The national habitus formation and the process of civilization in Poland after 1989: a figurational approach

ABSTRACT

The goal of the project is to solve the following problem: How was the formation of Polish national habitus after 1989 related to the process of civilization, or: what is the civilizational outcome of 1989-transformation?

 

The concept of civilization used here comes from Norbert Elias, a German-Jewish sociological classic who believed that civilization means a gradual elimination of interhuman violence by normative regulation of both formal and informal kind, supported by state formation processes leading to state monopole of physical violence and fiscal power. The elimination of violence is achieved by raising sensitivities and refining emotional standards as well as standards of behavior: civilization means more attention to detail, more differentiated and nuanced feelings and more behavioral complexness, as well as less direct connections between affect and behavior. It is due to civilization that humans can organize into ever more intricate networks of positions called figurations which undergo constant changes as a result of balances becoming unbalanced in the course of power struggles. Depending on the state of internal interdependence of figurations and on their interdependencies with external world, figurations change as a result of power struggles. In the process of civilization, individuals in figurations become more standardized emotionally and behaviorally, and the influence of physical force on social matters is reduced. Thus, more vulnerable social categories gain a level of protection against the stronger as a result of civilizing. The efficiency of civilization depends on internalization of ever finer normative standards of feeling and behaving, which in turns depend on the stable cognitive-behavioral structures which Elias called habitus. Habitus is a set of patterns of human experience and action, conditioned biologically and ecologically, but regulated by the influence of culture, history and social dependencies. Habitus is formed in a particular society and in a nation state may with time come to include a layer which is referred to as “national habitus”. None of the processes in question, either the civilizing
process nor the state formation or national habitus formation, are irreversible: history has known many decivilizing processes. However, any habitus, once formed, has a drag-effect: its influence on the behavior of individuals outlasts the figurational conditions which determined its formation.

 

An international team of seven researchers working for 60 months (including two post-docs employed for two years and two Ph. D. students employed for four years), will conduct large-scale empirical work to apply this theoretical framework to the experience of Polish transformation. We will focus on the components of habitus triggered, evoked or substantiated by belonging to a group identified as the Polish nation. We will study three “normativity spheres” (law, politics and religion), as well as no less than six “inequality spheres” (the treatment of women, children, sick and disabled persons, the elderly, the dying and terminally ill persons, animals, ethnic, religious, sexual and other minorities, other socially deprived categories and/or strangers (migrants, foreigners), working with mixed methods on secondary data and primary data generated by interviews. Our goal will the assessment of civilization and decivilisation tendencies in all these spheres, as well as of civilizing or decivilizing impact of politics, religion and law after 1989. We will compare Polish results with the results for no less than two other former Eastern bloc countries, to enhance explanation by including figurations exposed to a similar transformation impulse.

