Palgrave Studies on Norbert Elias- Established-Outsiders Relations in Poland Reconfiguring Elias and Scotson

This edited collection is rooted in a socio-historical understanding of the trajectory of Polish society before and since the fall of Communism over thirty years ago, and a critical assessment of the dramatic turn that Polish society has taken since the beginning of the democratic backsliding in 2015.

“This is a groundbreaking re-evaluation, review and extension of Elias and Scotson’s model of established–outsider relations. A rich array of examples — from the 'rainbow nationalism' of minoritised sexual and gender groups, to the plight of Ukrainian Roma refugees — are explored as part and parcel of processes of post-community transformation and established–outsider reconfiguration in Poland… This is a major contribution to scholarship across a range of fields, its significant far-reaching and its conceptual implications manifold.”
—Professor Jason Hughes, Professor of Sociology, CSSAH RIKE Lead, School of Media, Communication and Sociology, University of Leicester, UK

This book uses Norbert Elias and John L. Scotson’s The Established and The Outsiders to map selected established-outsiders figurations in Poland after 1989. Looking at gender and sexual orientation, nationalism and patriotism, race and class, antifeminism and homophobia, elitist and populist imaginaries, religious and political ideals and ideologies, hate speech, and the crisis of the rule of law, this book tracks how inequalities are transformed into figurations of the have and the have-nots by way of spatial, symbolic and institutional exclusion. This edited collection is rooted in a socio-historical understanding of the trajectory of Polish society before and since the fall of Communism over thirty years ago, and a critical assessment of the dramatic turn that Polish society has taken since the beginning of the democratic backsliding in 2015.

Professor Marta Bucholc is Director of the Centre of Figurational Research, Faculty of Sociology, University of Warsaw. She leads the Polish National Science Centre project on national habitus formation in Poland, as well as the ERC Consolidator project ABORTION FIGURATIONS and the Polish team of the Volkswagen Foundation project “Towards Illiberal Constitutionalism”. She is a Fellow of Norbert Elias Foundation, Amsterdam, and a Distinguished Fellow of the Universalism and Particularism KFG at the University of Munich.