The number of publications inspired by Bruno Latour’s social thought has significantly grown in Poland over the last decade. Among them there are theoretical analyses, research programms as well as projects of social engineering. This situation makes it urgent to examine the credibility of Latour’s vision of science and society. The present article claims that the premises as well as arguments of the French thinker are not only fallacious but also dangerous. A number of absurdities following from the actor-network theory become evident in the works of the Polish followers of Latour. Thus the article focuses on selected examples of them. In the conclusion the author indicates certain advantages for Latour’s readers and formulates several hypotheses about the possible reasons for Latour’s growing popularity.

The author of this essay deals with the specificity of sociology in Poland, reaching for the book of Antoni Sułek A Mirror on the High Road. Chapters from the History of Social Research in Poland (2019). Chapters of this book taken as a set constitute a review of the key issues that Polish sociologists strived to tackle in the 20th century. For approximately half of the book (6 chapters) Sułek focuses on issues of Polish sociology from the mid-1950s to the turn of the 1990s: the first is the change of theoretical and methodological paradigms in Polish sociology in the second half of the 20th century; the second is the successes of Polish sociology, but also its weaknesses—the author devoted much space to the theoretical limitations that prevented sociologists from predicting the formation of Solidarity in 1980. The third topic is the historical analysis of surveys conducted in the last decade of communism—their reliability as well as social and political functions. Finally, Sułek’s vision of socially-involved sociology appears. The strength of such sociology lies in its methodology, with which specific phenomena can be correctly defined, impartially analysed, and systematically investigated. And this in turn enables evidence-based debate and policy.

The article is devoted to the development of Polish sociology from the 19th century until the period of the Second Republic, when sociology became an established academic field. The first Polish sociologists studied sociology at various European universities, but later worked in different professions i.e., Supinski was an owner of a textile weaving shop, Krupinski was a priest and a teacher, while Limanowski, Świetochowski and Krzywicki worked as journalists. Their sociological interest was secondary to their professional life. What is interesting is that they first joined European sociological institutions as members of the Institut international de sociologie (The International Institute of Sociology), gave papers at international Sociological congresses and only much later spoke at Polish conferences. They published in „Annee sociologique” and „Revue international de sociologie.” At times they also taught at different European universities, for example Gumplowicz taught at the University of Grazu and Petrazycki in the St. Petersurg University. The first sociology programs were established in Poland after it regained its independence: in 1920 Leon Petrazycki was appointed chair of sociology at the University of Warsaw and Ludwik Krzywicki was appointed chair of a program called the history of socio-political systems. Sociology was treated then as an auxiliary academic field for the study of law. Sociology as an autonomous field was first created in Poznan and its main inspirer was Florian Znaniecki. Not until the second decade of the Second Republic was sociology established as a separate department at the universities in Kraków and Warsaw. At the wake of the WWII sociology was a well established academic field in Poland with its own programs of study, research intstitutes, scholarly journals and a professional association of practitioners.

For several decades of the last century, semiotic arrangements enriched the sociology of culture. The aim of the article is to show the achievements of the empirical school of sociology of culture in the perspective of the significant semiotic issues on the example of selectively selected works of the eminent scientist Antonina Kłoskowska and the “Łódź school” which she created. Thanks to Antonina Kłoskowska, the empirical way of the “Łódź school” sociology of culture led from literature reception research to visual arts research. Her students made a significant contribution to Polish sociology of art, sociology of literature, sociology of film, sociology of theater, and visual sociology. The text attempts to sketch semiotic theoretical inspirations, a characteristic theoretical and methodological approach to the study of symbolic culture. The problems of research on the reception of works were described in the context of selected studies on film reception. The starting point was the empirical research of Antonina Kłoskowska regarding the reception of the screening of the Wedding (dir. A. Wajda, 1973).

