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The article presents the autobiography of the sociologist Jan Szczepanski on the tribulations of a Polish sociologist. He started to study philosophy and sociology in 1932 at the University of Poznan, Poland, under Florian Znaniecki. He received the M.A. degree on the basis of a paper on the semantics of Husserl, and the Ph.D. degree on the basis of a dissertation entitled "The Idea of the Milieu in Rural Sociology," written under the direction of Professor Znaniecki in 1939. Both these works, prepared for printing in 1939, were lost during the war and have never been published, only several articles appearing at that time. He brought with him from his home an interest in rural sociology. His father possessed a small farm in the mountain locality of Ustron in Silesia. Work on this farm was therefore his first experience of any social importance. Sociology in Poland was quickly reconstructed. During the first post-war years the author wrote two textbooks, "Development of the Methods of Sociology" and "History of Social Thought in the Nineteenth Century." However, after the turn towards Stalinism, the publication of the manuscripts proved impossible. Instead he published many papers, and wrote in the weeklies, taking part directly in political discussions and polemics.

Adam Podgórecki (1925–1998), a sociologist, author of brilliant Chinese-styled parables and a compulsory immigrant, is merely acknowledged in certain circles of sociologists in the world. The present article offers, first, a sketch of Podgórecki’s biography. As his life divided into two separate parts after he left communist Poland in 1977, he uniquely experienced dissimilar academic milieus, oppressive in Poland, then competitive abroad. What is emphasized both generated some problems for him as an old-fashioned “disobedient in thinking” thinker. Secondly, the text offers a brief analysis of selected papers of Adam Podgórecki and outlines the factors influencing the reception of his work in Western sociology. An explanation of his career path is grounded in some concepts of the sociology of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article originates from an invitation to give a paper at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw in the Autumn of 1980. As then drafted, the paper consisted mainly of a discussion of the writings of selected Polish and British sociologists on the structure and workings of contemporary state-socialist societies, and it was my intention to revise it for submission to the Sociological Review as a sequel to, and commentary on, the article by Christopher G.A. Bryant published in the issue of February, 1980.[1] On return from Warsaw, I decided against doing so for two reasons: first, it seemed to me that the writings which I had taken as my starting-point were too remote from the actual course of events in Poland; second, I did not see how I could use the many informative conversations about those events which I had with Polish sociologists and others in an academic journal article. On further reflection, however, I do not believe that either of these reasons should prevent my attempting to set out and justify my view of the implications for sociological theory of the Polish case, even though it is based in part on non-documentary sources and (more seriously) I lack the knowledge of the language which would give me direct access to the documentary ones. In what follows, accordingly, I first outline the framework within which the forms and distribution of power in state-socialist societies in general and Poland in particular can, in my view, best be analysed; I then set out in slightly more detail what I see as the reasons why events in Poland between 1956 and 1981 followed the course they did; and I conclude with a brief discussion of what I believe to be the principal weakness in the recent British sociological literature on state socialism insofar as it relates to the Polish case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Society's lifestyles, influenced by the evolving preferences of values of subsequent generations, are subject to gradual changes. This variation in lifestyles requires a reflection on the patterns of physical culture and values amongst the youth, adults and the elderly. Patterns of physical culture shaped in the European tradition are also present in the contemporary lifestyles of all generations. People's choices concerning physical culture depend on the type and level of their physical activity, attitudes towards of the body, age, gender and education. In the classic physical types distinguished by Polish sociologists we can identify positive traits conducive to human development, traits inducing controversial attitude, and clearly negative ones that are health-threatening. In conclusion the paper puts forward a question about the direction of the development of physical culture patterns in future and the level of recognition of particular values by different generations. Some of the contemporary lifestyles arouse concerns of educators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the growth of a new left intellectual movement in Poland: Krytyka Polityczna. This group, led by the sociologist Słavomir Sierakowski, has brought a new discourse into the Polish political debate and challenged the ruling right-wing hegemony in the country. With the country's political scene dominated by two parties of the right, Krytyka Polityczna has added an alternative left-wing voice to the political debate. It has offered a new strategic thinking for the Polish left and confronted the mainstream left's capitulation to the right-wing hegemony. However, Krytyka Polityczna's language and activities are predominantly directed towards the liberal intellectual milleu. It has remained within the confines of a liberal democratic ideology, promoting ideas of a radical pluralist democracy, and thus failing to expand support for left wing ideas within large sections of Polish society and fuelling the suspicion that it is a creature of the establishment. Its growth therefore highlights the weakness of the Polish left and the failure of the labour movement in Poland to impose a real alternative to the dominance of the conservative right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper records the Polish aspects of P. F. Lazarsfeld's sociointellectual biography and examines his impact on Polish sociology. The analysis is divided into three chronological parts. In the 1930s, Lazarsfeld's empirical work inspired Polish sociologists in their studies on unemployment. In the late 1950s and 1960s, his model of empirical social research shaped the style of sociological practice in Poland. In the 1990s, some of Lazarsfeld's substantive contributions, mainly in the area of election studies, were taken up in Polish sociology. Lazarsfeld's influence on Polish sociology was conditioned by changes in Polish society and sociology, which is emphasized in this analysis. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the kinds of applications of institutional data in sociological research, the difficulties encountered by researchers who use it, and the ways of overcoming these difficulties. An essential methodological feature of empirical sociology as of January 1988, in particular in Poland, is its domination by survey research. However, this fact is not only a feature of sociology, but a blemish on its face. What is reprehensible is obviously not the use itself of questionnaire data, but the fact that empirical sociology is dominated by them, that in concrete studies they are almost always the only kind of data collected, that only rarely is heir quality verified though comparison with data of another kind. So empirical sociology should boldly make use of forgotten, unappreciated, and undeveloped non-survey data collection methods. The author chiefly has in mind a bolder use than before of data contained in institutional sources: reports, statistics, and other documents. According to him, sociologists are even unaware of the existence of many institutional sources of importance for sociology, while they pass by others indifferently, instead of deriving knowledge from them about the society in which they live. The aim of this paper is to encourage sociologists to look into this source and to show how knowledge can be derived form it.

