This article looks at hospitality practices in the process of recreating and modifying social structure. The author seeks the general regularities and behavioral patterns that appear when people visit others and are visited, as well as how they speak of these visits, or, in Pierre Bourdieu’s language, the principles that organize practices that are part of the class habitus. For the purposes of the analysis, two comparative groups were selected: people with the highest and lowest levels of economic, social, and cultural capital. The analysis allowed several conclusions to be drawn. First, in addition to the class factor, the age or generational factor should be taken into account as it has proven to be relevant in terms of the diversity of practices. Second, the research showed that several of the practices studied were not differentiated between the groups; they turned out to be intense in the case of people with high and low levels of capital. Such patterns involved informality and freedom, the striving for agreement and group solidarity, and an aversion to aesthetics and decoration. Third, there were sometimes differentiating nuances—the general principle could be the same, but the justification or motivation behind it was different. For people with a high level of both types of capital, naturalness/honesty was an important justification and was contrasted to falsehood, artificiality, and pretentiousness. This justification seemed to be a meta-principle that permeated many other patterns of behavior.

This article contains a partial report on ethnographic research conducted among homeless people who live in the streets outside the system of institutional aid or are staying in a hostel they created themselves. The study, carried out according to the principles of an interpretive orientation, created an opportunity to learn the views of the homeless people. It describes manifestations of engagement on behalf of the hostel in which they live and of a special type of work they undertake—interactive work on one another’s identity, which they refer to as mutual “education”—as well as involvement in the form of “doing nothing.”

Starting from the statement that self-reflection is necessary for the development of any scientific discipline, the author of this article—a historian and sociologist—considers the characteristics of research on everyday life. What is the subject of this subdiscipline and when did such research start? What methods does it use? The author reflects on these issues, while referring to his own experience as a historian and to the book by Bogumiła Mateja-Jaworska and Marta Zawodna- -Stephan, Badania życia codziennego. Rozmowy (nie)codzienne w Polsce (2019) [Studies of Everyday Life: (Not) Everyday Conversations in Poland], in which the statements of contemporary everyday researchers are quoted. The author concludes that the beginnings of such research should be sought in the very distant past and that its material might be provided by all the creations of human culture. He also wonders if and how evidence of the modern digital age will survive.