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The aim of this paper is to perform a sociological and pastoral analysis of the religiousness of young people in Poland, which is a challenge to Catholic education. The authors analyse this issue based on the empirical study conducted in 2019 and 2020. The study employed an online survey questionnaire. The study included 1171 people, students in grades 7 and 8 of primary schools and of secondary schools in the Małopolskie and Podkarpackie Voivodships in Poland. The paper focuses on young people's self-declarations concerning: the religion they profess, faith, affiliation with a religious community, a bond to the community, the respondents' and their parents' attending religious services, celebrations/masses and praying individually. It was regarded as important to determine the correlations between the self-declarations of affiliation with a religious community and self-declaration of the religion professed and between the self-declarations of faith and bond to a religious community and self-declaration of the religion professed. These issues are enriched with the respondents' opinions on religion as a school subject. They provide an insight into not only the respondents' religiousness but also a diagnosis of young people's attitudes towards religion as a school subject. They allow for conclusions to be drawn on Catholic education in the secularising society, especially with young people increasingly often quitting religious lessons in schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data production is becoming an emerging trend in critical urban activism. Precise and reliable public information, including spatial and environmental information, serves individual and collective 'right to the city' beliefs. One of the common strategies adopted by contemporary urban movements to ensure the accuracy and inclusiveness of urban data production processes are various forms of counter-mapping, which we introduce in this paper as a perspective aimed in critical evaluation of urban environmental conditions in Polish cities. By process tracing of smog alerts and urban greenery movements we investigate the main strategies of using such tools and their effects for both particular social actors, and general urban environmental policy. We argue that the core idea of citizen-driven collection of geographical data is strongly supported by its other features - social involvement and collective production of visualizations illustrating the scale and dynamics of particular environmental problems. In this sense, counter-mapping is aimed rather at repoliticizing urban environmental data in order to critically evaluate existing urban policy, than just to ensure greater citizen involvement in environmental decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper constitutes an analysis of urban movements, marked in the research as alternative groups and civil organisations, in terms of the new politics characteristic of new social movements. In particular it indicates that these movements, ostensibly urban, actually express demands towards the broader social system, delegitimating it in a twofold manner. Firstly, the acceptance of certain general principles in democratic values and rules is coupled with criticism of how the system functions in practice and of the political elites in Poland, via protest, lobbying, and watchdog activities. A separate type of delegitimation embraces organisations among which we may list cooperatives and squats, as well as organisations managing concrete spaces and withdrawing from participation in public life, shutting themselves away within autonomous spaces and realising a different cultural and democratic model. In both of these groups we are thus dealing with a strongly accentuated anti-systemic and anti-capitalist attitude towards the political reality of the period of transformation in Poland. The research delivered confirmation of the overall research hypothesis adopted in the Lifewhat project, according to which in response to economic crisis civil society responds with the emergence of alternative forms of resilience, not only alleviating the consequences of the crisis but which also, as time passes and the scale of their activities increases, may give rise to a new quality - including in a political sense. The research constitutes a part of the international Lifewhat project. It was conducted on a sample of eighteen purposefully selected civil groups and organisations operating in large cities in Poland, using the method of in-depth interviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws attention to online discourse of children's participation in decision-making. The participation of children is located in one of the core principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). This study examines the right of the child to express his/her opinion and the participation of the child in matters affecting his/her interests. This paper aims to compare Poland and Russia results in the search process in the Google global search engine, level from 2004 to 2019 using Google Trends. We discover that there are connecting discourses among legal policies in Poland and Russia. There are also differences between clusters of arguments about existence of children's rights in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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One of the trends in today’s tourism sector is the development of environmentally-friendly tourism activities which rely on natural resources of cultural heritage and on biodiversity. This is definitely the case for agritourism, a form of rural tourism. The purpose of this paper is to identify the development aspects of Polish agritourism with particular emphasis on natural and cultural attractiveness. To demonstrate the relationship between agritourism activities of Polish farms and the cultural and natural attractiveness, the Hellwig’s synthetic development indicator was used. As shown by research, the cultural and natural attractiveness of a destination is an important exogenous development factor. Another finding was that the intensified efforts undertaken by the farmers to access EU funds were not focused on areas with valuable natural or cultural resources and an untapped agritourism potential; instead, they were oriented at regions