Exposition

The Production of High Fidelity Audio Electronics and the Politics of Technological and Social Modernization in Late State Socialist Poland (2024)

Patryk Wasiak
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This paper investigates the development of the production of High Fidelity (Hi-Fi), audios and the emergence of an accompanying audiophile culture in late state socialist Poland of the 1970s. My case study offers a discussion on the re-negotiating of the cultural values of a specifically marketed technology that was used as a status symbol in affluent market economy countries. In state-socialist Poland, a host of social actors appropriated Hi-Fi audios technologies and audiophile culture to be part of a nationwide project of technological and social modernization. I investigate how in this specific historical setting the mass-scale development and the production of Hi-Fi audios emerged, and how this was embedded into the government policy of building “consumer socialism.” This development also corresponded with a state-sponsored program of technological modernization, in which the electronics industry was identified as a flagship sector that received substantial government investment. I also discuss the emergence of a local audiophile culture, which was redefined by intermediary actors, from being a Western elitist “consumption microculture” into an accessible form of cultural uplift for working-class youth.
typeresearch exposition
date24/09/2024
published27/09/2024
last modified27/09/2024
statuspublished
share statusprivate
copyrightWasiak
licenseCC BY-NC-ND
urlhttps://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/3025897/3025898
doihttps://doi.org/10.22501/JSS.3025897
published inJournal of Sonic Studies
portal issue26. Issue 26


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