Culture and Nationalism, Zdzisław Mach

This course consists of lectures/seminars that deal with the subject in a broad geographic perspective, with a special emphasis on Europe, and in particular Central and Eastern Europe. The discussion will be based on classic and recent theoretical works of sociologists and social anthropologists.

The theoretical analysis will be illustrated by case studies, which will bring material from different parts of the world, with special reference to the Central and Eastern European region. The current transformation of the region will be discussed in comparison with processes in other parts of Europe and in connection with European integration.

Economy and Society, Andrzej Rychard, Michał Federowicz

This course is based on extensive field research performed during the last ten years, integrating scientific interests in sociology, economics and political science. It does not focus on a given theoretical approach, but instead it takes various fields of analysis and demonstrates a necessary conceptualisation for effective field research. Students engaging themselves in the course readings and discussions will have an opportunity to see how the empirical studies may affect previously dominating stereotypes, existing not only in a common-sense perspective, but also often guiding some scientific investigations. The main objective is to provide students with an overview of existing approaches in the field of sociological and political studies related to economic performance and discuss their assumptions, theoretical framework, and results in confrontation with the field studies as well as their strong points and shortcomings. It is expected that at the end of the course students will be able to critically assess the empirical studies that combine economic, sociological, and political science perspectives. Students are also expected to be able to set a theoretical framework for an empirical study in a given field.

Contemporary Sociological Theories, Sławomir Kapralski

This course will be divided into five parts. Each of them will be devoted to one particular "missing issue" of social theory: the theory itself, subjectivity/agency, criticism, change, and reflexivity. These issues will be presented from the point of view of different theoretical orientations, understood very broadly as paradigms of thinking rather than sociological theories "of something." The course will emphasise interactions between different theoretical orientations and the role of the theoretical legacy of social thought in shaping contemporary problems and their solutions.

Sociology of Institutional Change, Andrzej Rychard

The aim of this course is to analyse the changing institutions in the post-communist world in light of institutional theory. The understanding of the emergence, persistence and the decline of these institutions will be stressed more than the presentation of abstract concepts. This course will present theories "in action" as instruments for understanding institutional stability and change. During the course, the main theoretical concepts of the sociology of institutions (referring to institutionalism and new institutionalism) will be discussed. Various types of institutional theory (including historical institutionalism and organizational institutionalism) will be analysed and confronted with other approaches (traditional organizational sociology, rational choice approach). The theoretical perspective will stress the role of the evolutionary changes during the transition processes, which contradicts the dominant view and stereotype of an almost instant character of the post-communist transition. Empirical data from studies in the region will be used.

Qualitative Methods, Mirosława Grabowska

This course is addressed to students interested in non-survey methods of sociological research at the above-elementary level. The course consists of the following: a very brief recapitulation of general methodological problems concerning all sociological methods; a discussion of the problems involving methods employing already existing data like statistics, documents or data used in content analysis; an overview of observation, field research, and case study; a review of research strategies; and a presentation of the variety of action research and experimentation. The main objectives of the course are to help students writing an empirical MA to deal with their problems and to be aware of the limitations but also the strong sides of the methods they use in collecting and analysing their data. The course also aims to improve students' understanding of methodological problems involved in all empirical research, in all methods, using all types of data (especially in qualitative methods) and to enhance their knowledge of chosen methods (e.g. their benefits and limitations and their methodological peculiarities).

Political Sociology, Sven Eliaeson

"Political Sociology" is an amorphous label under which a number of themes and problems having anything to do with social change and distribution of power could be subsumed. This is easy to see from a quick scanning of various syllabi on the Internet and various textbooks in the field. However, the core themes are the following: "groups", old and new social movements as well as ethnic groups in big cities; lobbying; the development of democracy and civil society as social change; the representative system and political communication in post-Enlightenment; elites vs. the masses in a knowledge based society and the problem of accountability; the relevance of the class concept; classes and ideologies; political socialisation; citizenship and identity; problems of multilevel government and the so-called democratic deficit; non-decision making; political extremism as a mass phenomenon; voting behaviour, conflict theories; and the intelligentsia and its relation to power.

The discourse(s) on civil society evidently is an essential part of political sociology as well as the political orientation of participants in political life, e.g. ideologies as well as other motivations for political behaviour. In this course we will deal with some important classics in the various fields of "political sociology" and with some standard themes. We will also draw on some still unpublished "works in progress" on the research frontier.