dominated by semi-subsistence or family farms. For a large part of farmers, the new form of support is about to become a source of additional incomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Due to changes in Polish society resulting from a significant inflow of immigrants to Poland, the need to develop the cultural competences of various professional groups who have contact with immigrants in their work has increased. These groups should include healthcare professionals, especially because of the significant increase in the number of culturally diverse patients. Therefore, medical education in Poland has had to rapidly adapt to this novel situation. For instance, the teaching process should be now more focused on the development and evaluation of the cultural competences of prospective health care workers. However, there is still a lack of standardized, valid and reliable instruments to assess cross-cultural competences among healthcare professionals. The purpose of the present paper was to describe, for the first time, the translation, adaptation, and psychometric evaluation of the Polish version of the Cross-Cultural Competence Inventory. Methods: Across two studies, we examined psychometric properties of the Cross-Cultural Competence Inventory (CCCI) such as reliability (i.e. internal consistency, test-retest reliability, factor structure) and validity (i.e. theoretical, criteria, convergent). In the first study, 408 participants (75% were healthcare professionals) completed the Polish version of the CCCI and the Positive/Negative Attitude Towards Culturally Divergent People Questionnaire. In the second study, 317 participants (97% were healthcare professionals) completed the CCCI twice, with an interval of at least 22 days. In addition, across two study sessions, participants completed questionnaires constructed to measure (a) cultural intelligence, (b) need for cognitive closure, (c) emphatic sensitiveness, (d) emotional intelligence, (e) self-esteem, (f) social desirability, and (g) personality. Finally, to additionally examine the theoretical validity, 36 professional cross-cultural competence trainers completed the CCCI during a one-session study. Results: Our findings confirm the reliability and validity of the CCCI. More precisely, in study 1 we proved the theoretical validity and reliability (i.e. internal consistency) of the CCCI. While the assumed structure did not fit the data well, all items were significantly related to the general factor, thus providing strong support for the usage of the total score of the CCCI. In study 2, we additionally estimated the test-retest reliability and theoretical, criterion and convergent validity. Across two studies we were able to successfully confirm these psychometric properties. The reliability was satisfactory and ranged from .83 to .86. We also observed a high and significant positive correlation between CCCI and the Cultural Intelligence Scale, which measures a concept similar to the one measured by CCCI. In addition, a significant relationship between intercultural competences (CCCI) and other variables such as personality, empathic sensitivity, emotional intelligence, self-esteem (positive correlations) and the need for cognitive closure (mainly negative correlation) were demonstrated. Conclusions: The obtained results support the usage of the CCCI questionnaire in scientific research, such as, for example, among healthcare professionals (nurses, doctors) and students of medical fields (nursing, medicine). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the paper, we present the development of symbolic interactionism (SI) in Poland by tracing and discussing its beginnings, as well as the influence the Chicago School had on the reception of SI in Polish sociology. Furthermore, we differentiate between two trends in the development of SI in Poland. One is connected with the early theoretical elaborations of the SI orientation and translations of classical books representing this perspective; another is linked with empirical work underpinned by SI concepts and the grounded theory approach in empirical research and data analysis. Stressing the importance of translations of classical texts of SI in its reception in Poland, we emphasize the role of field research and applications of SI concepts in sociological investigations that we shortly characterize. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of the paper is to present the “biography” of selected things which appear in autobiographical narrative interviews conducted within the project “Experiencing the Systemic Transformation Process in Poland. A Sociological Comparison on the Basis of Biographical Analysis.” The author discusses different social actions connected with things, for example, the migrations of things, emancipation through things, collecting things, and reconstructs the stages of life of such things as: notebooks, cassette, and video tapes. The considerations are mainly embedded in the context of the People’s Republic of Poland and the process of transformation of the 1990s. The sociology and anthropology of things are theoretical frames of the analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An international conference on local communities was held in Madralin on November 19-21, 1999. The conference was organized by Joanna Kurczewska from the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences. Henryk Domanski from the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, opened the conference with a paper on "The Death of Classes in Poland. Voting Behavior in the Nineties" in which he presented the findings of his studies in which he tried to determine whether classes in Poland were dying or becoming more consolidated in the nineties. Jerzy Bartlcowski from the Institute of Sociology, University of Warsaw, presented a paper entitled "How the Democratic Framework Affects the Shaping of Local Elites" in which he drew attention, among other things, to the considerable stability of these elites, the growing numbers of members of the intelligentsia and the decreasing number of working class people, women and young people in the local. authorities. Don Kaib from the Netherlands and the Human Sciences Institute in Vienna opened the second day of the conference by sharing his reflections on the Possible Futures of Citizenship in CEE Countries.

