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1

The Experience of Systemic Transformation in Contemporary Biographical Narratives of Older Poles

100%

Życzyńska-Ciołek D.

Qualitative Sociology Review

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2019

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vol. 15

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issue 4

20-45

EN

The aim of this article is to explore whether-from the subjective perspective of people born before the end of WWII-systemic transformation brought about significant changes in their individual lives, and if yes-what was the meaning of those changes for them. In particular, I examine how experiences related to the events that preceded systemic transformation in Poland or took place during its most intensive stage are reflected in contemporary biographical narratives of 49 persons aged 72 or more, for whom the period of professional activity, in whole or in major part, occurred in the times of the Polish People’s Republic. I perform the analysis in three steps. First, I investigate the place of systemic transformation in the narratives, and consider the reasons why it is relatively often absent or poorly reflected there. Second, I present thematic motifs prevailing in those interviews where references to the systemic change appear. In the third step, I investigate the meaning of experiences connected with transformation for the narrators, the accompanying emotions-some of them still persisting-and ways in which the narrators incorporated those experiences into their biographies. The underlying narratives come from people who were drawn for a nationwide quantitative panel survey many years ago, in 1987, and participated in it for the next 25-30 years.

2

Narrative Agency and Structural Chaos. A Biographical-Narrative Case Study

75%

Filipkowski P.

Qualitative Sociology Review

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2019

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vol. 15

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issue 4

268-290

EN

The article is an analysis of a single case-a biographical narrative of a Tri-City resident who enters adulthood at the beginning of political transformation in 1989, and whose life path turns out to be an unintentional, dynamic journey between various professions, social worlds and structural positions. This creates a complicated and ambiguous biographical pattern which does not fall into either the socio-economic promotion of the “winner” or into the degradation of the transformation “loser.” The reconstruction of this pattern reveals the hero’s great resourcefulness and entrepreneurship, but also the fragility of the structures stabilizing his life and the volatility of life orientation points. The binder of this biography turns out to be, above all, reflexivity and, what I suggest calling, the narrative agency of the narrator, who can transform his structurally dispersed and chaotic life experiences of the time of transformation into a very original story, making him a strong subject of his own fate. This, however, creates the inevitable tension between the experienced or lived life, life history and the narrated life, life story, prompting us to again pose the question about the commonly assumed, although differently defined, correspondence between the level of reality and the level of its linguistic (in this case-autobiographical) representation.

3

The PPR, Systemic Transformation, and New Poland. Opportunity Structures in the Biographical Experience of Senior Social Reformers

75%

Golczyńska-Grondas A.

Qualitative Sociology Review

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2019

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vol. 15

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issue 4

68-94

EN

The paper is based on preliminary results of the analysis of four pilot narrative autobiographical interviews conducted with members of the oldest generation of Polish social innovators (born in the 1930s-early 1950s) working in the human sector area CSOs. In this text, I use the concept of opportunity structures, reflecting over sets of structures which facilitate the professional and personal development of social reformers. I refer mainly to Institutional Opportunity Structures emerging in Poland under the socialist regime, during and post systemic transformation. The leading argument here is that the social innovator’s career interrelates with the use of opportunity structures available in a political and economic system regardless of its type and prevalent ideology.

4

Z klasy robotniczej do pomocy społecznej. Biograficzne doświadczenia dawnych „beneficjentów socjalizmu” w postindustrialnym polskim mieście

63%

Golczyńska-Grondas A., Potoczna M.

Przegląd Socjologii Jakościowej

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2016

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vol. 12

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issue 2

18-34

PL

Od początku lat 90. socjologowie z Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego prowadzą wielowymiarowe badania biedy i wykluczenia społecznego. W latach 1997–1999, w ramach projektów „Formy ubóstwa i zagrożeń społecznych i ich przestrzenne rozmieszczenie w Łodzi” (1997–1999) oraz „The Social Cost of Economic Transformation in Central Europe: Social History of Poverty in Central Europe – The Polish Case” (1999), przeprowadzono wywiady typu family life histories z trzema generacjami rodzin wspieranych przez pomoc społeczną. W PRL-u narratorzy reprezentujący „podstawową” generację badanych (40–50-latkowie) zaliczani byli do klasy robotniczej i reprezentowali zbiorowość, którą w pewnym sensie określić można mianem „beneficjentów socjalizmu”. W okresie realizacji badań przeżywali oni traumatyczne trajektorie wywołane przez procesy pauperyzacyjne. W artykule powracamy do danych sprzed prawie 20. lat i przedstawiamy biograficzne doświadczenia narratorów w odniesieniu do ich subiektywnego rozumienia procesu transformacji. W ostatniej części artykułu odwołujemy się do badań powtórzonych, przeprowadzonych w latach 2008–2010, wskazujemy na makrostrukturalne uwarunkowania losów badanych rodzin i na czynniki znaczące dla podtrzymywania błędnego koła biedy i marginalizacji społecznej.

EN

Since 1990 the sociologists from the University of Lodz have been conducting multidimensional analyses of poverty and social exclusion. In 1997-1999, within the framework of two projects, “The Social Cost of Economic Transformation in Central Europe—Social History of Poverty in Central Europe” and “Forms of Poverty and Social Risks and Their Spatial Distribution in Lodz,” family life histories of 3 generations of the families supported by social welfare agencies were collected. In Polish People’s Republic, the narrators from the generation named “the basic” (40-50 years old) belonged to the working class and—in a sense—represented the collectivity of socialism beneficiaries; at the moment of the research they were experiencing traumatic trajectories of unexpected impoverishment. In the paper, we are coming back to the data from 1990 and discuss biographical experiences of narrators within the context of their understanding of transition process. In the last part of the article, some results of the follow-up study conducted in 2008-2010 are presented with the notion to the macrostructural conditionings of family life histories and factors decisive to the vicious circle of poverty and social exclusion.

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3 Qualitative Sociology Review

1 Przegląd Socjologii Jakościowej

2 Golczyńska-Grondas A.

1 Filipkowski P.

1 Potoczna M.

1 Życzyńska-Ciołek D.

3 2019

1 2016

The Experience of Systemic Transformation in Contemporary Biographical Narratives of Older Poles

Narrative Agency and Structural Chaos. A Biographical-Narrative Case Study

The PPR, Systemic Transformation, and New Poland. Opportunity Structures in the Biographical Experience of Senior Social Reformers

Z klasy robotniczej do pomocy społecznej. Biograficzne doświadczenia dawnych „beneficjentów socjalizmu” w postindustrialnym polskim mieście