The Polish Elite and Language Sciences : A Perspective of Global Historical Sociology

This book revisits the modern history of Poland, from the perspective of its social sciences. The book makes this case study a model for the application of Bourdieu’s approach to the historical analysis of non-core Western societies. The book is, in other words, a reflexive study of the application of Bourdieu’s social theory. At the same time, it also critically studies the application of Western social theory in Poland, which is largely seen as a peripheral country. The study of Polish social sciences, with particular emphasis on linguistics and literary studies, points to the peculiar dynamics of peripheral intellectual and academic fields and their external dependencies. These insights offer a critical extension of Bourdieu’s theory of state and social elites beyond the Western core focusing on how the theories can be used in the reinterpretation and expansion of post-colonial theory, global history and comparative studies of post-communism. The book will be suitable for scholars and students of all those interested in the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu, global historical sociology, societies in Central and Eastern , socio-linguistics, literary studies and political sociology. Preface Contents 1 Global Context of Knowledge Production in the Peripheries 1.1 Meaning Production in a Sociological Perspective 1.1.1 Theoretical Starting Points: Bourdieu and Jessop 1.1.2 The Role of the State and Other Social Spheres in Production of Meaning 1.1.3 Homology as Mechanism of Meaning Production 1.1.4 The Role of Homology’s Restricted Nature in Semiosis 1.1.5 Bourdieu’s Insights into Workings of Homology 1.1.6 The Political Dimension Meaning Production 1.1.7 Revolutions as Re-adjustments of Homologies 1.1.8 Geographical Dimensions of Homology 1.1.9 Centrality of Field of Power 1.1.10 Field of Power and Semiosis 1.2 Poland as Semi-Periphery: Uses and Readings of Immanuel Wallerstein’s Approach 1.2.1 The World-Systems Theory and Its Competitors 1.2.2 Relational Readings of System Theories 1.2.3 Orthodox and Flexible Uses of Bourdieu and Wallerstein 1.2.4 The Multi-level Architecture of the World System 1.3 Poland as Interface Periphery: Uses and Readings of Stein Rokkan’s Approach 1.3.1 Contextualization of the Role of the Nation-State and Churches 1.3.2 Integration of Wallerstein with Rokkan and Extending Bourdieu to Sub-National Level 1.3.3 Relations Between Different Dimensions of Global Dependence 1.4 Peripheral Field of Power: East European Uses of George Steinmetz’s Approach 1.4.1 Contextualizing the Field of Power 1.4.2 Field of Power in Colonial Context 1.4.3 Field of Power in a Wider Context of Dependence 1.4.4 Types of Peripheral Autonomy and Peripheral Duality 1.5 Poland as Part of the Global East: Benefits of the Poland Case Study for the Global Sociology of Knowledge 1.5.1 The Global East as Context of the Polish Case Study 1.5.2 Impossibility of the Global East Intellectual Project 1.5.3 Why East Europeans Don’t Want to Be Emancipated? 1.5.4 “Rule and Divide” Mechanisms in Central and Eastern Europe 1.5.5 Dependence, Poverty and Dullness of Central and Eastern Europe 1.5.6 Specificity of the Central and Eastern Europe’s Dependent Status 1.5.7 Russian and Soviet Colonialism in a Comparative Context 1.5.8 Impossibility of Cosmopolitanism on Peripheries 1.5.9 Multiple Dependencies and Dualities of Central and Eastern Europe 1.5.10 The Unattainable Universalism of Central and Eastern Europe 1.5.11 Construction of Continuities and Discontinuities 1.5.12 Universalizing the Polish–Russian Relationship 1.6 Reinterpreting Poland from the Perspective of Global Historical Sociology 1.6.1 Toward Decentering of the Polish Historical Narrative 1.6.2 Polish History in Imperial Contexts 1.6.3 Political Contexts of Alternative History Writing References 2 Structural Reading of the Poland’s Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century History 2.1 Introduction 2.1.1 Basic Assumptions 2.1.2 The Polish Proto-Field of Power 2.1.3 The Intelligentsia in a Peripheral Proto-Field of Power 2.2 Austrian and Prussian Poland 2.3 Russian Poland 2.3.1 The Intelligentsia in the Russian Poland 2.3.2 Restriction of Autonomy After the January Uprising 2.3.3 Ambiguities of the Russian Rule in Poland 2.3.4 The Main Cleavages of the Polish Proto-Field of Power in Russia 2.4 Higher Education and Research in Russian Poland 2.4.1 Alternative Educational Paths for Polish Students in Russia 2.4.2 University of Warsaw as an Outpost of Russification of Poland 2.4.3 Independent Polish Sector of Higher Education and Research 2.4.4 Main Polish Political Camps in Russia 2.5 Polish Academic and Intellectual Field Under the Austrian Rule 2.5.1 The Early Stages of History of Galicia 2.5.2 Main