Women's Political Identity in Making, Joanna Regulska

The debates on "eastern" enlargement re-opened the post-1989 deliberations on the gains and losses of the transition from communism to liberal democracy, market economy and western capitalism. The question of what specifically will the "united' Europe bring or take away from countries in Central and Eastern Europe returned forcefully. Evoking "transition" discussions on the social, political, cultural and economic dimensions of transformations of Central and Eastern Europe after 1989, one is reminded of frequent claims by feminist scholars that women were not only marginalised in transformation discourse but that they also have been affected by the changes most severely. The recently completed eastern enlargement process echoed equally assertively the lack of engagement with women's concerns. The gender dimension, if and when included, was treated purely instrumentally by candidate countries. The EU institutional rhetoric on equal opportunities and equal treatment, while having a long history, also wasn't always ready to challenge states of incoming members.

This course will explore these issues by looking at the ongoing debates on theory and legitimacy of European integration, on democratic deficit, on the presence and activities of women in politics at the supranational, national and local level, and on the risks and benefits of eastern enlargement for women. We will look specifically at the EU and its women-centred policies that have been developed over the last several decades, and we will examine how these policies will or will not alter gender discourses in the new member states.

Mass Media in the Time of Transition, Jacek Żakowski

The main aim of this course is to provide a broad overview of the transition of the Polish media since 1989 as well as to give students a chance to meet those who are considered the main actors of the transition - journalists, editors, entrepreneurs and media managers. That is why with the exception of the first and last class, students will meet in specific media enterprises. Students will gain insight into the context in which Polish media enterprises now work. They will acquire an understanding of how some media enterprises of the former People's Republic have been transformed to operate in a new context and how private media concerns have been established as competitors in the new media market.

Media and Civil Society, Marcin Król

The main aim of the course is to define the functions of the media in a democratic society which is based on public debate. Democracy, at least a good democracy, cannot exist without public debate and public debate cannot be effective in our times without the media. Practically all contemporary theories of democracy (and older ones too) emphasise the importance of the citizen of the democratic state as an "enlightened" citizen.

During the course we will discuss how media help or hinder the process of changing a "normal" citizen into an "enlightened" one. Do media do this by promoting or neglecting public debate? We will also discuss the function of the media that through public debate are a kind of intermediary between the ruling class in democracy and the strange entity called "society." How do media, on one hand, transmit, analyse and criticise the decisions and generally the behaviour of government and other official institutions and - on the other hand - how do media express, formulate and, if possible, inspire the attitudes and ideas of citizens? How do the governing learn about what the governed know and think?

The course will also concentrate on public debate in the media. In the modern world there is practically no other institution that can organise and make public debate open. Therefore, the function of the media is crucial if we treat democracy seriously. How do the media balance between the expectations of the readers or viewers and the promotion of new ideas or unpopular ideas, which sometimes are useful or even necessary? We will consider how and whether media make an effort toward the formulation of long-term policies, which are commonly avoided by the politicians. Moreover, the course will discuss how media through public debate can support participation and representation in the modern democratic societies.

The Swedish Model of the Welfare State, Sven Eliaeson

This course scrutinizes the development and viability of the Swedish welfare state from a comparative and historical perspective. Northwestern European welfare states have many features in common. The modern welfare state did not originate in Sweden, which was one of the poorest countries in Europe a century ago, but the country was "ahead of the crowd" after the Second World War, and thus pioneering both the construction of a modern welfare state as well as its realignment in response to fiscal stress and legitimacy problems, matching a globalised economy, in recent years. Swedish economic history was a success story until the mid-1970s, and thereafter it has been relatively successful in adapting to new conditions.

Sweden is very much an Americanised society, except for its political culture, which rather appears as an extreme contrast. This makes Sweden very attractive as a case for comparative studies, which is reflected in several works and in various substantial fields, such as comparative health care, regulation, and housing. This course provides basic insight into the conceptual tools and methods for the comparative study of welfare states and their development.

