The aim of the discussed publication of Szczepan Wierzchosławski is to give a new perspective on many important issues for the history of the Polish lands of the Prussian partition. In ten essays, excluding introductory comments and the conclusion, the author presents his standpoint towards the problem of conditions and effects of the process of the modernization of Polish society on the example of cases from Pomerelia and the Kulm Land. The essential part of the author’s discussion is to what extend Polish society took advantage of the process of building a big capitalist, modern state, from the social and economic point of view, as well as of building the system of Rechtsstaat in Germany within the co-existence and capitalist competition. The work of Szczepan Wierzchosławski to a large extent eliminates a stereotypical perception concerning the co-existence of Poles and Germans in West Prussia (and not only) in the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century, showing many elements of cooperation between both nations. He also presents the process of “growing out of” the feudal structures and the shaping of a modern nation within the German state. He undermines the stereotype that the Polish nation was monolithic, and the Prussian administration was alienated from the reality of the province. He shows Pomerelia as a small motherland of Poles and Germas, who inhabited the area in the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century.
The aim of this article is to answer the question of what fundamental modernization and developmental challenges Poland currently faces. The author argues that the developmental model that has been in place in Poland for the last 25 years — and generally worked quite well, which is evidenced by many major achievements and several economic and social indices — is just exhausting its potential. Simultaneously, we are observing intensification and aggra- vation of several problems — either as yet unresolved or new ones — which jointly constitute something we may call a social deficit. The main message of the paper can be summarized in a nutshell as a thesis that under current situation and circumstances, it becomes necessary to proceed to new generation of competitiveness, launch different developmental leverages, which — speaking in most general terms — are to be found mainly in the social realm. The article consists of three parts. The first one is dedicated to the characteristics of strengths and weaknesses of Polish modernization after 1989 against the background of the situation in other CEE countries. The second one defines five key developmental challenges currently faced by Poland. The third part predominantly features the fundamental difference between the previous, post-transformational developmental policy and the new, pro- innovative modernization strategy, which places social policy in the very centre of its focus.
The most important problems of the development of religious society are the moments of development, changes, i.e. the questions of continuity and discontinuity. The Catholic Church has experienced several paradigm shifts, mainly successful, but the phenomenon of the so-called modernist crisis of the first decades of the 20th century is one of these unsuccessful attempts to change the paradigm. From the point of view of social history, this crisis provides remarkable material where the strategies and mechanisms can be studied of how the community seeks to promote or prevent change, what the motives of actors were and the impacts of the chosen solution. In the following study, using the example of a Czech modernizing priest, we will show what game fields the men thinking in this way had at that time, which strategies they chose, and in what their potential success or failure lay, what impacts the powerdriven stopping of the modernization efforts and the subsequent period of stagnation had. The phenomenon of the modernist and antimodernist crises does not concern only the Catholic Church, many processes and transformations in a series of moments anticipates or follows the development of other segments of European society.
The analysis of the amounts assigned in the budget act for defence expenditures since the year 2005 clearly shows that, despite the legal obligation, the amount designated for this purpose has never exceeded 1.95 per cent of the previous year’s GDP. The article attempts to identify the reasons for this situation, and to offer another solution so that the planning of the state budget spending for the financing of Poland’s defence needs is compliant with the law.
The authors discuss examples of solutions currently applied in the process of modernisation of main railway lines undertaken by the Polish PKP PLK S.A. in order to =assess compliance with the applicable environmental conditions. The solutions described pertain to nature conservation and restoration in the vicinity of railway routes. They are developed according to three assumptions: protection of animals along transport routes; traffic noise reduction; natural compensation which consists in restoration of the lands adjacent to railway lines in order to enhance water regimes and habitat conditions for animals.
The aim of this article is to point to some problematic aspects of intercultural dialogue between Islam and the West which stem from the general character of the process of globalisation. The right of individual cultures to conceive this general process of modernisation from the point of view of their own cultural perspective brings with it the danger of discrimination in basic normative specifics. For this reason it is necessary to open up potentialities and to seek points of departure for wider inter-normative agreement
This article seeks to investigate the problem of modernity in post-war communist Poland (People’s Republic of Poland, Pol.: Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa, PRL) through the prism of concepts and ideas of model family and possibilities of shaping it, as promoted in the expert discourse and guidance practices. On the interpretation level, it is important to refer to modern – that is, rational and expert knowledgepropelled – social control methods, strictly connected with the concepts or ideas of modern society. The crucial aspect is the tension between biopolitics understood in terms of actions and strategies of modern dictatorship devised to control a population and the concepts of modernity that appeared in expert discourses in the context of, i.a., decreasing natality, modern birth control methods or practices related to maternity/paternity. Analysed are experts’ opinions proving dominant in the discourse, including the arguments put forth at sessions of the Family Council and the Planned Parenthood Association.
