No 1/157/2007

• Antoni Sułek, The Marienthal 1931/1932 Study and Contemporary Studies on Unemployment in Poland

Abstract: The paper outlines Polish studies of unemployment in the 1930s—at the times of the well-known study in Marienthal, Austria. They focused on living conditions, social life and psychological well being of the unemployed. They combined various methods and data: statistical data, institutional records, diaries and memoirs, family interviews, and sample surveys. Research started with simple descriptions of life style of the unemployed and ended with an elaborate empirical study, cross-country comparisons and theory of unemployment. The image of unemployment and its consequences was parallel to the Marienthal study results—unemployment caused not only poverty, but also apathy and disintegration of social life. The Marienthal study was known in Poland at the time and to some extent served as an inspiration. The case of Polish unemployment studies in 1930s shows how sociography transformed into sociology. It shows the birth of common method of social research in Central Europe that was so unexpectedly put to a holt by Nazism and the Second World War.

• Anna Zawadzka, The Unemployed in the Inter-war Period and at the End of the 20th Century: Problems, Attitudes, Narratives. Analysis of the Memoirs of the Unemployed

Abstract: This article compares memoirs written by the unemployed in the 1930s and at the end of the 20th century. It pays particular attention to the structural, social and psychological similarities between the plights of the unemployed in these two periods. Through affirmative reading of the diaries, fully trusting in the diarists' honesty, the author tracks the sources of income, the consequences of poverty and joblessness, attitudes towards capitalism, and the diarists' social and psychological condition. Much of the work is devoted to discussion of differences between women's and men's memoirs. The author attempts to identify the reasons for gender-specific personal narratives which the memoirs clearly are. She also discusses the question of self-narrative as a modern way of constructing identity and agency, a painful and often fruitless process for marginalised people.

• Kazimierz M. Słomczyński, Krystyna Janicka, Goldie Shabad, Irina Tomescu-Dubrow, Changes in Class Structure in Poland, 1988-2003: Crystallization of the Winners- Losers’ Divide

Abstract: This paper builds on the work of Słomczyński and Janicka (2005) and examines changes in the social structure in Poland, and the role of social classes on public opinion formation. The main hypothesis is that the divide between winners and losers crystallizes over time, as the social distance that separates these categories solidifies, and their reaction to economic and political transformation becomes increasingly divergent. Using data from the Polish panel survey POLPAN, conducted in 1988, 1993, 1998 and 2003, we find that the main changes in the class structure in Poland occurred between 1988 and 1993. Following 1993, the patterns of the post-communist social structure start to settle, becoming, by 2003, typical of a capitalist society. Results further show substantial and significant differences between the privileged and the disadvantaged in evaluation of socialism, as well as in their subjective assessment of changes in life, and active and passive support for the institution of elections.

• Anna Gąsior-Niemiec, Civil Society and New Modes of Governance in Poland

Abstract: The paper is focused on the introduction and operation of a novel model of EU-induced structure of governance networks—composed of public administration, business and civil society actors. It takes up a case of institutional structures to manage EU structural funds in Poland. In particular, the role of social partners, i.e. representatives of non-governmental organizations in the European Regional Development Fund-related region-level and nation-level steering and monitoring committees is analyzed. Following a brief exposition of regionalization principles, arrangement for regional development policy in Poland and changes induced by the country's accession to the EU, legal and institutional frameworks for the inclusion of social partners in the committees responsible for the programming, management and evaluation of the EuropeanRegional Development Fund are scrutinized. Empirical evidence of social partners' participation in the proceedings of such selected committees is introduced and analyzed. Opportunities, challenges and dilemmas of civil society actors faced with new modes of governance are discussed.

• Jacek Kurczewski, Self-Identification Structure in Opole Silesia and the Kashubia: A Comparative Analysis

Abstract: Data from surveys made in 2005/6 in small towns in two ethnically mixed regions—Opole Silesia and Kashubian Pomerania—are compared on issue of the local/ethnic/regional/national/European identification. Two regional profiles are different. In Silesia, there are two oppositions that account for most of identifications: Slesian versus non-Silesian and Polish versus non-Polish with some Silesians considering themselves Poles. In Kashubia almost all Kashubians consider themselves Poles but differ from non-Kashubian Poles. European identity is the least important, while local one is next to it with national and ethnic dominant.