Polish Political Camps in Austria 2.5.3 Higher Education System in Galicia 2.5.4 The Kraków-Lviv Opposition 2.5.5 Internationalization of Galician Universities 2.5.6 Image of Galicia as a Creative Periphery 2.6 Poland Under German Rule 2.7 Economic Development of the Polish Lands During the World War I 2.7.1 Last Decades of the Nineteenth Century 2.7.2 Development of Bourgeoisie 2.7.3 Nationalist Movements and the Project of Mitteleuropa 2.7.4 Fall of the Economic Elite 2.8 The Interwar Period 2.8.1 Roots and Phases of the Interwar Period 2.8.2 Poland and Soviet Union—Differences and Similarities of Fields of Power 2.8.3 Intelligentsia Domination in the Field of Power 2.8.4 Higher Education in the Interwar Poland 2.9 The Early Post-War Period 2.9.1 The Intelligentsia as a Hegemon in the New Field of Power 2.9.2 Political Landscape of the Communist Poland 2.9.3 The Stalinist Period 2.9.4 Higher Education in Stalinist Poland 2.9.5 Duality of Views on Stalinism 2.10 The Liberal Period (1956–1968) 2.10.1 The Thaw (October 1956) 2.10.2 New Sector of the Field of Power Emerging in 1956 2.10.3 “Środowisko” as a Basic Unit of the Intelligentsia 2.10.4 Higher Education and Research Since 1956 2.10.5 Institutional Changes After 1956 2.10.6 The Field of Power in the 1960s 2.10.7 March 1968 2.11 The Last Decades of the Communist Period 2.11.1 Toward Technocratic 1970s 2.11.2 Academic Field in the 1970s 2.11.3 Consolidation of the Anti-Communist Opposition 2.11.4 The Re-traditionalization 2.11.5 The Collapse of Communism 2.12 The Post-Communist Period 2.12.1 Post-Communist Transformations of the Field of Power 2.12.2 The Second Phase of the Post-Communist Transformation 2.12.3 The Fate of the Intelligentsia in the Post-Communist Period 2.12.4 The Field of Higher Education and Its Autonomy 2.13 The Polish Fields of Social Sciences and Humanities After WWII—A Synthesis 2.13.1 Interface Periphery Effects and the Polish Academic System 2.13.2 The Homology of Structures and Disappearance of Critical Approaches References 3 The Field of Polish Linguistics and Literary Studies 3.1 Introduction 3.2 The Nineteenth-Century Beginnings of the Field 3.3 Jan Niecisław Baudouin de Courtenay 3.3.1 Early Years 3.3.2 The Tartu and Krakow Years 3.3.3 Panslavism 3.3.4 Second Stage of Career in Russia 3.3.5 Late years and Legacy 3.4 The Institutional Infrastructure of the Field at the Turn of Centuries 3.5 Baudouin de Courtenay’s Legacy and Successors 3.5.1 Andrzej Gawroński and Jan Michał Rozwadowski 3.5.2 Kazimierz Nitsch 3.5.3 Wiktor Porzeziński and Stanisław Szober—Toward a Systematic Standardization of Language 3.5.4 Linguistics in the Service of the State: Polonization of Place Names 3.5.5 Literary Studies at the Turn of the Century 3.5.6 Witold Doroszewski—Consolidation of the Warsaw Center of Language Studies 3.5.7 Jerzy Kuryłowicz—World-Famous Polish Linguist with no Successors 3.5.8 Later Baudouin de Courtenay’s Successors 3.6 The Configuration of the Field in the First Half of the Twentieth Century 3.6.1 Developments Prior to WWII in a Wider Perspective 3.6.2 Polish School of Formalism of the Interwar Period 3.6.3 The Warsaw-Lviv School and Its Legacy 3.6.4 Polish Emigrants During WWII 3.7 The Post-WWII Reconstruction of the Field 3.7.1 Construction of the New Institutional System 3.7.2 Establishment of New Canons 3.7.3 Institute of Literary Research (IBL) 3.7.4 The First Congress of Polish Science (1951) 3.8 The Post-1956 Era 3.8.1 The Thaw and Its Consequences 3.8.2 The Golden 60s or Era of Internationalization 3.8.3 Internal Dynamics of the Development of Polish Structuralism 3.9 Post-1968 Developments in the Field: Toward Anti-communism 3.9.1 The Growing Significance of the IBL in the Field of Power 3.9.2 Toward Political Activism: Committee for the Defense of Workers, Society for Scientific Courses, and “Solidarity” Trade Union 3.9.3 Social Science as Seen Through the Prism of Communist Secret Service Documents 3.9.4 The Twilight of Marxism Through the Prism of Party Documents 3.9.5 Two Visions of the IBL 3.10 The Late 1970s and the 1980s: Toward the End of Theorization and Communism 3.10.1 The Institutional Infrastructure of the Field 3.10.2 Configuration of the Field in the Late Communist Period 3.10.3 Re-traditionalization in the Field of Linguistics and Literary Studies 3.10.4 From Structuralism to Theory of Newspeak 3.11 The Post-communist Era 3.11.1 The Key Cleavage in the Field 3.11.2 Language Standardization and Polish Language Council References 4 Conclusion 4.1 Inevitable Entanglements in Polish Contexts 4.2 Hegemony of the Intelligentsia as a Key Factor Shaping the Polish Social Sciences Field 4.3 Polish Structuralism and Interpretations of Its Failure: From Trajectories of Selected Scholars to the Global Scale 4.4 On Possible Lessons from the Polish Case Study References Index