The aim of this article is to describe the transformation of the prison system during the years 1945–92 in Czechoslovakia. The following phases are analysed: the sovietisation process in the 1950s, the humanization and professionalization processes in the 1960s, the ambivalence between modernisation and repression in the 1970s and 1980s, and finally the democratisation that occurred after 1989. For each phase, it will be explained how the system was influenced by the concept of class struggle, mainly reflected in the approach to political prisoners, as well as a modernist-technocratic approach that gained priority at the time of the release of political prisoners in the 1960s. The aim is to show the dominant trends during this period and how the political and social context was reflected in the prison system.
The article regards the public debate focusing on the assessment of the political transformation andthe model of modernisation implemented in Poland after 1989. In recent years, the conservative and right-wingcriticism, which focused on pro-Western modernisation and the liberal discourse of transformational success,is more and more often accompanied with self-criticising statements uttered by the former liberal leaders ofthe democratic transformation and with appeals for a radical retribution of the past which are put forward bythe young generation of Polish intellectuals. On the basis of the analysis of the public discourse between 2013and 2017, the author differentiates between the retribution and reckoning dimensions of the liberal and leftistdiscourse, reconstructing its interpretative and argumentative structures. The discourse of ‘being disappointedwith the transformation’ is considered a symptom of the condition of public debate in Poland.
For all the post-war decades sociology in Poland has been focused on problems that are typical of peripheral modernising societies. The aim of this text is to identify, from today’s perspective, successive stages of sociology’s development after the Second World War. In the beginning, sociology was focused on perceiving the communist revolution as a social laboratory. In the 1960s and 1970s, Polish society underwent enforced industrialisation and urbanisation. In the next decade, studies were dominated by critical analysis of the communist system in crisis. After 1989, social scientists started to study the post-communist transformation, which was seen as a “return to normality.” The entire time, sociological studies oscillated between the monitoring of project implementation and the recording of new grass roots processes. The author considers that sociology’s recent departure from the narrative of catching up and imitation creates a chance for a more precise view of social processes in Poland.
In 2020, Chelion Begass published a book on impoverished nobility in Prussia at the turn of the nineteenth century. The aim of this discussion article is to assess the scholarly merits of this publication and to evaluate the new research approach proposed by the authoress. It should be emphasised that the very topic of the work is innovative in itself. Begass focuses on the impoverished nobility, i.e. this part of the social stratum that was not able to live a life suited for the nobility due to insufficient financial resources. Such nobles experienced contradictions that arose from the discrepancy between high social prestige and uncertain livelihood. The book identifies the causes and consequences of this situation. In the subsequent chapters, Begass discusses the policy of the Prussian State towards the impoverished nobility and then presents the results of her research on poverty experienced by the nobility. The authoress makes use of the approach of cultural anthropology and attempts to demonstrate the worldview of investigated nobles. Her studies indicate that the impoverished nobility had to face the new economic circumstances and the emerging bourgeois society as early as at the turn of the nineteenth century, i.e. much earlier than the aristocracy placed higher in the social hierarchy. Begass’s research demonstrates the necessity to take a different view of the history of Prussian nobility. One needs to take into account the heterogeneity of this social group, the economic condition of its members, their relations with the monarchy, and the different paths that led them to modernity.
Beginning with the middle of the nineteenth century, Bucharest was the hub of an emerging nation-state, finally turning into the capital city of a kingdom (in the century’s last quarter). This advancement implied the necessity for the town to adapt to a new status and to represent Romania before the world. To this end, broad-based investment projects were necessary; in the first place, the city had to be bestowed with edifices of public institutions. The forms of these buildings, and the designs of grand boulevards, were primarily rooted in the fascination with Paris of the time of Prefect Haussmann. Foreigners’ accounts of Bucharest testify to the image of a ‘Little Paris’ getting anchored at the time. However, the premises for this nickname are traceable in earlier period: an elitist snobbery about ‘Parisian’ salon life was taking shape in the early nineteenth century, whereas the incipient national ideas fell back on the French revolutionary tradition. The overwhelming French influence on the local elites finally raised increasing resistance as potentially damaging to the Romanian identity. This turn triggered certain political as well as architectural projects that were supposed to bring the country’s modern life to its presumed roots or ‘authentic’ tradition.
The process of system transformation starting in the 90s and continuing its consequences since more than a decade directs to the functioning in the mentioned context of social actors with the specific scope of demands, related to their adaptation to the liberal and democratic reality. The demands are directed to the individuals as well as to the different institutions, among others to the educational ones. The process of adaptation to new social conditions and reaching more actual qualities, in the criteria of the highly advanced in specific aspects societies or communities, can take on the form of modernisation. In the paper there are analysed the characteristics of the actual social realities of pluralistic, liberal, democratic every-day conditions, their consequences for the spheres of the individuals' functioning and directions of the possibilities of utilizing the resolves implicated by the theory of modernisation in creating the educational and extra-educational reality.