• Justyna Stypińska, Jewish Majority and Arab Minority in Israel – Demographic Struggle

Abstract: The aim of this article is to take a closer look at national Israeli policies in the domain of population growth. Demography plays a powerful role in understanding the Israeli society and the changes it has experienced over time. The “demographic struggle” presents the constant effort of the Jewish population to maintain, regardless of the costs, the numerical majority of the Jews in Israel. The central means to achieve the demographic dominance are the immigration policies and fertility rate, therefore the control over these factors of social life is of primary importance to the Israeli authorities. The methods of managing and influencing the two demographic indicators are discussed in the article in details, since the differences between the Arab and Jewish communities in this area are crucial. The article presents also briefly the role of demography in constituting ethnic democracy in Israel.

• Book Review
• Books Recommended
• Annual Index 2006

No 2/158/2007
Florian Znaniecki’s Sociology in Today’s Global Society

• Tim F. Liao, Elżbieta Hałas, Editors' Introduction: Cultural Becoming and Cultural Sciences
• Norbert Wiley, Znaniecki’s Key Insight: The Merger of Pragmatism and Neo-Kantianism

Abstract: Znaniecki is difficult to classify theoretically, which may be why his ideas and writings have been neglected. He is a central and perhaps the central figure in American sociological theory. This is because he clarified the sense in which the social is symbolic. In addition his pioneering analysis of ethnic prejudice and racism makes him a central figure in the American reform tradition. The key to understanding his theoretical power is in his having fused or merged neo-Kantianism and pragmatism. This paper explains how Znaniecki achieved this highly creative feat and what consequences it led to.

• Elżbieta Hałas, Culture and Power: Possibilities and Responsibilities for the World-Society

Abstract:From Znaniecki's point of view, and alluding to present-day conclusions about the so-called reflexivity of modernity, one would have to say that it is a problematic reflexivity, as long as knowledge about the principles of cultural becoming will be minimal. Znaniecki did not deny the justification of sociological studies that start out from naturalist premises. However, he rightly believed that the dependence of cultural order on natural order is not only shrinking, but the reverse is in fact happening—there is an increasing influence of cultural order on natural order, and the rising complexity of cultural phenomena renders the naturalist approach scientifically less productive. The development of sociology as a cultural science led, according to Znaniecki, to displaying the possibility of a world-society as a society founded on culture, while the development of cultural sciences would be an expression of global responsibility for the world-culture society.

• Dorothee Schneider, Polish Peasants into Americans: U.S. Citizenship and Americanization among Polish Immigrants in the Inter-War Era

Abstract: Despite the pessimistic assessment of Thomas and Znaniecki, Polish immigrants to the United States built a stable and cohesive social and institutional community in the interwar years. The complex network of self organization and a high rate of naturalization as U.S. citizens reflected the strongmotivation and ability of Polish Americans to fit into working class America during the 1920s and 30s.

• Tim F. Liao; Carolyn Hronis, The Polish Peasant and the Sixth Life Course Principle

Abstract: In life course studies five principles guide social science researchers: (1) the principle of human development and aging, (2) the principle of human agency, (3) the principle of historical time and space, (4) the principle of timing, and (5) the principle of linked lives. We propose a sixth principle: life course tempo explicitly depends on other life course principles especially the external principles of (2), (3), and (5). Tempo changes may have sociological and psychological consequences. To demonstrate the sixth principle at work, we analyze a sample of the peasant letters both to and from America in Thomas and Znaniecki's The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, the pioneer life history study of Polish immigrants in early 20th century. Two types of tempo change in transition into first marriage are evident in the letters, waiting/postponement and haste, which resulted from changed historical time and space and reorganized human agency of the immigrants. Thus, this research is inspired by Thomas and Znaniecki's work on the Polish peasant and Znaniecki's methodology and in turn uses the Polish peasant letters as data.

• Jacques Tacq, Znanieck’s Analytic Induction as a Method of Sociological Research

Abstract: The Polish sociologist and philosopher Florian Znaniecki, well-known by his research together with W. I. Thomas on Polish immigrants in the United States, explicated the principles of his "analytic induction" in a later publication The Method of Sociology. This is a method in which research units are examined one by one and in which theoretical insights are adjusted to each observation. This process of continuous re-formulation of the research hypotheses completes when new observations do no longer offer new insights, i.e., when theoretical saturation takes place. In this paper a treatment of the original view of Znaniecki is offered. His starting-points—inductive approach, respect for the facts, dynamical fundamental attitude, special treatment of exceptions, attention for validity and intensional approach—are explained, as well as his formulation of analytic induction in four steps and the principle of structural dependence and the principle of causality. Starting from this original view, the advantages and disadvantages of analytic induction are balanced against each other and this method is examined with the aim of application. Critiques of the approach in the period around 1950, by Robinson, Lindesmith and Cressey and, later in time, by Peter Manning, are discussed and additional research examples from Belgium and the Netherlands serve as illustration of the arguments.