The article discusses 11th Polish sociological congress organized by the Polish Sociological Association from September 20-23, 2000 in Rzeszów. The title of the congress is "The Fate and the Choice. Heritage and Perspectives of the Polish Society." The inaugural plenary session was on the topic "The Social History of the Polish Society in the 20th Century." It included papers "Power Versus Society and Political Changes," by Roman Wapiński; "Polish Society Against a Background of Economic Transformations in 20th Century," by Wojciech Roszkowski. Another plenary session was on topic "Towards New Europe: Old and New Neighbourhoods of Cultures." It included papers "Disintegration of Post Communist Europe. Old and New Neighbourhoods of National Cultures," by Joanna Kurczewska; "European Systems of Values and National Identity of the Poles," by Aleksandra Jasińska-Kania; "Contemporary European International Migrations and the Dynamics of Integration Processes," by Marek Okólski. Jerzy Szacki organized a symposia "Identity of the Polish Sociology." It included papers "National Identity of Social Sciences: The Case of the Polish Sociology," by Jerzy Szacki; "Polish Sociology in the Process of its International Integration," by Kazimierz Slomczyński.

Vaccination against seasonal flu is crucial to prevention of illness in modern societies. The level of influenza vaccination in Poland is low and, for many years, has hovered around a few percent of the general population. For this reason, it is crucial to understand the reasons for such a low level of vaccination and to assess the influence of medical and social authorities on the decision to vaccinate against influenza from the perspective of social vaccinology. For this purpose, a representative survey was conducted in 2022 among adult Poles (N = 805), orchestrated with the CAWI technique based on the author's questionnaire. The most significant authority in the context of influenza vaccination is held by physicians, especially among the oldest part of the population, over 65 years of age—in this group, 50.4% of respondents declare a very high level of respect for physicians on the issue of recommended influenza vaccination (p < 0.001), and the second-highest authority group for which seniors have respect in the aspect of influenza vaccination is pharmacists (p = 0.011). It was also shown that pharmacists have more authority on the issue of influenza vaccination than nurses, especially in the group that declared themselves opponents of vaccination (p < 0.001). The survey indicates the need to strengthen the authority of physicians and pharmacists regarding influenza vaccination, and, in the case of pharmacists, the need for changing the law to allow them to qualify for influenza vaccination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents discussion on the previous issue of the "Polish Sociological Review." First, the texts selected for publication are modifications of papers of Polish sociologists presented at the XII Polish Sociological Congress in Poznan on September 15-18, 2004. The title of the congress was "Poland in Europe: Determinants and Perspectives." Polish sociologists from various academic centres, representing a variety of academic schools and functioning in a variety of sociological sub-disciplines, diagnosed the nature of the social order and social change in the context of Poland's accession to European structures and they did so from several different perspectives. It was hard to choose from the rich intellectual offer which was presented at the Poznan Congress. Therefore, the editors of the PSR had to select just a few papers and texts prepared on the basis of these papers, aware that many interesting papers would have to be left out of this issue. In other words, one source of the specificity of the issue was that all the texts relate to the Congress which took place in a city which is one of the most well-known localities on the map of twentieth-century Polish sociology, from its origins at the beginning of the Second Republic to this day.

Following Zygmunt Bauman's view, one can claim that communism, or the so-called real socialism, was thoroughly modern in its passionate conviction that a good society can only be carefully designated, rationally managed and thoroughly industrialized. As a result, in an attempt to ‘out-modernize the modernizers’ the rulers of state-socialist countries tended to introduce pseudo-scientific solutions and centrally planned endeavours also in the domain of the identity politics. In this connection, this paper aims to examine the nation-building project grounded in the ideologically-saturated social scientific discourse during the communist past in Poland as contested by local narratives. The case of the community of Cieszyn Silesia will be discussed in the context of its struggles against an illusion of monolithic national culture. The significance of the local knowledge (especially the narratives about the local history) in challenging the official version of national homogeneous culture and strengthening the bonds of the local solidarities and loyalties will be emphasized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the sociological theories that developed in Poland during the height of societal expectations for better life and a brighter future. However, the decade of 1970-80 already contained seeds of crisis. The mainstream sociological theories that are analysed here neglected many of the alarming features of the socialist society already to be seen. Instead, the proponents of those theories actively supported the political enterprise of the existing power elite. As a result, those major sociological theories have little explanatory utility, since they are not an adequate tool of cognition for the actual existing socialist society. The non-mainstream approaches, on the other hand, although being far more critical, did not bear features of sociological theory either. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper starts with an analysis of the three main principles of the social order of 'real socialism': etatistic homogenization, basic dichotomy between the ruling group and all the direct producers as a whole, and politically-defined-from-above income differences among different sectors of employees. The structural crisis of this order is described as gradual undermining of these principles brought about especially by the growth of the second economy. In the last section the dilemmas of the recently started system transformation are described in terms of symbolic support but lack of short-term interests of the most numerous social groups in the market reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reconstructs the unknown part of Ossowski's sociology that deals with Marxism and Marxist societies by looking onto his unpublished Diary from the heydays of communist totalitarianism in Poland (1951-1955). The Diary served both as the research notes and theoretical glosses to reality. Consistent with the censored Class Structure in the Social Consciousness and posthumously published work On Social Structure but much more explicitly, Ossowski characterizes Marxist societies as ones in which the abolition of freedoms is supplemented with growing social stratification. This is a class structure of a new type in which the political dominance in the nationalized economy allows domination over the totally dependent new, economically privileged classes. Marxism is analysed as the secular counterpart of the Calvinist ethics of work and merit which legitimizes new inequality, while criticizing the political enemy. In this context Ossowski's desperate plea for a pluralistic and planned social democracy is recalled at the end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question, whether in Poland emerge processes typical for social stratification in market societies reverts in this paper. In what follows I attempt to figure out "upper," "middle," and "lower" classes in Polish society. This classical fix Western sociology but uncommon in Polish research analytical schema is deliberately taken to emphasize distinctive features of social stratification in Poland. Based on speculative reflection I compare Polish intelligentsia, white collars, private entrepreneurs, farmers, and working class with their counterparts in Western countries to answer a critical question: how far to the market system? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about several issues discussed at the Third Edmund Mokrzycki Symposium held from October 20-21, 2006 in Warsaw, Poland, is presented. The papers ranged from theoretical and historical overviews related to growth in Europe. Sven Eliaeson, sociologist, introduced the conference and outlined the themes. The main theme of the conference was "New Europe and Its Growth to Limits?" Globalization and territoriality was the main issue of socio-political European societies.

The introduction to this volume pursues two aims. On the one hand, it refers to the problem of distinguishing between 'right to the city' initiatives and 'urban city movements' as phenomena embedded in different structural moments of society. On the other hand, it attempts to propose a supplement to the discussion about the aforementioned phenomena. This supplement addresses the need to take into account different scales by which the phenomena of self-organisation in the city are analysed. The article offers an example of such analysis referring to the Central European and the Polish perspectives, treating the two stories as separate to a certain extent. As it turns out, each of them offers a slightly different reasoning and different contexts for understanding the evolution of phenomena as well as separate decisive factors shaping the empowerment processes. The reader finds here references to research analysis in sociology, urban and economic history, supplementing the existing knowledge. The proposed interpretation is intended to lead to a discussion on the need to comprehend local and regional specifics in universalising studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: It is generally accepted that maternal factors are important in maintaining the adequate nutritional status of young children. This study was aimed at verifying whether mother's socio-demographic (age and relationship status) and socio-economic features (education and professional status) differentiate the child's nutritional status.Material and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted between April and October 2013. Five hundred thirty mothers of preschool children from 5 different regions of Poland were interviewed. Mothers were interviewed on their socio-demographic and socio-economic status. To assess the child's nutritional status, body mass index (BMI) z-score and the diet indicators were calculated, such as the percentage of the estimated average requirement for energy (%EAR), the percentage of energy coming from carbohydrates (%EC), fat (%ET) and proteins (%EP). Percentage of the estimated average requirement for energy, %EC, %ET and %EP was obtained from 24-h dietary recalls conducted with the mothers.Results: The results showed that mother's education and professional status did not differentiate any of the indices of the child's nutritional status. However, maternal age and her relationship status occurred significant (ANOVA; p < 0.05). Children of younger mothers had higher BMI z-score and higher %EC as compared to children of older mothers. Moreover, %EAR was higher among children of single mothers and it was closer to the recommended nutrition standards as compared to children of mothers with a partner.Conclusions: When a child is diagnosed with any type of malnutrition, it is worth assessing various factors that might influence the nutritional status, such as child's social background (e.g., maternal factors). Int J Occup Med Environ Health 2017;30(5):811-821. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The aim of the study was to estimate ten-year changes in physical activity (PA) patterns and sociodemographic determinants among adult residents of Poland. Methods: The study comprised two independent samples of randomly selected adults aged 20–74 years participating in the National Multicentre Health Survey WOBASZ (2003–2005; n = 14572) and WOBASZ II (2013–2014; n = 5694). In both surveys the measurements were performed by six academic centers in all 16 voivodships of Poland (108 measurement points in each survey). Sociodemographic data were collected by an interviewer-administered questionnaire in both surveys. Physical activity was assessed in three domains: leisure-time, occupational and commuting physical activity. Results: Leisure-time PA changed substantially between the surveys (p<0.001). The prevalence of subjects being active on most days of week fell in both genders in the years 2003–2014 (37.4% vs 27.3% in men); 32.7% vs 28.3% in women. None or occasional activity increased from 49.6% to 56.8% in men, while remained stable in women (55.2% vs 54.9%). In both WOBASZ surveys the likelihood of physical inactivity was higher in less educated individuals, smokers and those living in large agglomerations (p<0.01). No significant changes were observed in occupational activity in men between the surveys, while in women percentage of sedentary work increased from 43.4% to % 49.4% (p<0.01). Commuting PA decreased significantly in both genders (p<0.001). About 79.3% of men and 71.3% of women reported no active commuting in the WOBASZ II survey. Conclusions: The observed unfavourable changes in PA emphasize the need for novel intervention concepts in order to reverse this direction. Further detailed monitoring of PA patterns in Poland is of particular importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present results of an abstract, agent based model of opinion dynamics simulations based on the emotion/information/opinion (E/I/O) approach, applied to a strongly polarized society, corresponding to the Polish political scene between 2005 and 2015. Under certain conditions the model leads to metastable coexistence of two subcommunities of comparable size (supporting the corresponding opinions)—which corresponds to the bipartisan split found in Poland. Spurred by the recent breakdown of this political duopoly, which occurred in 2015, we present a model extension that describes both the long term coexistence of the two opposing opinions and a rapid, transitory change due to the appearance of a third party alternative. We provide quantitative comparison of the model with the results of polls and elections in Poland, testing the assumptions related to the modeled processes and the parameters used in the simulations. It is shown, that when the propaganda messages of the two incumbent parties differ in emotional tone, the political status quo may be unstable. The asymmetry of the emotions within the support bases of the two parties allows one of them to be ‘invaded’ by a newcomer third party very quickly, while the second remains immune to such invasion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Various childhood adversities have been found to be associated with chronic pain in adulthood. However, associations were moderate in most studies, i.e. odds ratios (OR) were between one and two. Method: An internet survey was performed in 508 Polish and 500 German subjects. A total of 19 childhood adversities were selected and their associations with headaches explored. Age, gender and country were included as potential confounders, as well as their two-way interaction with the risk factors. Results: Two strong risk factors were identified. (1) A combined score for physical and emotional neglect showed an odds ratio (OR) of 2.78 (p < .002) to the frequency of headache in adulthood as a main effect. (2) Father having had chronic pain showed an OR of 4.36 (p < .001) with headache in adulthood for women, but not for men (OR = 0.86, p < .556). The majority of the examined childhood adversities were not associated with adult headache, neither when tested individually nor as a sum score. Conclusion: This study confirms results from previous ones that childhood adversities may play a role in the development of adult headache, but it is a rather minor one. Contrary to other studies, neglect turned out to be one of the strongest predictors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a few years the political and economic situation in Poland has been getting worse in many respects: the unemployment rate has been rising, the budget deficit has been growing, trust in politicians has been falling. The state has been unable to perform many of its functions, for example, in the area of health care services. The pessimistic situation has been accompanied by pessimistic social moods, supported by the catastrophic tone of the media and the Polish tendency to complain. However, not everything has been that bad. An optimistic tone may be seen in the social involvement of Poles. Over the past three years, the number of Poles engaged in various forms of voluntary jobs has increased markedly. Surveys done in the years 1994–2002 on representative samples of Poles show an increase in sensitivity to the public good and a significant growth in the strength of social orientations, particularly prosocial ones. The results show that social orientations, understood both as outcome allocation preferences and as control allocation preferences, affect the prosocial behaviors of Poles. The measures of attitudes and behaviors were: attitudes toward public goods, declared environment-friendly behaviors, and declared limited resources crisis behaviors. As it has turned out, it is not the orientations themselves that are the best predictors of such behaviors but their absolute value. Thus, for prosocial attitudes it is not one's cooperative orientation that matters but his/her concern for joint outcomes, even when he/she cares for minimization of those joint outcomes. That one wants something is more important than what the something is. This is a theoretically unexpected result, and, as such, it needs replication in further studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International migration has enormously increased in volume and diversity, playing a constitutive role in the globalization processes that are transforming economies, nation-states, and local cultures worldwide. A coherent explanatory framework is needed for the sociology of international migration, which would relate to mainstream theoretical agenda of the discipline. Thus, the initiation of international migratory flows is best accounted for by a combination of propositions from the world system, segmented labor market, neoclassical economics, and the new economics of migration theories, and, thus far unintegrated into the sociological theories of immigrations, the nature and effectiveness of emigration and immigration policies of sender and receiver states. A combination of specific propositions derived from the segmented labor market model and social capital and cumulative causation theories explains the perpetuation mechanisms of international migratory flows. The information about these worker, and trader-tourists and their environments in home and host countries has been gathered from national and sub-regional reports on the directions, intensity, and sociodemographic composition of Westbound migrations from post-communist Poland.

