Includes bibliographical references and index.

List of Figures -- Notes on Contributors -- 1 Postpandemic Futures: Sociology of Crisis Experience in Central and Eastern Europe -- Anna Giza and Kaja Gadowska -- Part 1 -- The Social Crisis as a Crisis of Social Sciences -- 2 Sociology and the Alienation of Knowledge -- Anna Giza -- 3 Sociology and Social Change: Polish Researchers and the Transformation -- Izabella Bukraba-Rylska -- 4 Postcolonial Parallels, Global Entanglements, and Practices of Decolonization: Varieties of Postcolonial Discourses on Poland -- Joanna Wawrzyniak and Małgorzata Głowacka-Grajper -- 5 The Absent Bourgeoisie: Implications of the Relative Weakness of the Polish Economic Elite in the Long Twentieth Century -- Tomasz Zarycki -- Part 2 -- Staying Close to Social Experience -- 6 Industry 4.0 as a Sociotechnical Imaginary Experienced from Below: The Case of Small and Medium Industrial Enterprises in Poland -- Renata Włoch -- 7 Multiculturalism and Multilingualism in Smaller ‘Cities of Immigration and Emigration’: Płock, Kalisz and Piła, 2019–2022 -- Anne White -- 8 The covid-19 Pandemic as a Source of Workplace Innovation: The Worker Perspective -- Adam Mrozowicki and Jacek Burski -- 9 Social Life in an Era of Growing Uncertainty -- Mirosława Marody -- Part 3 -- In Search of a New Perspective -- 10 Law in the Anthropocene Era -- Marek Zirk-Sadowski -- 11 Knowledge in the Face of Populism -- Michał Kaczmarczyk -- 12 Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Twenty-First Century -- Grzegorz Ekiert -- 13 On the Influence of Sociology on Society and on the Sociologist -- Krzysztof T. Konecki -- Index.

The book casts a spotlight on Central and Eastern European societies, making their experiences visible and meaningful within the postcolonial discourse. The modernization theory overlooks important aspects of postsocialist transformation. Consequently, sociological knowledge has drifted apart from the social production of knowledge, and sociology has become alarmingly irrelevant to the people it studies. Therefore, the book departs from preconceived notions of “normal” and “modern” to foreground the importance of actual social experience. After all, Central and Eastern Europe is a valuable yet underestimated social laboratory. Thus, the contributors experiment with new theoretical and methodological approaches to bridge the gap between social research and real people. Contributors are: Izabella Bukraba-Rylska, Jacek Burski, Grzegorz Ekiert, Kaja Gadowska, Anna Giza, Małgorzata Głowacka-Grajper, Michał Kaczmarczyk, Krzysztof T. Konecki, Mirosława Marody, Adam Mrozowicki, Joanna Wawrzyniak, Anne White, Renata Włoch, Tomasz Zarycki, and Marek Zirk-Sadowski. See Less

English

Description based on print version record.