• Günther Lüschen, Sociology of/as Culture. The Unfinished Methodology of Florian Znaniecki

Abstract: While Florian Znaniecki's work is best known through his joint work with William I. Thomas on The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, his most important work deals with the methodology and substance of sociology of culture, based on three origins: systems theory, the identification of cultural science along the Vico-Axiom (his culturalism), and his cultural realism. Of the major sources of specific sociology of culture, he analyses in The Method of Sociology (1934) as a system approach, types of cultural and sociological data, existing methodological tendencies and the development of analytic induction which means a conglomerate of logic principles and a principle based on exception rather than the rule of insight. His final work Cultural Sciences (1952) is an attempt to include data and their interpretation from a set of cultural sciences, whereby the functionality of sociology as a cultural specialty is increasing the sociologists specialize in the comparative studies of other cultural sciences.

• Florian Znaniecki, The Evolutionary Approach to The History of Culture

No 3/159/2007

• Piotr Sztompka, The Return to Values in Recent Sociological Theory

Abstract: The author reviews two opposite traditional positions on the role of values and value judgements in sociological research and theory: treating values as a bias interfering in research, or treating values as ideology providing privileged access to knowledge. He traces the recent revival of the debate about valuations, focusing particularly on the claims of the so-called "public sociology." Then the author's own position is outlined based on the fundamental particularity of the social sciences as contrasted with the natural sciences. The old argument that values do not follow from facts is acknowledged as true in the sense of logical deduction, but in the social sciences we encounter different mechanism of implication, which may be called "sociological syllogism:" values may follow from facts, and facts may imply values because, on the one hand, people act on their axiological beliefs, and human actions constitute social facts, and on the other hand, social facts (e.g. about poverty, inequality, degradation, crime, terrorism) mobilize moral impulses and valuational commitments. In other words values shape meanings of human actions and resulting social facts, and the knowledge of facts acquires valuational meaning by mobilizing human axiological impulses. The strict separation of facts and values does not work in the social sciences; there is a two-directional link between the two. This opens the possibility for "sociological ethics" deriving normative standards of social life from the research results of sociology.

• Jadwiga Staniszkis, Global Challenges, Culture, and Development

Abstract: This paper examines the comparative suitability of Chinese and Western European philosophies of power vis-ŕ-vis globalization. The Author argues that the patent feebleness of themodernEuropean state represents the demise of the post-Enlightenment model of power, one based on uniform, hierarchically organized standards of formal rationality-and she contrasts this with China's pursuit of steerability as based upon a stratified system of logics that deliberately hearkens to divergent standards of rationality. The Author proposes that to govern in the era of globalization means not to sniff out irrationalities as within the Enlightenment formula, but to build institutional and mental bridges between a system's differing rationalities and topographies at both the micro and macro levels. She also offers an analysis of Russia's ongoing radical pursuit of the Enlightenment paradigm, and notes that the weakly "theoretized," flexible practice of the English world's utilitarianism and pragmatism can be treated as a suitable option for a globalized world-an option deprived, however, of the intellectual seductiveness of the Asian philosophy of power. In the later case, the epistemology rather than axiology is a decisive dimension.

• Kristine Barseghyan, Changing Turkish Other in Post-Soviet Armenian Discourse on National Identity

Abstract: The paper is focused on the definition of the Other in the discourse on Armenian national identity from 19th century onwards and, particularly, on its transformations after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It argues that with the collapse of the Soviet Union and establishment of Armenian statehood the image of the Turkey-Other or Turkey-Enemy of the Armenian nation, developed within the discursive project of the last two centuries, became challenged by the projects voting for the pragmatic interests of the Armenian statehood. The post-communist elites tend to revise the historical representation of the Ottoman period and to reformulate Turkey as a force the cooperation with which is "vital" for the successful development of the state. The problem of Turkey-other became the very point where the concepts of the state and nation clash.