The Roma in Central and Eastern Europe, Sławomir Kapralski

The course will be divided into two parts: a general one and one devoted to particular problems of Romani communities in the selected countries of Central and Eastern Europe. In the first part of the course, students will become acquainted with the history of the Roma in Europe, their traditional culture(s) and forms of social organisation. However, since the perception of the Roma by their environment, including the academic attempts, has been marked by several misconceptions and stereotypes, students should become familiar with the ways in which the pictures of the Roma have been created in several European discourse (both the expert and the everyday ones). This will help students to understand not only the attitudes of the dominant populations towards the Roma but also the defensive strategies of the latter. An overview of the situation of the Roma in Central and Eastern Europe will then be presented in order to familiarise students with the economic, political, cultural and legal contexts of their existence as well as with different aspects of the process of marginalisation they have experienced. A large part of the course will be devoted to the issues of contemporary Romani identity. The main focus will be on the one hand on the process of the decomposition of the traditional Romani identities and, on the other hand, on the attempts by Romani elites to find new forms of self-organization and to create viable, modern forms of common Romani identity which would be able to help many otherwise very different Romani groups to produce satisfactory strategies for survival and development, together with the preservation of their group distinctiveness. An important aspect of the process of identity formation is a re-examination of the Romani history and an attempt to find a "usable past" which would foster modern identity and include the Roma into one of the most important narratives of modernity: that of the Holocaust.

Political Culture, Jan Kubik

This course has two goals: (a) to provide a systematic review of the state-of-the-art work on the relationship between politics and culture and (b) to explore how "cultural" approaches can complement and enrich the dominant politological and economic analyses of such momentous processes as the fall of state socialism and the emergence and consolidation of post-communism.

The complex and multifaceted relationship between politics and culture has been studied from a variety of perspectives. This course will examine, therefore, several approaches developed within the fields of political science, anthropology, history, sociology, and cultural/postcolonial studies. One of the key objectives is to demonstrate that many if not all cultural productions, though not always "explicitly" political, are nonetheless reflective or constitutive of the competition for power.

Management for Eastern Europe, Piotr Płoszajski

The course will analyse a variety of factors that influence the management transition process in the Central and Eastern European economies. The topics will include: management practices in Eastern Europe (the past, the future, and the transition process in the making - the difficult process of learning and forgetting); the global determinants of local management practices; the Internet and network economy; the main transition routes (from central planning to market, from state to private ownership, from full employment to entrepreneurship, from training for a life-time career to life-time training for career development, from communist to liberal "management mentalities," and from autarchic to globally exposed economies); culture as an organizational variable; the hopes and anxieties of entrepreneurship (the emerging new 'post-communist' entrepreneur); and developing the new management models for Eastern Europe.

Advanced Qualitative Methods, Daniel Bertaux

The objective of this course is to introduce students to the 'philosophy' of the case study and case history approach, first through a series of lectures, then through the practice of making a case history of a specific 'object,' i.e. their own family (going back to their grandparents and possibly their great grandparents), and finally through its presentation and discussion in class. The academic objectives concern two levels: the first one is methodological (introduction to the philosophy of the case history method), and the second one is 'applied theoretical,' inasmuch as many examples are given of the application of theoretical concepts (which often remain otherwise highly abstract to students) to very concrete and historical realities.

Seminar on Corruption, Leslie Holmes

The study of corruption has become a central focus of political science in recent years. One reason is that the number of corruption scandals appears to have increased dramatically since the 1980s. Another - related - reason is that the old notion that corruption was primarily a feature of developing countries has had to be dramatically revised in the light of major corruption scandals in France, Germany, Italy, NATO and the EU (to name but a few of the Western countries or organisations to have experienced major corruption scandals in recent years) since the early 1990s. Before this, corruption was seen to be a rare and abnormal phenomenon in most of these countries and organisations.

This course examines both practical and theoretical aspects of corruption, and thus combines pure analysis and theorising with an applied, policy-oriented component. While there is an emphasis on Europe (in particular, Central and Eastern Europe, including the CIS), most of the issues apply globally, and students are encouraged to explore other parts of the world that particularly interest them.

Mass Media Ethics, Peter Przytula

In the fast-paced media world, important decisions have to be made in a very short time, frequently, in just a few minutes or, on occasion, in just a few seconds. More often than is commonly recognised, let alone admitted, moral aspects are involved in majority of those decisions. It is crucial that while making such decisions we keep in mind their ethical/moral dimensions and that the final determinations are made NOT by reflex, or on impulse, but by reflection, no matter how short it may be. This course will assist students in recognising the presence and the significance of the aforementioned ethical dimension involved in 'doing' mass communication.

