ANALISIS INFERENCIAL

The interest in low-budget practices is growing in the West following the Global Financial Crisis. Academic studies have explored the political potential of low- budget urban practices for reshaping consumption and democratising cities, while calling for more work able to theorise them in all their diversity (Iveson, 2013). Much attention has been drawn to the shift from practical, utility-led aspects to value-led lifestyle consumption. The interest in contemporary

consumer formations, its visible sites and mediated manifestations, is also increasingly a topic in the popular press and emergent Polish academic studies. The intention of our study was to investigate media constructions of low-budget practices in a context where conditions of scarcity are part of the living memory in times of relative, if unevenly distributed affluence. We adopted a discourse analytic perspective of media representations as a way of uncovering the little understood parameters and meanings of changing consumption patterns in Poland. In doing so, we paid special attention to the extent in which low-budget practices are depicted as being rooted in informal, socialist and pre-socialist economic and social activities.

While ‘semioticising processes’ (Lotman, 1990) are underway, the media discourse approach has provided a number of valuable insights that contribute to our understanding of ‘low-budget practices’. In contrast to much empirical work focusing on a single urban low-budget practice (e.g. couch-surfing, car-sharing, etc.), this approach has enabled us to map a range of aspects of low-budget practices, variously linked to nostalgia, curiosity for the past, Western fashions, anti-consumerist sentiments, the appeal of alternative economies, and a host of social and financial rewards. We note that the representations of Polish low- budget practices in the popular press are not homogenous overall, despite a clear narrative focus on the young and professional as key groups involved. For young Poles born after the transition, many low-budget practices are depicted as being appreciated as extraordinary and cool, similar to the West. But the representations in the media exclude and draw in the Polish past at one and the same time. Some examples narrate cultural influences from the West over domestic continuities as drivers for these practices. The example provided by the re-emergence of milk bars in Warsaw is interesting as it clearly bridges the gap between the Polish past and present and productively exploits it as generative and innovative. Here we encounter a language that interweaves evocations of changing urban life (including today’s growing social stratification) with references to a new Polish ‘hispterism’ and the avant-gardist potential of bars on a European level.

The curious mix of low-budget practices in Poland derives from and engenders a multiplicity of entangled motivations, models, applications and experiences that require sophisticated theoretical tools and detailed studies on the ground. The problematised link between thrift-related skills and social class is one such dimension that could be usefully explored further. With the growing academic and policy interest in ‘thrift capital’ and its potential for creativity and social innovation, the Polish case could be illuminating. It is useful on the analytical level, we argue, to consider various low-budget practices in relation to one another and alongside other operative concepts such as ‘kombinowanie’ as part

urban practices in Poland of a larger semiotic and social system. For this reason, this article makes the case for a broad translation framework, operating at different levels of critical reading, analysis and comparison. Translation is useful as a theoretical framework to explain how low-budget practices are formed and imbued with meaning at the intersection between dynamic local and international cultural influences and socio-economic contingencies. The value of translation is also highlighted by the type of engaged inter-cultural research we have pursued here, helping us to refine the terms, categories and communicative techniques to effectively describe and analyse what is generally a broad notion of ‘low-budget practices’. There is a real opportunity for offering a richer historical analysis of how current ideas and practices of ‘low-budget’ (or thrift) have evolved over time. This discourse analysis is a first step in this direction. Polish studies could serve as important sources for a historical and comparative perspective on the international literature about low-budget practices, as well as the mechanisms explaining how cultures are made and remade.

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