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

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 author analyses a history of research on culture in communist Poland and the USSR (later Russian Federation). She finds similarities and differences. During the time of communist Poland a tendency was to standardize the supply of culture and make the access to it more democratic. The basic task of the sociology of culture in communist Poland was to control the advancement process of culture dissemination and research into the various forms of participation. However, in the second half of the 70s attention was more and more focused on the directions of cultural sociology development and functions. Following the fall of communism this discipline was faced with a challenge of embracing all the important directions of changes while indicating a now socio-cultural model at the same time. In the USSR, on the other hand, the government was interested only in the cultural research which was to confirm a hypothesis on fast cultural development of masses. Sociology of culture did not exist as a science, though. Following years of deep crisis, when perestroika period began, sociologists of post soviet Russia faced a serious challenge: how to move from “the only one true” Marxist paradigm to the mastering and usage of various theories which functioned in sociology around the world. The Author indicated the contribution in this respect i.a. of Vladimir Yadov or academics circled around Yurij Levada. In general one can say that in Poland as well as in Russia, the sociology of culture following the fall of communist regime and following certain major political, economic, social and cultural changes, found itself in entirely new reality.

One of the most powerful ways in which we can globalize knowledge, and sociology, is to figure ways in which leading intellectual figures within insufficiently articulated knowledge cultures might inform readings of the other’s work. With the recent revivals of Antonina Kłoskowska and W.E.B. Du Bois in Polish and US sociology respectively, it is a propitious time to figure the ways in which their scholarship aligns, contrasts, and can mutually transform. In particular, the two are both concerned for how marginalized communities with their associated subjectivities engage dominant cultures, but Kłoskowska works within a national/regional frame and Du Bois a global and racial one. Too, Du Bois theorizes from within that marginalized community, with political pointedness, not from outside it or with any attempt to refrain from value judgements. Finally, while Du Bois blends Marxist accounts with a culturally rich account of Blackness and its others, Kłoskowska offers a more semiotic and intersubjective hermeneutic view of how various fusions of horizons might also create a more open world. Those who extend Kłoskowska’s tradition exemplify that very potential while Du Bois, in his very conditions of existence, made racism’s hardest shell manifest. Figuring exemplars of national and racial leadership might, however, invite powerful figurations of the future, but only when their cultural and political constitutions are made explicit.

In the last period of her professional career, Antonina Kłoskowska focused on issues related to national culture and nation itself, which is evident e.g. in her publication National Cultures at the Grass-Root Level. The article presents Kłoskowska’s main agruments concerning the notion of “national culture”. The author regarded this specific type of culture as one that could be characterized as symbolic, compound and coherent in the syntagmatic sense. Kłoskowska points out that, in order to be recognized as a member of a national community, it is necessary to acquire and refer to the canonical resources of its culture.

In the second part of the article some of the findings of contemporary Polish researchers are laid out, which correspond or directly relate to some of Kłoskowska’s ideas. A comparison and analysis of their views leads to a conclusion that their diversification does not generally mean that they are completely distant in their judgments but rather that various aspects are stressed in different ways. This attests, however, to the fact that the authors belonged to diverse intellectual formations.

The phenomenon of publication, in the same year, of two books having identical titles, is enough to study the theory presented therein. Both books feature the notion of culture, which was broadly elaborated by both authors: Antonina Kłoskowska and Raymond Williams already in their earlier analyses. It turns out, however, that no matter the title of a book interesting to us, culture is tackled differently in both of them. Williams seems to keep using anthropological definition of culture, while Kłoskowska suggests sociological approach. A reflection on culture by the English academic has shaped the character of British cultural studies and their subsequent follow-ups around the world. A question arises, to what extent the sociological approach by Kłoskowska may give impetus to cultural research in Poland, especially when symbolic culture appears beyond the principle of autotelism.