Publications

• Marta Bucholc, 2020, The Corona Crisis as a Test of National Habitus: The Imperative of Obedience
• Marta Bucholc, 2020, Law and liberal pedagogy in post-socialist society: The case of Poland, Journal of Modern European History 1-11
• Matylda Szempruch, 2020, Twórczość feministyczna a kobieca podmiotowość: ujęcie monstrualne, Przegląd Humanistyczny 4
• Marta Bucholc, Daniel Witte, 2020, Post-socialist Constitutionalism in Central and Eastern Europe, [w:] Toward a Populist Constitutional Consensus?, Dynamics of Constitutional Cultures. The Cultural Manifestation and Political Force Field of Constitutionalism, Werner Gephardt/Jan Christoph Suntrup (eds.), Frankfurt/Main: Vittorio Klostermann
• Marta Bucholc, 2021, Figurational Sociology of the Rule of Law, [w:] A Case of Central and Eastern Europe, Norbert Elias in Troubled Times. Figurational Approaches to the Problems of the Twenty-First Century, Florence Delmotte/Barbara Górnicka (eds.), Palgrave Macmillan
• Marta Bucholc, 2021, Handlarze i bohaterowie: Werner Sombart o kulturze, wojnie i kapitalizmie, Roczniki Historii Socjologii XI (2020), 7-24
• Marta Bucholc, Agnieszka Kolasa-Nowak, 2021, Historical Sociology in Poland, Transformations of Uses of the Past, East European Politics and Societies XX (X), 1-27.
• Marta Gospodarczyk, Łukasz Kożuchowski, 2021, Nowa ludowa historia: charakterystyka i społeczno-polityczne korzenie współczesnych narracji o historii chłopów polskich, Studia Socjologiczne 2(2020).
• Marta Bucholc, 2021, Kod kapitału a jurydyzacja (nie)odpowiedzialności, Kultura (nie)odpowiedzialności. [in:] Społeczne konteksty zaniechanej cnoty, red. Małgorzata Bogunia-Borowska, PWN
• Emilia Sieczka, 2021, O ograniczeniach teorii semiotycznej w badaniach późnego PRL-u na przykładzie Semiotyki Solidarności Pawła Rojka, Przegląd Humanistyczny 2(2021)
• Agnieszka Laddach, 2021, Sexuality and Gender Diversity in the Liberal Catholic Discourse in Poland in the Pastoral Perspective, Open Theology 7: 368-379
• Marta Bucholc, Maciej Komornik, 2022, Spinnrad im Dauerbetrieb. Der Justizumbau in Polen, Osteuropa 10 (2021)
• Marta Bucholc, Stephen Mennell, 2022, The Past and the Future of Historical Sociology. An Introduction, [in:] The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Human Sciences, D.McCallum, ed.
• Marta Bucholc, 2022, The Anti‐LGBTIQ Campaign in Poland: The Established, the Outsiders, and the Legal Performance of Exclusion, Law & Policy 43(4)
• Marta Bucholc, 2022, Abortion Law and Human Rights in Poland: The Closing of the Jurisprudential Horizon, Hague Journal on the Rule of Law https://doi.org/10.1007/s40803-022-00167-9
• Marta Bucholc, 2022, Historical Sociology of Law, [in:] D. McCallum ed., D. McCallum ed., The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Human Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4106-3_55-1 Springer
• Marta Bucholc, 2022, The Rule of Law as a Postcolonial Relic: The Narrative of the Polish Right, Zeitschrift für Rechtssoziologie 42(1): 1–24
• Marta Bucholc, 2022, Sakralizacja i desakralizacja, tłumaczenie, Hans Joas, Stan Rzeczy 20(2021), p. 239-260
• Marta Bucholc, 2022, O naszość naszą i waszą, Stan Rzeczy 20(2021), p. 285-299
• Marta Bucholc, 2022, Tactical Boundary-Setting in the Search for Recognition, [in:] Understanding Recognition: Conceptual and Empirical Studies, red. P.Kulas, A. Waśkiewicz, S. Krawczyk, Nowy Jork: Routledge
• Paweł Bagiński, 2022, Mężczyźni wobec akcji #metoo (#jateż) na polskojęzycznym Facebooku. Analiza reakcji na kryzys normatywny w relacjach między kobietami a mężczyznami, Przegląd Humanistyczny 4/21, 32-48
• Marta Bucholc, 2022, Law, [in:] The Routledge Handbook of Memory Activism, red. Yifat Gutman, Jenny Wustenberg with Irit Dekel, Kaitlin M. Murphy, Benjamin Nienass, Joanna Wawrzyniak and Kerry Whigham, Nowy Jork: Routledge, s.149-153
• Marta Bucholc, 2022, Conditions for LGBTIQ+ families in Poland. Breaking away from the community of states?, [in:] Nina Dethloff i Katharina Kaesling (red.), Between Sexuality, Gender and Reproduction, Intersentia, s. 157-712
• Marta Bucholc, 2022, Academic Freedom in Poland, [in:] University Autonomy Decline. Causes, Responses and Implications for Academic Freedom, ed. Kirsten Roberts Lyer, Ilyas Saliba, Janika Spannagel. Nowy Jork, Routledge, s.119-146
• Marta Bucholc, 2023, Norbert Elias als Kulturkritiker. Von der demokratischen Ironie – oder: Wie Kultur Zivilisation verrät, [in:] Kulturkritik in Namen der Freiheit. Von Georg Simmel bis Hannah Arendt, ed. Christian Marty, Hans-Peter Müller, Barbara Thériault, Transcript Edition Kulturwissenshaft, s. 73-88
• Marta Bucholc, 2023, Conditions for LGBTIQ+ Families in Poland: Breaking Away from the Community of States?, [in:] Between Sexuality, Gender and Reproduction. On the Pluralisation of Family Forms, red. Nina Dethloff, Katharina Kaeslig, European Family Law 54, Intersentia
• Marta Bucholc, Agnieszka Kolasa-Nowak, 2023, Historical Sociology in Poland: Transformations of the Uses of the Past, East European Politics and Societies and Cultures 37 (1), 2023, p. 3-29
• Marta Bucholc, 2023, Civilizing Parents in the Digital Age, [in:] Dethloff, N., Kaesling, K., Specht-Riemenschneider, L. (eds) Families and New Media. Juridicum – Schriften zum Medien-, Informations- und Datenrecht. Springer, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-39664-0_8
• Marta Bucholc, 2023, Norbert Elias’s Comparative Historical Sociology, [in:] Against Process Reduction, Anthem Companion to Norbert Elias, red. Alexander Law, Stephen Mennell, https://anthempress.com/the-anthem-companion-to-norbert-elias-hb
• Emilia Sieczka, 2023, Wstyd a cywilizowanie młodzieży przez normy narodowe. Strategie wychowawcze na łamach gazetki szkolnej „Zeszyty Jagiellońskie”, [in:] Cywilizowanie dzieci. Społeczno-kulturowe badania dzieciństwa w perspektywie teorii Norberta Eliasa, red. Zofia Boni, Marta Rakoczy, Warszawa: Oficyna Naukowa