The word ‘narrative’ is used unusually often in the social sciences. The basic aim of this article is to draw the attention of social researchers, particularly sociologists, to problems with narrative theory. Narratology constitutes an important source of inspiration for sociologists. There are many perspectives and analytical approaches to the theory of the narrative. In this article, it is viewed from the perspective of sociological thought inspired by phenomenology and hermeneutics. Narration should certainly not be perceived as synonymous with other notions, as it has its own history and meaning. The author points, however, to the possibility of a link, on sociological grounds, between narrative and life history (biography) as two different but mutually interacting ideas.

The article features an analysis of the ideas of Yurij Levada, an eminent Russian academic, sociologist dealing both with theory and with practice of sociology, a founder of a research institution inMoscow known as Levada-Centre. Levada gave a special place to culture within sociology and he himself called his project on theoretical sociology an “attempt at culturally justified sociology” (grounded in a perspective orientated to culture). The project was based on structurally complex, culturally conditioned and symbolically indirect social actions. In his opinion, such knowledge of culture required to be looked at retrospectively, which provides for tackling the issue of social system reproduction while enabling to understand contemporary culture at the same time. This way of thinking was a basis for Levada’s analyses of the surrounding social reality, e.g. his analyses of intelligence or the concept of “simple Soviet man”.

The noise perceiving issue is very subjective and depends on several factors, such as: the living environment in which each person has grown and developed, the education they have received, the culture in which their life principles have formed and, last but not least, the social and financial status. Therefore, in order to establish effective actions in multiple directions when it comes to any urban noise analysis, it is very important to know the perception and the subjective reactions of the individuals involved. The paper respects this idea, presenting the results of a sociological study on urban noise, applied in the city of Cluj-Napoca, Romania. The intention was to capture the reactions of the permanent residents of the city, but also of the people in transit, as well as to analyse the changes that occurred as result of the implementation of the Environmental Noise Directive (European Commission). The study shows that 75.2% of the respondents consider that the noise in the city has increased in the last ten years and 58% of them have rated the noise as level 4 or 5 on a five point scale. Information related to noise maps and actions taken to reduce community noise has no sufficient dissemination. There is also a medium to low reaction of the population in correlation to the declared noise annoyance.

In the 21th century we can observe a return to Marx, particularly in the circles of New Left. A critical approach to the legacy of Karl Marx implies a readiness to revise or even reject the false or no longer valid propositions of Marx in order to be able to confront his legacy with the current state of contemporary science. Some of his views have already been definitely rejected (particularly the theory of revolution and of the dictatorship of proletariat). But a part of his contribution remains valid: (1) the philosophy of praxis, i.e. a theory oriented toward a social change, and (2) the sociological theory that interprets politics in terms of class interests.

The article treats of one of the most innovative series in the Polish humanities after the 1945, the Poznań German Library. The series is a scientific-editorial project initiated 1996 to introduce readers in Poland (both specialists and nonspecialists) into the most important questions of German history, sociology, political science etc. in the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st century.

While considering the anthropological and sociological aspects of development of the historic city of Zamość , it is necessary to mention the elements of its residents’ life that brought intellectual values in the cultural space of the city entered in 1992 into the List of World Cultural Heritage. The paper has recalled a unique meeting place of the Zamość intelligentsia in the years 1957–2003 – the Ratuszowa café. It was located in the very heart of the city, in the Zamość Town Hall. The paper proves that it was not only a place of careless entertainment but of creative debate and work. It has also evoked memories of the “café life” and regular visitors to coffeehouses in Lviv, Krakow and Warsaw

This essay addresses the question of the ties between various social levels, particularly in connection with research on Polish society at various stages of its post-war history. In reference to the theoretical reflections and research presented by Mikołaj Pawlak in the book Tying Micro and Macro: What Fills Up the Sociological Vacuum in 2018, the author of the article argues for the necessity of careful consideration in formulating research generalities, especially when they refer to terms or metaphors coined earlier, such as the idea of a sociological vacuum proposed in the 1970s by Stefan Nowak.