Historical Genealogy and Contemporary Social Elite: The Case of a Prominent Polish on-Line Genealogical Database

Tomasz Zarycki, University of Warsaw

Using the example of a prominent genealogical database of Poland's historical elites, www.wielcy.pl, built by Marek Jerzy Minakowski, the paper will analyze selected broader social mechanisms of the functioning of such databases. First, it will indicate the mechanisms for building the social credibility, recognition, and visibility of a given genealogical database. Secondly, the paper will indicate how the database is used to legitimize the social status of a selected faction of the contemporary Polish elite. In particular, the case of the Polish community of descendants of former aristocratic and landed elites, which has managed to maintain a certain coherence as a multi-generational social network, will be discussed. The given group, which can be called an extended family, adopted a relatively consistent historical family ideology and managed to maintain a relatively high social status, primarily by joining the elite of the Polish intelligentsia after World War II. The efficient use of the base by a given milieu is possible because the family ideology of the given elite factions is tied to the national ideology of the historical elites of Poland, which strongly privileges the nobility and its heritage. The given genealogical database may be, in fact, seen as a mechanism of operationalization of that relationship. Therefore, it allows for the mutual legitimization of a given database by its ties to a given elite group, as well as of a given elite group by a given database. Hopes of joining contemporary elite circles with the ability to present themselves as heirs to "historical elites" offered to other base users are usually not fulfilled, even if they are able to prove fairly close kinship ties to them. Such disappointment concerns especially the real social advancement or the possibility of joining historically formed elite circles.

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 Presented in Session 153. Production of Knowledge Regimes: Experts, Political Authority, and Legitimation I