Kultura i Społeczeństwo

The paper presents findings of a research project aimed at a reconstruction of the dynamics of biographical experiences of some of those categories of the Polish society’s members whose educational and professional careers have been shaped by the systemic transformation after 1989. The text is an attempt to delineate analytical guidelines for grasping how some components of three types of social order, conceived in terms of premodernity, modernity and postmodernity, interpenetrating each other in the contemporary life of the society, impact its members’ biographical experiences on the level of work, social ties and identity.

This article discusses the issue of hypermodernity, which was studied as part of the research project Poles in the World of Late Capitalism. The article presents biographical models of hypermodernity and strategies of coping with hypermodern ideology, that is, cyclothymias, conversions, and hypermodern episodes.

In studying contemporary transformations of social relations and family life, researchers and social theorists have been focused on the increased diversity of forms of bonding, coupling and other interpersonal connections. When single people are discussed, either it is to emphasize the disintegration of their ties and the crisis of the family, or their single life is considered as an identity choice. The aim of this text is to look at the experience of singleness not by choice among contemporary corporate employees in Poland and to try to set this experience against the background of a broader social reality, especially the reality of professional work. The text also examines the relationship between relational forms (including being single) and the social system in late capitalism. The experiences of people who are not single by choice are discussed and contrasting variants for people whose single situation is associated with low interpersonal skills and for those with an interactional proficiency are distinguished. In the conclusion, the authors are looking for patterns of connection between being unwillingly single and operating on the late capitalist labour market.

This paper discusses contemporary transformations in the way work is organised and the consequences for the stability of careers and biographies. It debates the widely held belief that organised and predictable life-course paths (including professional careers) have ceased to exist and that work itself has lost its stabilising quality. Biographical data collected among Polish employees of transnational corporations within the project “Poles in the World of Late Capitalism” proves that even though transnational corporations are widely criticised for propelling neoliberal tendencies in the global economy, they provide a means of protecting their employees against today’s uncertainty and occupational risk. Three empirical cases are presented to show how work in a transnational corporation may contribute to achieving and maintaining stability for persons who have had troublesome experiences of working in other sectors of the labour market.

In this article the author intend to use an epistemological concept and its categories of description to analyse two specially chosen biographies reflecting diverse postmodern life patterns. Postmodernity, or in fact the postmodern order, refers to the concept of order-making dimensions discussed in the previous article concerning hypermodernity. It is treated there as casual and variable with regard to the category of relations and work, and the only certainty for the individual, in regard to future possibilities or necessities, is the individual’s own identity. This article adds the category of resonance to the characteristics of postmodernity, as a synonym for a person’s primary entanglement in the world. It is a category of which individuals are increasingly aware, on which they reflect, and which they make an object of their experience.

The author supports the claim that attempts to formulate a universal definition of the term “populism” are not worthwhile, because the sense of the term is usually determined by a specific social context. Understanding the utopian nature of populism provides a better understanding of the utopian nature of democracy and allows for a humble departure from dreams of a perfect social order, because, as has been shown in numerous survey studies, the contemporary shift of social mood, attitudes, and opinions toward some version of populism is a relatively simple consequence of the deficiencies of democracy in its neoliberal version.

The analyses and conclusions presented in the article are based on the results of qualitative panel surveys conducted among large indigent families in the years 2013 to 2014 and in 2017. The survey attempted to answer the questions of whether and to what extent the implementation of a pro-family policy in Poland in 2016 influenced the situation of large families receiving institutional social aid. On what do these families spend the payments received from the Family 500+ programme? Has their new economic situation favoured their activation or increased their ability to manage? Could the programme, in consequence, hinder or limit the intergenerational transmission of poverty? The author concludes that in fact the effects of financing large families differ from those that were intended. The programme, which was intended to be pro-natal, has acquired the nature of social aid payments. It has improved the material situation of many families, but it has not sufficiently contributed to changing ways of thinking about the children’s futures, which would contribute to limiting the processes of inheriting poverty.

Recent years have witnessed the publication of a number of research papers and books seeking to assess threats of electoral victories of anti-establishment politicians and political parties, described as authoritarian populists. This essay focuses on three books directly addressing the origins and threats of authoritarian populism to democracy. It consists of six sections and the conclusion. The first section presents findings (Norris and Inglehart) based on surveys of values of voters of various age cohorts concluding that authoritarian populism is a temporary backlash provoked by the post-materialist perspective. The second section examines the contention, spelled out in Levitsky and Ziblatt, that increase in openness of American political system produced, unintentionally, a degradation of the American political system. The third section continues brief presentations focusing on to the causes and implications of “illiberal democracy,” and “undemocratic liberalism” (Mounk). The fourth section examines developments in the quality of democracy in the world showing that despite the decline in Democracy Indices, overall there was no slide towards non-democratic forms of government in 2006–2019. The next two sections deal with dimensions missing in reviewed books; the notion of nation-state, international environment, civic culture and, in particular, dangers of radical egalitarianism to democracy. The last section concludes with regrets that the authors ignored rich literature on fragility of democracy and failed to incorporate in their analyses deeper structural factors eroding democracy: by the same token, return to the pre-populist shock trajectory is unlikely to assure survival of liberal democracy.

This essay addresses the question of the ties between various social levels, particularly in connection with research on Polish society at various stages of its post-war history. In reference to the theoretical reflections and research presented by Mikołaj Pawlak in the book Tying Micro and Macro: What Fills Up the Sociological Vacuum in 2018, the author of the article argues for the necessity of careful consideration in formulating research generalities, especially when they refer to terms or metaphors coined earlier, such as the idea of a sociological vacuum proposed in the 1970s by Stefan Nowak.

The author of this essay deals with the specificity of sociology in Poland, reaching for the book of Antoni Sułek A Mirror on the High Road. Chapters from the History of Social Research in Poland (2019). Chapters of this book taken as a set constitute a review of the key issues that Polish sociologists strived to tackle in the 20th century. For approximately half of the book (6 chapters) Sułek focuses on issues of Polish sociology from the mid-1950s to the turn of the 1990s: the first is the change of theoretical and methodological paradigms in Polish sociology in the second half of the 20th century; the second is the successes of Polish sociology, but also its weaknesses—the author devoted much space to the theoretical limitations that prevented sociologists from predicting the formation of Solidarity in 1980. The third topic is the historical analysis of surveys conducted in the last decade of communism—their reliability as well as social and political functions. Finally, Sułek’s vision of socially-involved sociology appears. The strength of such sociology lies in its methodology, with which specific phenomena can be correctly defined, impartially analysed, and systematically investigated. And this in turn enables evidence-based debate and policy.