Cultural Sociology in Poland

The following outline of the history and achievements of Polish cultural sociology is merely a sketch of the developmental path of sociology in Poland, rather than a comprehensive picture. It shows that culturally oriented sociological research has a long tradition in Poland, upheld despite unfavorable factors that disrupted its continuity during World War II and the post-war period of communist rule, which ended in 1989. The article discusses the presence of the cultural approach in Polish sociology as a whole and the reasons for treating sociology of culture as a distinct subdiscipline from the 1960s onwards, as well as the complementary character and mutual influence of these two approaches.