Suchergebnisse

This is a transcript of a conversation with Jerzy Szacki which was conducted for the research project 'The Archive of Research into Daily Life' of the UAM Institute of Sociology in Poznań. The aim of the project is to obtain information about past sociological research in Poland and, in the future, to make it available in an organized form. The professor spoke about the history of sociology in Poland a few months before his death.

The article discusses contemporary changes in intimate relationships. A starting point for this discussion is Anthony Giddens's theory presented in his book The Transformation of Intimacy (1992), particularly the specificity of self-help literature as a source of information for sociological reasoning. On the example of housework, the nature of the tensions between the conflict expectations of partners is presented. Today, many people are torn between several different models of intimate relations and different needs. The thesis of the article is that the ambivalence observed in the process of relationship formation is neither marginal nor only psychological but it represents tensions between different types and dimensions of knowledge which are used in this process. This ambivalence is also a perfect indicator of the discourse struggle in the public sphere and an element of changes of social bonds; its study may help answer the question about transformation of intimacy and about the commonness of "pure relations" or other models of intimate relationships.

A strong bias is observed in the popular sociological explanations toward those notions of human action which emphasize its rational nature, grounded on the assumption that any given action is an effect of the aims, values or attitudes of an actor. Such a point of view corresponds well with simple social surveys but fails to explain and describe inconsistencies in our thinking and acting, as well as those human activities which rest heavily on the "practical consciousness", anchored in habits and material environment. Although there are some sociological approaches suited to explain these everyday practices, e.g. Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology or Bourdieu's idea of sense of practice, they are hardly used in empirical sociology. Drawing on Swidler's notion of culture as a tool-kit, Giza-Poleszczuk's and Marody's model of social bond changes and, above all, on Jean-Claude Kaufmann's theory, the paper aims at overcoming this stalemate. Kaufmann's idea of habits and their dialectical relation with reflexivity is an attempt to create not only a multifaceted sociological theory of action but also empirical tools and guidelines designed to investigate the mundane interactions which have been already tested in several Kaufmann's studies. Drawing on these empirical examples (mainly studies concerning housework and intimate relationships) Kaufmann's main theoretical assumptions are described and discussed, as well as some aspects of their affinity with some other sociological theories (e.g. Berger's and Luckmann's notion of routine and habit, Bourdieu's notion of habitus, American pragmatism and sociology of Bruno Latour).

Who is an artist? Questions over how to define this role divided the makers of the project The Invisible Visual: Visual Art in Poland—Its State, Role, and Significance. The authors' sources of data were the results of a nationwide survey, a survey of graduates of the Polish Academy of Fine Arts in the years 1975–2011, and in-depth interviews with seventy individuals in the field of visual arts. The authors were able to establish, first, that persons working in the art field give different definitions from those beyond its bounds; second, that artists, decision-makers, curators, and critics try to defend the sense and autonomy of their activities against ways of thinking and acting that are typical of other areas of the social world (while they are themselves engaged in disputes over who has a right to call him- or herself an artist and what is and isn't good art); and third, being an artist is marked by a difficult-to-cross boundary, as is shown by the common necessity of supplementing artistic work by other sources of income and the high risk of failure in an artistic career.

1: Introduction -- Part 1: Family in the Empty Nest -- 2: Mothering from Full Nest to Empty Nest -- 3: Fathering from Full Nest to Empty Nest -- 4: Adult Children's Bedrooms and Emptying the Nest: The Mechanisms of Transition -- 5: Visiting Parents: The Recomposing and Renegotiation of Family Roles and Responsibilities -- 6: The Come-Back to 'Full Nest' in Times of Pandemic in France and Poland -- 7: The Recomposition: Parental Roles and Animal Roles in the Empty Nest -- Part 2: Couple in the Empty Nest 8: Redefining Couple Relationship in the Empty Nest: The Evolving Involvement -- 9: Redefining Couple Relationship in the Empty Nest: Together, but Apart -- 10: No Intimate Bonds in the Empty Nest: Uncoupling and Recoupling -- Part 3: The Self in the Empty Nest -- 11: What Do We Do In Our Free Time? Personal Life Strategies -- 12: Without Children at Home: The Transition to Herplaces and Hisplaces -- 13: Changing Roles, Changing Emotions: Women's Emotions in Coping with Change -- 14: Struggling with Limitations, Creating New Possibilities: The Identity of Men in the Empty Nest Stage -- 15: Conclusion.