This article focuses on human rights – a central topic in Bob Dylan’s works since the beginning of his career. Analysing a selection of texts in which this winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature refers to the situation of black Americans, the author tries to capture and define Dylan’s recurring narrative regarding the responsibility of individuals, structures and institutions, and their mutual relationships. The analysis focuses on the motif of accusation: who and what is it addressed to? In his discussion of Dylan’s narrative, the author refers to the concept of habitus proposed by Pierre Bourdieu. It is defined as a set of rules incorporated by an individual from the environment and later applied in individual attitudes and actions. Based on the analysis of Dylan’s most important works on human rights, the article shows that the American artist’s perception of the scope of individual and structural responsibility is similar to the concept described by Bourdieu, and as such belongs within a specific borderline sphere.
In 1967, Thomas Luckmann published ‘Invisible Religion’ – a book in which he entered a polemic with the existing tradition of research on religion and religiosity and indicated that religion should be treated by social sciences as a permanent process. The author of the article recalls the theses of a German sociologist to show which aspects of Polish research in the sociology of religion may be considered incomplete – e.g., lack of theoretical consistency, as well as ease of inference. He then looks again at the concept of invisible religion, describing eight of its most important aspects. Finally, theoretical considerations of Thomas Luckmann’s thesis allow us to look at it from a universal perspective and show in which areas of research into Polish society the concept of invisible religion can still be used.
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