Polish Society

by Adam Podgórecki

Podgorecki presents his own participant observation of the political and organizational pressures that were exerted upon sociologists to produce dogmatically proper results to give a false diagnosis of social reality. He analyzes the roles of Polish sociologists as dissenters, observers, conformists, or eager agents of the rapid and imposed changes designed to bring about an alien communist utopia. Podgorecki synthesizes data pertinent to social changes during the period of real socialism and the new system of formal and informal stratification mainly based on the access to formal power and its shadow counterparts. Finally, he discusses the social stratum of the intelligentsia, considered to be the vital link between the worker-based phenomenon of Solidarity and the traditional Polish ethos, and their intricate alliance that generated the sparks of the inflammatory revolution that changed the face of Europe. Recommended for scholars and students of sociology, political science, and East European studies.

208 pages, Hardcover

First published November 30, 1993

About the author

Adam Podgórecki (1925–1998) is an internationally renowned legal sociologist and one of the founders of the Research Committee on Sociology of Law (RCSL). Podgórecki was also one of the founders of the first institute at Warsaw University which was devoted to the social scientific studies of law.

He carried out a systematic programme of socio-legal research throughout his academic life, wrote and published widely in both Polish and English and developed a unique socio-legal line of inquiry which can be traced back to Leon Petrazycki’s theory of “intuitive law”. According to Adam Czarnota, Podgórecki developed his social theory “in opposition to the Marxist theory of law and the state. He stressed the importance of empirical comparative material guided by theoretical hypothesis. Crucial for him was the typology, derived from Petrazycki,of intutitive and official law”.

To honour the significant contribution made by Adam Podgórecki to the development of sociology of law and to shape the history of the Research Committee on Sociology of Law (RCSL), the Board of RCSL decided in 2004 to establish the annual Adam Podgórecki Prize. This prize is awarded for outstanding achievements in socio-legal research