• Marek S. Szczepański, Weronika Ślęzak-Tazbir, Between Fear and Admiration. Social and Spatial Ghettoes in an Old Industrial Region

Abstract: More and more frequently a notion of space ghettoization is used to describe a phenomenon of dividing urban space into various enclaves of social life-or socially isolated worlds. Ghettoization that we describe results from various social processes which are increasingly reflected in urban space. It results from differences in the economic standard of inhabitants of given areas (riches-poverty) There is one more criterion, very important if we view the case from a profoundly humanistic perspective-the criterion of social emotions accompanying urban space. This justifies the title of this article. Today's ghettoes may result from relatively automatic choices (lifestyles) and relatively objective processes-marginalization. We will try to make a general outline of the problems of ghettoization in a traditional industrial region, namely in Upper Silesia, related to diversification of income as well as the aesthetic and architectonic and urban criteria.

• Piotr Chmielewski, Errare humanum est, but Sometimes Costs are Extremely High The Biggest Constructional Catastrophe in Polish History: The Collapsed Building in Chorzów-Katowice

Abstract: The paper approaches the biggest constructional catastrophe in Polish history. Article focuses on conditions and causes of crises. Conditions refer to: biophysical factors, natural and technical ones, different institutional rules acting in variable spheres of life, as well as various characteristics of community. All of them create context of actions of human beings. Those conditions combined with intentional, rationally bounded and opportunistic individual, transform into causes of social events (positive and negative). Catastrophe in Chorzów-Katowice was a result of all of those elements mentioned above. New institutional approach used in this paper seems to be the most productive to explain and understand different social crises.

• Małgorzata Haładewicz-Grzelak, Enchantment Strategies in Polish Radio Commercials

Abstract: The article investigates the linguistic reflection of post-modernist sociological theory (e.g. Campbell 1989; Baudrillard 1979, 1998; Ritzer 2001) in the case study of Polish radio commercials. I assumed that radio commercials are a communicative event of the post-modern society. Furthermore, they a simulated event: a guided conversation, which is imbued, in Eliade's terminology, with the function of coincidencia oppositorum. The source of 310 radio commercials serves to single out enchantment strategies in the commercial idiolect, reflecting the seduction, fetishism and the decline of the moral posture of autarchy in contemporary society.

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No 4/160/2007

• Janusz Mucha, Democratization in Central and Eastern Europe and the Minority Issues

Abstract: The aim of this article is to present some ramifications of the democratization processes in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) since 1989. The analysis concentrates on relations between the new dominant groups and cultural (mostly national and religious) minorities. The author outlines the concepts of democracy under conditions of cultural pluralism. He concentrates on similarities and differences between three levels of relations between the dominant groups and minorities: “institutional,” “semi-institutional,” and “non-institutional.” CEE is not homogenous neither among the countries nor among these spheres. Moreover, relations between dominant groups and minorities do not seem to be much more complicated than in some (actually many)Western countries. However, it seems to be easier in CEE to express oneself on political and cultural maters without fear of governmental reprisal than without fear of societal reprisal.


• Hanna Bojar, To be an Immigrant in Poland. An Analysis of the Experiences of Immigrants from Non-EU Countries

Abstract: This article analyses the experience of immigrants who have migrated to Poland from the point of view of the major social dimensions of this experience: the organisational dimension which involves the immigrant's relations with various formal public and civic institutions, the economical dimension which determines the immigrant's material standard of living, the socio-cultural dimension which involves the immigrant's relations with members of the receiving society and the identity dimension which involves the immigrant's empowerment and self-identification. The emergent reconstruction of immigrants' vision of social reality uncovers many subjective meanings, positive and negative emotions, heterogeneous experiences and individual strategies of coping with the status of “being an immigrant.” This analysis is based on the assumption that differences in immigrants' focus on the different social dimensions and the resulting hierarchy of importance of the dimensions are a very powerful indicator of an immigrant's conditions of life in a given country.


• Beata Leuner, Settling Down and Settlement Patterns. Case Study: Polish Migrants from the 1980s in Melbourne

Abstract: The history of Australia and the cultural origins of its population are closely linked to the story of the migration of peoples from other continents. This paper includes an examination of opportunity and psychological costs of Polish migration to Melbourne (Australia) during the 1980s. Included are positive and negative experiences during the settlement process, as well as the outcomes and consequences of migration. Generally migrants have had a difficult time building a life for themselves in Australia due to a variety of reasons which will be discussed in this paper. The article also outlines Polish migrants opinions of multiculturalism in Australia.