Following the Nazi occupation of much of Europe, millions of ordinary citizens found themselves cast in unfamiliar, sometimes wholly clandestine roles. Many of these roles came to be life- and death-defining. For Jews and other targeted minorities, going undercover became a matter of everyday resistance and survival. In what were previously spaces of co-existence, they routinely risked being attacked, blackmailed or exposed—at times by former neighbours or by people offering shelter. For Jews in hiding or seeking to 'pass' openly under another identity, the breakdown of all norms turned habitual, daily acts—including of self-presentation and self-orientation—into what the sociologist Stanisław Ossowski called an 'endless surviving', a 'temporary eternity'. The unbounding of past experience drove a radical reshaping of agency among people struggling to survive. According to many of their first-hand testimonies, this adaptive agency was largely defined by performance. Their recollections offer distinctive performance vernaculars that detail the covert ways of being that emerged in this world of pervasive observation and threat. This article draws on the postwar concept of Alltagsgeschichte—'everyday history' or 'microhistory' from below—to analyse a range of sources relating to occupied Poland. It investigates accounts of performing, improvising and cultivating know-how in extreme circumstances—from Jewish children masquerading as non-Jewish adults to Jewish activists passing within the Polish underground. It examines practices of self-presentation articulated by Jews living undercover, including how they interpreted changing modalities of space and unfamiliar cultural repertoires. It traces how they adapted by means of performance not only to abrupt, catastrophic situational shifts, but to changes that unfolded over years, forcing individuals to keep improvising, keep repeating—without missteps—even as conditions deteriorated beyond recognition. Finally, it suggests the everyday histories of Jewish passers constitute a cultural remembering that is increasingly vital today, as others fleeing contemporary atrocities are compelled to perform to attain refuge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the concept of the boundary of civilizations is discussed on the example of Polish-Belarusian and Polish-Ukrainian borderlands. The author starts from the assumption, shared by many historians and sociologists, that civilizations are real cultural entities based on certain long-lasting patterns of symbolical order. Those patterns are closely related to respective religions like Catholicism and Orthodoxy, but they act even though people's religiosity is weak. The differences between Western Christian and Eastern Christian patterns remain important in a secularized world as well. The author analyses how these civilization differences influence both cross national and political identities in countries, situated on the boundary of civilizations. He shows, in particular, how symbolic patterns shape the identity of Catholic minority in modern Belarus and that of Orthodox minority in today's Poland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Initiated in 1977 with the conference at Radziejowice near Warsaw, the cooperation of the Canadian and Polish social scientists yielded its successive venture which was a seminar of October 10-13, 1979 held at Saint Hypolite near Montreal in one of the research centres of the University of Montreal. The seminar gathered more than twenty Canadian sociologists representing mainly the French-Canadian areas of Montreal and Quebec but it also assembled some social scientists from the English-Canadian regions of Toronto, Vancouver or New Brunswick. The Polish delegation to the conference consisted of ten participants. The seminar was organized owing to the financial assistance ensured by the government of the Province of Quebec. The seminar discussions, being vivid and generally prolonged well beyond the formal time limits of the sessions, revealed a great interest and good understanding of the specific Polish problems on the part of the Canadian sociologists. They were astonished with the Polish sociologists' active participation in the discussions on their colleagues' papers.

