(in Polish) Burżuazja ziem polskich i pamięć o niej: seminarium z zakresu socjologii historycznej elit

elective courses

(in Polish) znajomość języka angielskiego (umiejętność czytania trudniejszych tekstów akademickich); wskazane jest posiadanie podstaw wiedzy z zakresu nauk społecznych, w szczególności podejść krytycznych na przykład w socjologii, językoznawstwie, antropologii czy etnologii.

Classroom

The seminar will be devoted to the role of the bourgeoisie in Polish history from the second half of the 19th century to the present day. It will focus on the one hand on sociological theory, on the other hand on the histories of specific bourgeois families (in particular industrialists, financiers and traders) and finally on the contemporary memory of them.

The seminar will analyze the role of the bourgeoisie in Polish history from the second half of the 19th century to the present. On the one hand it will take a sociological theory perspective on historical as well as more contemporary economic elites. On the other hand, the history of specific bourgeois families (especially industrialists, financiers and traders), and finally the contemporary memory of these families, especially among the Polish intelligentsia.

On the theoretical side, the course will take as its main point of reference the sociological theory and practice of elite studies inspired by the work of Pierre Bourdieu. This will be the main frame of reference for the interpretation of both the historical processes of elite transformations, the mutual interaction of different elite factions, and their historical specificity and evolution (e.g. using the concept of power field).

An important assumption of the seminar's program is the observation that in the second half of the 19th century a socially significant group of very wealthy emerged in Poland, especially in the Russian partition. Until the end of World War I it played an important role in the history of Poland, both in its economic and political development as well as in the development of culture, science and many other spheres. This role was significantly reduced after 1918, in particular due to the economic degradation of the elite mentioned above, which finally ceased to exist in its role in 1945. As it seems, this part of the history of the Polish elite has been overshadowed since the first Polish uprisings by the intelligentsia and partly by the landed gentry. The proposed seminar will examine, among other things, the conditions of this disappearance of the memory of the Polish bourgeoisie and its implications. The seminar will focus on the possible forms of this memory and the attempts to reactivate it, both on a social and on a private level (especially of individual families). Among the forms of memory analyzed in the seminar will be the cultivation of genealogical knowledge as a phenomenon, as well as the practice of publishing obituaries. Cemeteries will be given special attention, especially historical cemeteries in Polish cities with large bourgeois populations, such as Warsaw and Lodz.

Special attention at the seminar will be given to the Jewish bourgeoisie; bourgeois families of other national origins will also be mentioned. This will allow us to consider the role of the economic elite in the formation of a modern Polish national identity and its relationship to other national projects. The seminar will discuss the history of individual families (clans) which, at least at certain stages of their development, can be considered Polish bourgeois families. Their transformations and changing fortunes will be traced, as well as the sources of their dynamics. A comparison of the history of bourgeois families in Poland and other countries of the region will be discussed. Another proposed topic will be a broader reflection on the role of the multigenerational family in the reproduction of the elite of particular societies. In such a context, the question of reproduction and breaks in its continuity will be posed. In particular, we will reflect on the implications of discontinuity in the reproduction of Polish economic elites for various spheres of social life and social identities in Poland. A question to be asked at the seminar is whether any connection between the historical bourgeoisie and the contemporary Polish elites, either economic or cultural (especially the intelligentsia) can be identified.

• Bernardes, Jon. 1985. ‘Family ideology’: identification and exploration. "The Sociological Review" 33:275-297.

• Bourdieu, Pierre and Loïc J. D. Wacquant. 2001. Zaproszenie Do Socjologii Refleksyjnej. Warszawa: Oficyna Naukowa.

• Brody, Samuel Hayim. 2020. What Great Transformation? Continuity, Rupture, and Capitalism in Twenty-First-Century Jewish Studies. "Jewish Quarterly Review" 110:343-372.

• Charle, Christophe. 1994. Social History of France in the Nineteenth Century. Oxford, R.I.: Berg.

• Davidson, Neil. 2012. How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions? Chicago: Haymarket Books.

• Denord, Francois, Mikael Palme, i Bertrand Réau. 2020. "Researching Elites and Power: Theory, Methods, Analyses." Cham: Springer.

• Drahokoupil, Jan. 2008. Who won the contest for a new property class? Structural transformation of elites in the Visegrád Four region. "Journal for East European Management Studies" 13:361-377.

• Eisenbach, Artur. 1988. Emancypacja Żydow na ziemiach polskich 1785–1870 na tle europejskim. Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy.

• Eyal, Gil, Iván Szelényi, i Eleanor R. Townsley. 1998. Making capitalism without capitalists. Class formation and elite struggles in post-communist Central Europe. London, New York: Verso.

• Ferguson, Niall. 2016. Dom Rothschildów: Bankierzy Świata 1849-1999. Tom 2. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie.

• Fowler, Bridget. 2007. The obituary as collective memory. London: Routledge.

• Gitelman, Zvi Y. 2001. A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

• Hartmann, Michael. 2007. The Sociology of Elites. New York: Routledge.

• Ihnatowicz, Ewa. 2000. "Mieszczaństwo i mieszczańskość w literaturze polskiej drugiej połowy XIX wieku." Warszawa: Dom Wydawniczy Elipsa.