The concept of strategic planning of sustainable development on the example of the railway transport of Ukraine from the standpoint of economic security, which includes methodology, methods and principles of research through the identification of the level of sustainable development, the definition of criteria, objectives and strategies for the modernisation of railway transport by using adaptive control techniques from control theory.
The economic policy of Interwar Poland was shaped by two outstanding personalities –Władysław Grabski and Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski. Grabski represented the tradition of liberal economic policy, macroeconomic balance and openness. Kwiatkowski has become a symbol of economic self-sufficiency, independence from outside world and of statism. Interwar Poland faced four big challenges: unification, macroeconomic stabilisation, capitalisation and modernisation, and it succeeded in all those fields. However, the problem of social and national integrity remained unsolved.
The aim of this article is to reread The Polish Peasant in Europe and America as a representation of the fears and modernisation fantasies of its era. I analyse the patterns of gendered family relations and ideals of femininity and masculinity constructed by Thomas and Znaniecki within the framework of rural–urban discourses. As I will show, in The Polish Peasant we find huge contradictions between the liberal and conservative perspectives presented. On the one hand, the authors introduce the concept of “organisation – disorganisation – reorganisation,” which is supposed to be scientific and thus non-ideological. On the other hand, the authors’ patterns of interpreting empirical data show numerous gender bias and patriarchal schemes. As a result, the authors create an opposition in which whatever is rural is the cradle of authenticity, of naturalised national and gendered family values, and whatever is urban is dangerous and demoralising due to escaping the former strong rural social control. In The Polish Peasant the authors thereby construct the “morally healthy” model of a national and patriarchal rural community of families untouched by individualisation and women’s emancipation. Such a model had a patriarchal division of gender roles within a religiously devout, strong (meaning indissoluble), multi-generational family. In The Polish Peasant we can find both a nostalgia – which was typical of its era – for a “pre-modern,” rural, conservative civilisation, and worry about the moral health of women in the urban world. However, it is an ambivalent nostalgia accompanied by a conviction of the inevitability of social change.
Chciałbym napisać podręcznik historii zaawansowanej lub podręcznik historii dla zaawansowanych, który nie byłby wykładem faktograficzno-chronologicznym, lecz opracowaniem z socjologii historycznej. Jej istotą jest zorganizowanie refleksji wokół problemów – i to rozpatrywanych w długim trwaniu oraz przy uwzględnieniu ich występowania na różnych terenach. W jakich punktach włączyłbym Brazylię do takiego opracowania? Inaczej mówiąc: jakie sprawy, istotne dla dziejów wielu krajów, ale w jej historii rysujące się szczególnie wyraźnie, uznałbym za warte analizy? Byłoby to wszak opracowanie wybiórcze. Kwestię – powiedzmy – rewolucji przemysłowej musiałbym pokazywać na przykładzie dziejów Anglii, zaś rozwój masowej produkcji samochodu osobowego na przykładzie Forda – jako na casusach najbliższych modelowym, choć oczywiście nie wyczerpującym sprawy.
EN
It is my intention to write an advanced history manual or a history manual for advanced users, which would not be a factual and a chronological discourse, but a study of historical sociology. Its core is the organisation of ideas around certain problems – ones evaluated in long-term perspective and considered as present in different areas. Under which aspects would I include Brazil in this study? In other words: which features, significant for many countries though especially salient in the Brazilian history, would I consider worth analysing? After all, it would be a selective study. For instance, the question of the industrial revolution I would need to illustrate on the example of England, whereas the mass production of cars on the example of Ford. These cases would be closest to the exemplary, though certainly not exhausting the issue.
It is my intention to write an advanced history manual or a history manual for advanced users, which would not be a factual and a chronological discourse, but a study of historical sociology. Its core is the organisation of ideas around certain problems – ones evaluated in long-term perspective and considered as present in different areas. Under which aspects would I include Brazil in this study? In other words: which features, significant for many countries though especially salient in the Brazilian history, would I consider worth analysing? After all, it would be a selective study. For instance, the question of the industrial revolution I would need to illustrate on the example of England, whereas the mass production of cars on the example of Ford. These cases would be closest to the exemplary, though certainly not exhausting the issue.