Abstract In this article I discuss the social roles of Polish sociologists in the period between 1945 and 1989. Sociologists in Poland are assumed to have constituted a heterogeneous group representing various attitudes towards the political system. Over time, they defined their intellectual role in public discourse differently. This picture remains incomplete without consideration of some crucial aspects: whether there were ways in which sociologists neutralized their participation in building the regime; and the techniques used for evasion and 'legal criticism' of the system. The analysis is based on my comments of well-known sociologists published in the press and in books. Issues discussed include the function of sociology, the role of sociologists in a socialist country, and the position of sociology among other sciences and political doctrines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on pilot studies in sociology. Sociological literature distinguishes a number of techniques whose purpose is to validate research tools before proceeding to the research proper. Pilot study, pilot project, pretest, trial survey, test tube survey and pilot survey are those which are mentioned. The practices of the pilot study in Poland, as well as the uses to which its results have been put have, so far, also been very varied. This was occasioned by a number of circumstances such as, different theoretical orientations of the individual researchers and research centres, different work organization in the field research, and different demands concerning the level of the methodological precision adopted by sociologists. The conception of the in-depth pilot study resulted from the conviction that the pilot practices in Poland were not satisfactory in the new phase of the development of sociological investigations. The in-depth pilot study differs greatly from the trial survey which should be undertaken in the case of very extensive investigations. The trial survey has as its aim the preliminary assessment of the distribution of the answers, the preliminary evaluation of the hypotheses, and the like.

This article discusses the history of qualitative sociology in Poland, as of March 1988. Until the Second World War Polish sociology developed in accordance with the general pattern in the social sciences. One of its main features was its humanistic or interpretive orientation. After World War II the situation in Poland and in Polish social sciences changed rapidly. Subsequent development of Polish sociology in terms of its continuity, the formation of schools, regular contacts with the rest of the world, and publishing was no longer natural. Rather, because of its dependence upon ideological and political criteria, Polish science became state-run and state-funded. With the great political breakthrough of the so-called Polish October in 1956, Polish sociologists got the historical opportunity to rebuild and develop the discipline both by returning to its Polish roots and by becoming up-to-date. Between 1956 and 1968 Polish sociology developed effectively. At the same time Marxist sociology developed sophisticated versions in the work of sociologists Julian Hochfeld and Zygmunt Bauman. Structuralism was also being introduced.

This article provides information about Leon Petrazycki (1861-1931), a legal theorist and sociologist, who came from the Polish gentry of the Witebsk area, a territory historically Polish, but then and now a part of Russia. After 1918, Petrazycki fled to Poland and did so as a professor at the University of Warsaw. Petratycki was a member of the Polish Academy of Science from 1912 until his death in 1931. Despite his achievements and earlier prominence, Petratycki is now relatively unknown, and his work is not well understood. He attracted much attention early in his career in Berlin because of his brilliant critique of the Burgerliches Gesetzbuch (German Civil Code) when its drafting was nearing completion. Because Petratycki's ideas were couched in the psychological language of the beginning of the century, they are regarded today as products of an introspective, psychological methodology. His later ideas were expressed in more recognizably sociological terms. Petrazycki's intention was to build a science of legal policy, which would give a democratic society a new comprehensive and systematic understanding of law necessary for solving conflicts and avoiding disruptive tensions.