• Ihnatowicz, Ireneusz. 1972. Burżuazja warszawska. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.

• James, Harold. 2012. Krupp: A History of the Legendary German Firm. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

• Karady, Victor. 2004. The Jews of Europe in the Modern Era: A Socio-Historical Outline. Budapest: Central European University Press.

• Kramer, Anne-Marie. 2011. Kinship, Affinity and Connectedness: Exploring the Role of Genealogy in Personal Lives. "Sociology" 45:379-395.

• Leder, Andrzej. 2014. Prześniona rewolucja. Ćwiczenie z logiki historycznej. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej.

• Leder, Stefan i Witold Leder. 2005. Czerwona nić: Ze wspomnień i prac rodziny Lederów. Warszawa: Iskry.

• Łoza, Stanisław. 1935. Rodziny polskie pochodzenia cudzoziemskiego osiadłe w Warszawie i okolicach. Warszawa: Wydawictwo i Druk Zakładów Graficznych Galewski i Dau.

• Marcus, Joseph. 1983. Social and Political History of the Jews in Poland 1919-1939. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH.

• Minakowski, Marek Jerzy. 2017. Sieć społeczna wokół Kuriera Warszawskiego na podstawie jego nekrologów z lat 1821–1861. "Przeszłość Demograficzna Polski" 39:209-251.

• Nagy, Zsófia. 2017. Remembering lives, changing regimes: An analysis of Hungarian obituaries (1961–2000). "Memory Studies" 1-18.

• Olczak-Ronikier, Joanna. 2006. In the Garden of Memory: A Family Memoir. London: Orion Publishing Co.

• Rosołowski, Marcin, Andrzej Krajewski, Arkadiusz Bińczyk, i Wojciech Kwilecki. 2019. Poczet Przedsiębiorców Polskich. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Warsaw Enterprise Institute.

• Rossier, Thierry. 2019. Prosopography, Networks, Life Course Sequences, and so on. Quantifying with or beyond Bourdieu? "Bulletin of Sociological Methodology/Bulletin de Méthodologie Sociologique" 144:6-39.

• Sroka, Antoni Rościsław. 1912. Przemysł i Handel Królestwa Polskiego. Warszawa: Stowarzyszene Techników w Warszawie.

• Toeplitz, Krzysztof Teodor. 2004. Rodzina Toeplitzów: Książka mojego ojca. Warszawa: Iskry.

• Toft, Maren, Vegard Jarness. 2020. Upper-class romance: homogamy at the apex of the class structure. "European Societies":1-27.

• Wetherell, Charles, Andrejs Plakans, i Barry Wellman. 1994. Social Networks, Kinship, and Community in Eastern Europe. "The Journal of Interdisciplinary History" 24:639-663.

• Wróbel, Szymon. 2022. "The Bourgeoisie as Humanity or Inter-Class." Pp. 51-64 in Understanding Recognition: Conceptual and Empirical Studies, edited by P. Kulas, A. Waśkiewicz and S. Krawczyk. London: Routledge

• Zaremba Bielawski, Marcin. 2018. Dom z dwiema wieżami. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Krakater.

• Zarycki, Tomasz, Rafał Smoczyński, i Tomasz Warczok. 2017. The Roots of Polish Culture-Centered Politics: Toward a Non–Purely Cultural Model of Cultural Domination in Central and Eastern Europe. "East European Politics and Societies" 31:360-381.

• Ziomek, Wojciech. 1998. Udział przedsiębiorstw żydowskich w przemyśle włókienniczym Łodzi w latach 1860-1914. "Acta Universitatis Lodziensis: Folia Historica" 63-114:93-.

• Żor, Andrzej. 2011. Kronenberg: Dzieje fortuny. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.

K_W02 Is aware of ongoing theoretical and methodological disputes conducted in modern sociology; is reflective and critical of various positions

K_W04 Is reflective and critical of the problem of social differentiation and inequalities

K_W05 Has in-depth knowledge about the types of social ties and mechanisms supporting collective governance

K_W10 Has in-depth knowledge about major international and domestic sociological research pertaining to selected areas of social reality or sub-domains of sociology

K_W13 Is reflective and critical in interpreting the processes occurring in Polish as well as global society and their consequences for social attitudes and institutions

K_W14 Has in-depth knowledge of assumptions and claims of selected historical and contemporary sociological theories

K_W15 Approaches the choice of a particular theoretical perspective in a reflective and critical way

K_U04 Can use theoretical categories and research methods in the description and analysis of social and cultural changes in modern societies, as well as their consequences

K_U08 Knows how to interpret the role of culture in the life of the individual and society

K_K03 Can gather, find, synthesize and critically assess information about social sciences

K_K04 Can argue a thesis using scientific evidence

K_K09 Is open to various theoretical and methodological perspectives of social research

The main basis for the evaluation of students will be a credit work written by them independently, the volume of which is several pages on a topic related to the issues of the classes independently proposed and approved by the lecturer. The work will be evaluated mainly in terms of originality and ability to use the theory and scientific literature, and analysis of texts or other research material. Not without importance is also a good composition of the work and appropriate style. Detailed guidelines in this regard will be provided to students in a separate instruction manual.

The evaluation will also take into account class attendance and active participation in discussions.