E-media and Society, Edwin Bendyk

E-media is a very broad term that covers a lot of phenomena initiated mainly by the development of digital technologies of communications, especially computer networks (Internet). E-media is synonymous to the New Media in this course. This course will not treat as e-media such modifications of traditional media, such as digital television. However, the processes of convergence of old and new media (e.g. triple play services available in broadband Internet networks) will be shown and analysed. The focus will be on social, political, economic and cultural changes caused by e-media development. The course will provide theoretical tools to discuss e-media phenomena. These tools will be used in practice during the analyses of several case studies from the real life of e-media. We will focus on particular cases that either met with tremendous success or failed completely. Students will be invited to apply knowledge obtained during this course to analyse cases of e-media ventures known from their personal experience/knowledge. The aim of the course is to show that e-media are an inherent part of the postmodern world and this part is of rapidly growing importance.

Law and Society, Martin Krygier

It is generally uncontested that law plays an important role in modern societies. However, what role(s) it does and should play are matters of great controversy in the history and present of social and political discourse. This course will introduce some of the central issues in these controversies, by way of 1) an introduction to some of the great traditions of thinking about law and society, 2) contemporary sociological discussions of law, 3) some of the central practical, theoretical, empirical and normative issues that surround the interactions of law and society in the contemporary world, and 4) contemporary accounts of large-scale shifts in the character of legal orders and their social environments. A distinctive part of the course is that it will seek to blend empirical and normative concerns, that is it will ask not merely what the law does but what it should do. Though most of contemporary sociology is empirical, and much contemporary political theory is normative, it is a conviction underlying this course that our understanding benefits from a systematic mixing of the two.

Mass Media and Society, Peter Przytula

This course explores mass media from social, cultural, political and economic perspectives. During the course we will focus on the following issues: economic, political and social determinants of the character and content of mass communication in America; the impact, structure and functioning of the mass media as social institutions; professional freedom and responsibility; criticism and reform of the media; and current problems and prospects for the future.

Media Ecology, George Gladney

This course will use a media ecology (medium theory) approach to examine the broad social and psychological impact of communication technologies. Media ecology takes an historical, cross-cultural approach that focuses on the particular characteristics of each medium - not the content the medium conveys. Students will examine how communication technologies have inherent biases, temporal and spatial, that affect social organisation and culture, as well as biases that alter humankind's sensory organisation and consciousness by determining how human senses are activated and how humans organise experience. In short, students will develop a deep understanding of Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan's most famous and profound observation/aphorism: "The medium is the message."

The Holocaust and Its Cultural Meaning, Annamaria Orla-Bukowska

A person can only hope to fully understand the Holocaust if provided with multidisciplinary approaches which would allow a more complete viewing of its multidimensional complexity. The aim of this course is to introduce students precisely to those perspectives more often and more traditionally missed by the majority of Holocaust courses - the sociological, anthropological, and cultural points of view.

The Shoah needs to be understood as something more than a historical or political event stemming from very particular circumstances. It was a sociocultural phenomenon originating out of, taking place within, and rending apart European culture and civilization. The Holocaust was committed by, witnessed by, and suffered by European peoples - most directly by those actually inhabiting Europe but also, though more indirectly, by those living in North America. After World War II had ended, its refugees were spread across all of the continents of the globe; their experiences and their stories went with them and also infected, as it were, other cultures and civilisations descended from and related to the European. One of the goals will be to demythologise the histories of the Holocaust to enable a critical, analytical, nuanced, and detailed understanding of Europe and Europeans (Jews and non-Jews) in the twentieth century, before and after the Shoah.

Theories of Culture, Sławomir Kapralski

The main objective of the course is to see culture as an ambiguous entity that locates itself "in between" different spheres of life. The intention of the course is to review a great historical and geographical variety of cultures, following an assumption that although all cultures are basically about the same set of concerns, the ways in which these concerns are culturally handled may be radically different and may decide that each culture is a unique entity that only partly can be translated into the language of other cultures.

