The Roots of the Polish Culture-Centered Politics

• In Event: 594 - Section on Political Sociology Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 12. Ethnicity and Nationalism

Abstract

This paper’s main aim is to propose a novel model of explanation of the continuous domination of the identity issues, or more generally cultural cleavages, in the modern Polish political discourse. The model proposed here may also appear useful as an explanation of similar tendencies in some other Central European countries. It is based on a specific reading of the modern history of the region, which is seen in a structural perspective, specifically in terms of what Pierre Bourdieu calls the “field of power”. The paper discusses evolution of its configuration from emergence of the national field of power in the late 19th century until present day. As it is argued, the key moment for development of specific configuration of the Polish field of power can be identified between 1917 and 1918 and related first of all to the Bolshevik Revolution and to the emergence of the new Polish state in which the class of the intelligentsia appeared as the dominant elite. The paper posits that a number of crucial transformations took place at that time. They included economic, cultural and structural changes, which conditioned until today what could be called the permanent “culturalization” of Polish politics. One of the ways of looking at these processes could based on analysis of specificity of the model of citizenship in Poland.

Authors

• Tomasz Zarycki, University of Warsaw

• Rafal Smoczynski, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences