Social Classes in contemporary Poland: experiences and discourses

2022-11-22

Social Classes in contemporary Poland: experiences and discourses

We invite academic authors to submit papers for the special issue of "Studia Krytyczne" edited by Kamil Łuczaj and Justyna Kajta. The issue will be focused on qualitative analyses of social classes in Poland, with particular emphasis on the study of class experiences and discourses.

As compared to the UK or France, class language and class self-identifications are much less rooted in Polish society. This, of course, is related to the different historical experiences, which translate, among other things, into the emotional and political connotations of the notion of class. The post-transformation discourse normalizing social inequalities and grounding the idea of ​​meritocracy is also significant here. If social class is discussed in Polish public discourse, it is primarily the middle class. The problematic character of the discussion about classes also translates into research conducted in Polish social sciences.

At the same time, in recent years, we can observe an increase in the interest of Polish researchers in the cultural turn in the analysis of social classes in Poland, hence we would like to give voice to these analyses in the special issue. We are interested in both research on class experiences (e.g. crossing class boundaries through upward mobility), social perception of social classes, and social construction of class boundaries, as well as the analysis of class representations in the media discourse. An important idea behind this issue is also the need to strengthen the voice of people who have experienced the feeling of not fitting in, marginalization, exclusion, or discrimination due to their class origin. Referring to the paradigm of new working-class studies and engaged sociology, we would like the issue to be not only a space for presenting research on the disadvantaged classes but also an opportunity to increase their visibility.

We would like to collect academic papers based on qualitative research in the field of broadly understood social sciences (including sociology, social anthropology, pedagogy, and narrative psychology). We also encourage the authors to submit theoretical autoethnographic analyses.

The thematic scope of the issue includes issues such as:

• class determinants of professional careers in Poland,
• opportunities and barriers to upward mobility in contemporary Poland,
• biographical class experiences,
• intersectional approaches to class analysis,
• upward mobility in the context of transformation and post-transformation,
• mechanisms of upward mobility and class reproduction and strategies of resistance against them,
• social perception of social classes and constructing class boundaries,
• media discourses on social classes,
• class cultures in the context of migration processes,
• theoretical and terminological solutions helping to study social classes, including the phenomenon of upward mobility,
• methodological challenges in qualitative studies of social classes.

The publication of the issue is planned for the June 2023. The deadline is March 15, 2023. Manuscripts both in Polish and English are accepted.

Submission portal: https://czasopisma.uni.opole.pl/index.php/sk/user/register

Instructions for Authors: https://czasopisma.uni.opole.pl/index.php/sk/about/submissions