The author tries to define social and cultural conditions for the formation of the basic idea of the rule of law concept, which is a limitation of the royal power by the law. He says that this basic idea arose in England and Scandinavian kingdoms because here the two main factors weakening the royal power met: a tension between a secular authority and the church and an outliving tradition of a military democracy in which a relation between a prince (a military leader) and his warriors was conditional and contractual. On the contrary, a Roman idea of an unrestricted authority of emperors was weak in these lands. A development of legal and philosophical thinking helped to describe such a situation also from a theoretical point of view. An original struggle between nobility and commons defending legal restriction of royal authority and – on the opposite side - monarchs stressing their own sovereignty and superiority over law continues also today – in a discussion on mutual relations between the State and citizens.
Poland's integration with EU may mark the beginning of changes important for the Polish rural community, in the result of which both farmers and rural areas will stop playing the role of convincing examples of 'marginalization' and 'social exclusion'. Such vision will not materialize unless the rural community records a substantial growth in capital - economic, social and human. The authoress tries to diagnose the condition that these three types of capital were in prior to accession and considers the possible role that may be played in their development by the EU's agricultural and structural policy and the attitudes of farmers and rural inhabitants themselves. She also draws attention to the role of 'political capital' that is still being used by farmers for the purpose of lobbying. The results of opinion polls and qualitative surveys quoted by the authoress confirm the correctness of a thesis about the change of the farmers' attitude towards the European Union, but this change does not signify the farmers' resignation from pragmatism and rational assessment of the complex consequences of Poland's accession to EU.
The past few years in Poland and, indeed, globally, have seen a shift from the predominance of traditional museums to the rise of multi-mediated, multi-sensory, and interactive “new” museums. However, in the midst of technological shifts in museum forms as well as broader social, cultural, and political changes, are the images of Poland and Polish culture and national identity, as presented in museums, also changing? If so, how, and what resources are being drawn on to construct new identities and/or reproduce old ones? I am currently engaged in a study of museums—conceptualized broadly to include traditional historical and cultural museums, cultural and historical centers, and online archives and virtual “memory sites—in contemporary Poland. My study focuses on one particular type of museum “publics”—those most involved with and interested in the museum process, the workers and volunteers. I am interested in which individuals comprise this form of the museum public in the case of historical and cultural museums in Poland, their motivations for becoming involved, and their role within museum practices more broadly. I hypothesize, first, that new museums understood as a sort of public “ritual” represent in part a means of addressing uncertainty over national identity; and secondly, that local/regional and transnational resources, in addition to national ones are increasingly being drawn on in both museum form and content in the process of constructing new public images of Poland, in part in dialogue with broader and more diffuse audiences, but also that these new images coexist, at times uneasily, with familiar discourses of the nation.
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