• Kinga Sekerdej, Agnieszka Pasieka, Marta Warat, Popular Religion and Postsocialist Nostalgia. Licheń as a Polysemic Pilgrimage Centre in Poland

Abstract: The paper discusses the intertwining of religious-national symbolism and socrealist aesthetics in a popular pilgrimage site in Poland: Licheń. In the last decades of the 20th century, a local cult with a sanctuary devoted to the Virgin Mary has turned into a popular nation-wide pilgrimage site. It is argued that the popularity of Licheń derives from the familiarity it evokes, that the longing for the recent and familiar past is fulfilled by the, seemingly contradictory, combination of popular religion and the aesthetics characteristic for the People's Republic of Poland. This is visible in the monuments, paintings, architecture, the cult of one man, as well as the language at the sanctuary. However, this particular poetics, rooted in recent history, is vitalized by modern technology and global trends, thus creating a successful and attractive pilgrimage destination.


• Aleksandra Herman, Roman Catholic Poles and Mariavite Poles. Religious Divisions as a Source of Differentiation of Local Structure

Abstract: This article presents a two-denominational village community in central Poland (Roman Catholics and followers of the Old Catholic Mariavite Church). The author strives to combine an anthropological interpretation of her field studies with a broader historical and social perspective. Mariavitism emerged from Roman Catholicism a hundred years ago. Today it no longer provokes the spontaneous social sanctions of the followers of the mother Church. The structural dichotomy, indistinguishable in everyday life, has been channelled in the local political division. Celebrations of holidays in the village public space are a site of fractional rivalry between political actors and they also serve as a symbolic means of expression for different social forces. Because of the dense local relations and symbols and their interpretations, the local community is easily manipulated politically and this is weakening their civic activity.

• Ruxandra Timofeychev, Orthodox Romanian Church and the State. Testing Paul Ramet’s Model

Abstract: This paper analyzes the types of relationships which have been established between the Orthodox Romanian Church and the state starting with the 1866 Constitution. It critically assesses the theoretical model proposed by Pedro Ramet (1987) and reorganizes it applying its basic principles and its structure to the Romanian case study. Taking into consideration the various elements of the model, the study concludes that currently in spite of a delimitation of the religious sphere from the political one, in practice in post-communist Romania the connection between Church and state is much more blurred.

• Krzysztof Gorlach, Tomasz Adamski, Neo-endogenous Development and the Revalidation of Local Knowledge

Abstract: This article is about rural development. This theoretical concept encompasses the perspective of neo-endogenous development, i.e., a developmental idea rooted in the assumption that two different types of resources should be utilised side by side: internal resources, unique for a particular community, and external resources, offered by the state, non-governmental organisations and supranational institutions and organisations. The combination of two major types of knowledge plays an important role in this mechanism: so-called external, expert knowledge contributed by experts and representatives of the said institutions and local knowledge, contributed by members of the local community and based on experience and tradition. The main idea of the article is that only the combination of both types of knowledge will guarantee success, i.e., specific change. This process is empirically illustrated by a case study of the reintroduction of the “Polish red cow” in one of the local administrative districts of the Małopolska voivodeship. This study was conducted in 2005 by a group of sociologists from the Jagiellonian and Łódź Universities within the framework of the CORASON Project (A Cognitive Approach Towards Rural Sustainable Development), part of the European Union Sixth Framework Programme.

• Izabella Bukraba-Rylska, A Hundred Years of Village Monographs in Poland. Jubilee Reflections

Abstract: Monographs of local rural communities played an important role in Polish sociology until the 1970s. They had been preceded by numerous sociographic descriptions and social surveys made already in the first half of the 19th century. Numerous critical remarks made about classical (descriptive, encyclopedic) monographs, which stressed that such accounts lacked a representative character and provided no material for formulating general conclusions, that they represented a synchronic and not a diachronic approach and contained redundant details, were justified. However, the best monographs in Polish sociology met all the strict methodological requirements and their most important value was a reliable description of social reality, which has been neglected since the moment of the popularization of research conducted with the help of questionnaires that concentrate mainly on the analysis of the respondents' awareness. Traditional monographs seem to represent an interesting approach to scientific investigations, even from the point of view of present dilemmas in social sciences (the postulated restraint on the part of the author, incoherence of culture, the researcher's ethos, science's non-involvement in temporary matters). Therefore, it is worth examining this inconsiderately abandoned genre of sociological literature.

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• Obituary
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