“FIXERS”
“FIXERS”

CONVERSIONS AND ARRANGEMENTS OF CAPITAL IN THE NARRATIVES OF THE POLISH BUSINESS ELITE

Author(s): Kamil Lipiński
Subject(s): Politics, Sociology, Security and defense
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: capitalism; transformation; biography; business; capital; class; elite
Summary/Abstract: The aim of this chapter is to present, systematise, and analyse the activities as well as the relationships established by members of the Polish business elite in the course of their lives. The creativity and diligence of the respondents in the described processes are not inferior to their ability to use public and private institutions or to bend the rules, which is how they accumulate economic, social, political, and cultural capital, subsequently building their dominant position. A systematic description and analysis of the life paths, turning points, biographies, and capital conversions carried out by members of the business elite can be an interesting supplement to the dominant discourses and ideologies describing the business elites in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). I use biographical analysis as well as Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social fields to identify and describe the sequences of biographical structures accompanying capital conversions carried out by the richest Poles. Analysis of 19 in-depth interviews with leading Polish businessmen provides an insight into the network of changing, multiple audiences of those conversions, allowing me to situate the dynamics of the elite’s business relations in the wider context of consolidation of the CEE business field.

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