This article discusses a research conducted in Poland in four separate surveys in 1965, 1967, 1976 and 1980. Each time, a randomly selected sample of working men aged 21 to 65, heads of families, was interviewed. The sizes of the samples were 1,000, 1,000,960, and 975 in the respective years. The most recent survey was conducted in November-December 1980. Like its predecessors, it is part of a series of studies on social differentiation among the urban population. A comparison of the average monthly income in 1976 and 1980 indicates that basic wages of unskilled workers and foremen increased the most. By contrast, professionals and office workers received the smallest increase in monthly wages. Compared to the period 1967-76, the rate of increase of wages in the period 1976-80 is, on the whole, lower and more even. There was a reduction in the disparity between the wages of clearly polarized groups professionals and unskilled workers. In 1967 the top wages were on average 198 percent higher than the minimum, while in 1976 the corresponding figure fell slightly, to 193, and four years later, in 1980, it had decreased to 160. One can speak, therefore, of a systematic reduction in intergroup disparity in terms of basic wages. Moreover, the values of the variability coefficients of intragroup differentiation did not increase.

The article focuses on transformations of class structure and social stratification in Poland. The structure of classes and strata has undergone major transformations in People's Poland. The individual classes and social strata are internally diversified and divided into various social groups, each with different socially significant traits. Although both workers and peasants are formally co-owners of the nation's property, the former, unlike the latter, work predominantly in the socialized sector of the economy, where they hold a dual position as both hired labor and collective owners at the same time. An intermediate position in the working class is occupied by so-called peasant workers, a category of people who live on private farms and work chiefly or exclusively outside agriculture either in town or country. The intelligentsia in Poland does not basically differ from the workers as regards its relation to the means of production, although certain segments of the intelligentsia (managerial groups) have a larger direct influence on the administration of means of production.

The article aims at reconstructing the social process that took place in Poland in the second half of the 1970s and led to the great strike on the Dańsk coast in August 1980 and the founding of the independent self-governing trade union "Solidarity." The perspective is that of looking at the process through the theoretical categories of a phenomenological sociology of knowledge. The shaping of collective identity of the social movement "Solidarity." This movement had many faces--it represented the working class before the employers, the citizens before the state, and the nation before the authorities. In the concrete historical conditions of Polish "real socialism," all of these conflicts are forms of the elementary conflict between the civil society and the party-state. The introduction of martial law and suppression of the social movement in December 1981 constituted only an outward, superficial solution to this conflict. The movement lost, as a result of the de-legalization of "Solidarity" and the curtailment of the freedom of expression, space for social action and communication.

With data from Poland we continue the debate on the extent of consensus in judgements about occupational prestige. Analysis of individuals' judgements obtained through two different rating techniques reveals notable dissensus in evaluations of occupational roles. Contrary to some previous evidence, however, we found very modest differences among basic occupational strata as regards their internal similarity in prestige ratings. In particular we show that upper occupational strata do not display a considerably higher consensus in prestige ratings relative to lower occupational categories. This suggests that prestige norms operate weakly not only in the society as a whole, but also within the basic segments of the social structure in Poland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]