Social Problems and Social Policy, Kazimierz Frieske

The aim of the course is twofold: first it intends to introduce students to the major debates concerning 'social problems,' i.e. social phenomena recognised and institutionalised as such in modern societies as well as to debates concerning public (governmental and civil) attempts to cope with 'problematic' - institutional, organised reaction called the 'welfare state'; second the course deals with the very idea of policy, its presumed rationales, rationality and effectiveness. In short, the second 'stream' of the course asks questions concerning the nature of 'policies' and, in particular, 'social policies' focusing on the ideological as well political character of 'policy process.'

Students are expected to realise the rooting of social problems in the variety of social theories as well as links between the ways social problems are defined and the designs of particular policies. Since this course uses data from the Eurostat social protection statistics students are also required to access and to process these sets of data.

Political Economy of Policy Reform, Michał Federowicz

This course is designed to help students develop an understanding of the principles of the interaction between politics and economic policy making. It shows the variety of distinctive models of capitalism in the contemporary world and discusses the issue of convergence versus divergence in the globalising economy. Both theoretical debates and the results of empirical research will be discussed during the course.

The central questions under consideration are: how to explain variations in economic policy and performance across nations, and what kind of lessons for the transforming societies can be drawn. In this context several processes characteristic of the post-communist transformation will be discussed, among them: privatisation, changing labour relations, and corporate governance. Besides the basic models of advanced economies and Central and Eastern European transformation, the case of China will be considered.

The expected outcomes of the course bring together two perspectives. One is an overview of advanced capitalist economies in terms of their major institutional settings. In this respect, it is expected that students will understand the major differences between them, as well as the major forces promoting and objecting globalisation. The other perspective put in this context is the transforming economies of Central and Eastern Europe, the scope of manoeuvre in their policy-making and outcomes of the institutional change.

Quantitative Methods, Henryk Banaszak

At the beginning of this course the basics of factor analysis will be presented: its assumptions, formal properties and applications to the problem of scale construction and validation. Students will be provided with examples of data on social inequality perception (ISSP 1992) and scales used by Inglehart in the World Values Survey project. Next, multivariate regression will serve as a tool of causal modelling. Scales and indexes obtained thanks to factor analyses will serve as dependent variables in simple path models of attitude formation. Simple techniques of identifying model parameters and investigating path model properties will be discussed as well as examples from mobility studies. Finally, the consequences of the rate of sample exhaustion (response rate) for the effectiveness of statistical inferences will be presented. The PGSS data on the legalization of abortion will serve as an illustration of the problem of predicting the distribution of public opinions and its change.

Research Methods, Henryk Banaszak, Anna Giza-Poleszczuk

The course is divided into two parts. The aim of the first part is to improve students' understanding of: (1) relations between theories (or, more modestly, theoretical claims, conceptual schemes, conceptions, and notions) and the level of research (doing research and interpreting results); and (2) the links between theoretical concepts and problems, and types of research applied to resolve them.

The second part is devoted to a presentation of the features of survey research in comparison with other types of research: from conceptualisation through measurement on to interpretation. It will include: (1) stages of designing a research project (especially in the case of survey research) and problems concerned with these stages; (2) concepts of indicators, measurement, reliability and validity; (3) problems with building questionnaires and types of questions; and (4) the main problems of sampling.

Social & Political Theory, Slawomir Kapralski

The course presents the fundamental changes ofiant the main perspectives (paradigms) of social and (to some extent) political thought and offers a broad picture of the history of ideas, which significantly influenced contemporary sociology. The particular periods to be analyzed are: the separation of socio-political order from the world perceived as a whole (ancient Greece), the separation of the social and the political orders and the emergence of society as a distinct field of inquiry (the Enlightenment), the attempt to make the reflection on society a systematic and a science-like project and, on the other hand, the attempt to deconstruct society (Nineteenth Century), the beginnings of academic sociology (Twentieth Century). Special attention will be given to Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, the two "giants" of classical social theory. Their thought will be analyzed as an attempt to find elementary units of sociological analysis ("social facts" in case of Durkheim and "social action" in case of Weber. Their approaches will illustrate two contradictory tendencies in social theory: the one that regards society as a dominant reality, which regulates and controls individuals, and the one that interprets society as a kind of more or less ephemeral reality that emerges out of the multitude of individual actions. Eventually, the relation between "action" and "society" in the functionalist theory will be presented. The genealogy of the most important sociological categories will be analyzed, together with the changing problem agenda of social theory. When possible, the attempt will be made to link classical social theory with contemporary sociological approaches.