Suchergebnisse

After World War II, Polish nobility was commonly considered an obsolete social group because of the post-1945 confiscation of their properties and the decline of their legal and political privileges. From a formal point of view, the Polish nobility had ceased to exist. However, this group did not simply vanish. For this reason, we should not speak of the disintegration of the former noble milieu but rather its reorganization. To expand deliberation on these "reorganization strategies" with the use of appropriate sociological tools, this article analyzes major social actors in contemporary Poland who use their noble legacies in their collective identity-building practices.

AbstractCitizenship is usually seen as a product of modern nation-states, or of other political entities which possess institutional infrastructures and political systems capable of producing a coherent framework that defines the relationship between that system and its members. In this paper, we show that an early system of modern citizenship was created in the absence of a formal state, notably by the cultural elite of a stateless nation. The Polish case illustrates that an elite may become a dominant class in the given society only later, and institutionalize that early citizenship system within the framework of a newly founded state. As a result of the legacy of the emergence of citizenship predating the restoration of statehood, the contemporary Polish citizenship model is influenced by a strong and largely overlooked cultural component that emerged at the turn of the 19th century. This model uses the figure of the intelligentsia member as its ideal citizen. Despite the dramatic political and economic changes in the decades which have passed since its emergence, this cultural frame, which was institutionalized during the interwar period, still defines the key features of the Polish citizenship model. Consequently, we argue that the culturalization of citizenship is hardly a new phenomenon. It can be seen as a primary mechanism in the formation of civic polities within the imperial context. Moreover, it shows that such processes can have many ambiguous aspects as far as their Orientalizing forces of exclusion are concerned.

This article's main aim is to propose a novel model explaining the continuous domination of identity issues in modern Polish political discourse. The model proposed here may also appear useful as an explanation of similar tendencies in some other Central European countries. It is based on a specific reading of the modern history of the region—one relying on a structural perspective and specifically using Pierre Bourdieu's notion of a "field of power." In conclusion, the article suggests that the perspective it proposes may challenge what it calls simplistic accounts of processes of long duration.

This chapter discusses and compares societal reactions to NRMs in Poland, Croatia and Slovakia. It starts with the theoretical framework that combines Stanley Cohen's moral panics approach and Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's discursive theory to explain the situation regarding actors (anti-cult movements, media, Catholic clergy, politicians) involved in anti-cult claims making, and its impact on changes in the legislation and policy making that address activities of religious communities in general. The results show that the response was more fierce in Poland than in Croatia and Slovakia due to a specific societal contexts during transition period in these states.