PL
Chciałbym napisać podręcznik historii zaawansowanej lub podręcznik historii dla zaawansowanych, który nie byłby wykładem faktograficzno-chronologicznym, lecz opracowaniem z socjologii historycznej. Jej istotą jest zorganizowanie refleksji wokół problemów – i to rozpatrywanych w długim trwaniu oraz przy uwzględnieniu ich występowania na różnych terenach. W jakich punktach włączyłbym Brazylię do takiego opracowania? Inaczej mówiąc: jakie sprawy, istotne dla dziejów wielu krajów, ale w jej historii rysujące się szczególnie wyraźnie, uznałbym za warte analizy? Byłoby to wszak opracowanie wybiórcze. Kwestię – powiedzmy – rewolucji przemysłowej musiałbym pokazywać na przykładzie dziejów Anglii, zaś rozwój masowej produkcji samochodu osobowego na przykładzie Forda – jako na casusach najbliższych modelowym, choć oczywiście nie wyczerpującym sprawy.
In the second half of the 19th century, rural society underwent a significant transformation. 1848 was the year which symbolically launched the process of peasants’ economic and social emancipation. Achieving freedom – both personal freedom and freedom to own property – represented a fundamental precondition for the social and intellectual formation of a new type of peasant. In rural areas, the new type of relations between people and the new cultural and economic reality were shaped in particular by the newly established local authorities, associations and the press. This study looks at the roles played by the newly established district farming associations. Alongside the farming press, these were where the main impetus towards modernising the rural environment originated until at least the 1870s, and they spearheaded the modern agrarian movement.
DE
In der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts erfährt die ländliche Gesellschaft einen starken Wandel. Das Jahr 1848 startete symbolisch den Prozess der wirtschaftlichen und gesellschaftlichen Emanzipation der Bauern. Die Errungenschaft der Freiheit – sowohl der persönlichen als auch der eigentumsrechtlichen – war die grundlegende Voraussetzung für die Formierung eines sozial und im Denken neuen Bauerntyps. Dieser neue Bauerntyp war – trotz aller Beschränkungen – selbstbewusst, gebildet, wirtschaftlich mehr oder weniger unabhängig und voll in den Entwicklungsprozess einer qualitativ neuen Gesellschaft eingebunden. Auf dem Land wurden der neue Typ der Beziehungen zwischen den Menschen und die neue kulturelle wie wirtschaftliche Wirklichkeit vor allem durch die neu aufgebaute Selbstverwaltung, die Vereine und die Presse geformt. Die Studie widmet sich der Rolle, die bei der Modernisierung auf dem Land die neu gegründeten Bezirkswirtschaftverbände spielten. Diese stellten nämlich, gemeinsam mit der Wirtschaftspresse, mindestens bis in die siebziger Jahre des 19. Jahrhunderts die Hauptquelle für auf die Modernisierung des ländlichen Umfelds gerichtete Impulse dar und bahnten der modernen Agrarbewegung den Weg. Die Studie behandelt die wichtigsten Aspekte der Vereinsaktivitäten, die sowohl eine wirtschaftliche Modernisierung (die Verbreitung von Kenntnissen über neue Verfahren in der Landwirtschaft sowie über die Technik, Organisieren von Wirtschaftsausstellungen, Bemühungen zur Einrichtung von landwirtschaftlichen Schulen u.ä.) als auch die Anerkennung der Bauernschaft als wichtiger Komponente der modernen nationalen Gesellschaft anstrebten.
Artykuł recenzyjny jest poświęcony książce Małgorzaty Litwinowicz-Droździel „Zmiana, której nie było. Trzy próby czytania Reymonta” (2019), będącej propozycją nowego spojrzenia na trzy utwory Władysława Stanisława Reymonta z lat dziewięćdziesiątych XIX wieku: „Pielgrzymkę do Jasnej Góry”, „Fermenty” oraz „Ziemię obiecaną”. Litwinowicz-Droździel osadziła te dzieła w szerokich kontekstach kulturoznawczych i wykorzystała do refleksji nad przemianami modernizacyjnymi na ziemiach polskich pod koniec XIX wieku. Zaproponowany przez nią model lektury ukazuje Reymonta jako pisarza na wskroś nowoczesnego i przełamuje utrwalone schematy interpretowania jego twórczości.
EN
The review paper is devoted to Małgorzata Litwinowicz-Droździel’s „Zmiana, której nie było. Trzy próby czytania Reymonta” (“The Change That Was Not. Three Attempts at Reading Reymont”, 2019), a proposal of a new view on Władysław Stanisław Reymont’s three pieces composed in 1890s, namely “Pielgrzymka do Jasnej Góry” (“A Pilgrimage to Jasna Góra”), “Fermenty” (“Ferments”), and “Ziemia obiecana” (“The Promised Land”). Litwinowicz-Droździel sets the works in a broad cultural studies contexts and employs them to reflect on the modernising changes that took place in Poland towards the end of the 19th century. The reading model that she suggests depicts Reymont as a thoroughly modern writer and violates the accepted modes of interpreting his work.
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