Rethinking the Social: Sociology of Crisis Experience in Central and Eastern Europe

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, Malgorzata Glowacka-Grajper, Michal Kaczmarczyk, Krzysztof T. Konecki, Miroslawa Marody, Adam Mrozowicki, Joanna Wawrzyniak, Anne White, Renata Wloch, Tomasz Zarycki, and Marek Zirk-Sadowski.

Kaja Gadowska is Professor of Sociology at Jagiellonian University and Vice President of the European Sociological Association. She studies the public sphere in postcommunist countries and is co-editor of Legal Change in Post-Communist States: Progress, Reversions, Explanations (Ibidem Verlag, 2019).

Anna Giza is Professor of Sociology at the University of Warsaw. Her interests include social research methodology and theories of social change. She co-authored Transformations of Social Bonds: The Outline of the Theory of Social Change (Peter Lang, 2018).