ABSTRACT
Poland has always been located between Eastern and Western Europe, and for many centuries, between the Eastern and Western worlds. Polish culture, including social sciences and humanities, has always been torn between these two imagined poles. This chapter comprises five sections, but in fact three parts. The first part discusses the beginnings of sociology in Poland, as it follows two strains, both academic: Western-oriented and ‘domestic’. The latter was oriented to the specificity of national culture and not to ‘universal’ social processes. The second part discusses sociology under socialism. On the one hand, scholars were forced to accept at least some ideas of Soviet Marxism and political control, while, on the other hand, most of them strongly respected Western-style academic culture. Due to the originality of the combination of the two approaches, sociology practised in Poland was attractive to Western sociologists who, if interested in socialism, found here a common platform of communication. It was also attractive to Eastern European scholars, who found translations of Western literature here, and to people who have studied social sciences in the West. The third part discusses sociology after the systemic transformation in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in the early 1990s. As the situation changed, sociology responded to it and flourished. In parallel, societies of the region lost a lot of their specific characteristics, as constraints on social sciences were abolished. As a consequence, sociology as practised in Poland was rendered less interesting to both Western and Eastern scholars.
