Sociology

Coping with Social Change Life Strategies of Workers in Poland’s New Capitalism

Adam Mrozowicki

€ 49,50 isbn 978 90 5867 865 2 03/2011 15,2 x 22,9 cm Paperback ca. 304 p. 5 figures (black & white), 9 tables with English and Polish summary nur 755 English The concerns of the people, whose experiences are explored in this book, rarely make it through to the academic discourse and political praxis in Central and Eastern Europe. In the public discourse and in many sociological accounts, manual workers tend to be represented as disoriented victims of post-socialist transformation. But how can such an approach explain the diversity of the actual ways of coping with social change adopted by workers in the new capitalist reality?

To address this question the author turns to workers themselves, to their life strategies and personal experiences. He reconstructs the processes of adapting to and resisting structural changes in working-class milieus in one of the industrial regions of Poland (Silesia). Through this in-depth analysis of 166 personal interviews with blue-collar workers, Mrozowicki reaches general conclusions. The workers rarely resemble the passive puppets of historical forces. Their ability to reflect upon their lives, upon their deeply-ingrained moral ethos, and upon their social circumstances emerge as the foundation of their efforts to overcome socially imposed limitations.

Exploring the life strategies of the socially disadvantaged, this book is of interest not only to those interested in post-socialism and working class theory, but also to anybody inclined to think critically about workers’ empowerment in late capitalist societies.

adam mrozowicki is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Sociology, University of Wroclaw (Poland).

hisclass A Historical Social Class Scheme

Marco H.D. van Leeuwen and Ineke Maas

Social class schemes, contemporary as well as historical, always involve something of a mystery. While this book does not claim to have solved that mystery completely, it does shed significant light on it.

For the sake of comparability, it is advisable not to develop new class schemes but to use old ones. Yet presenting a new class scheme – hisclass – is exactly what this book does. Unlike existing historical schemes, hisclass is international, created for the purpose of making comparisons across different periods, countries and languages. Furthermore, it is linked to an international standard classification scheme for occupations – hisc0. The chapters in the book show how historical occupational titles classified in hisc0 can form the building blocks of a social class scheme for past populations. The dimensions underlying classes are discussed. How, for instance, can manual work be distinguished from non-manual work? Skilled from non-skilled? And what did ‘supervision’ really mean? A rich source of detailed occupational information is used to measure those dimensions. The result is an instrument that can be used to systematically compare social class positions, distilled from a dazzling variety of occupational titles, around the world and over a range of periods.

€ 39,50 isbn 978 90 5867 857 7 02/2011 18 x 27 cm Hardcover ca 180 p. nur 756 English

marco h.d. van leeuwen is Professor of Historical Sociology at the Department of Sociology/ICS, Utrecht University, and Honorary Research Fellow of the International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam. ineke maas is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology/ICS, Utrecht University. special offer!

Order both volumes for only € 75!

Previously published hisco. Historical International Standard Classification of Occupations, Marco van Leeuwen, Ineke Maas, Andrew Miles, € 48,50, isbn 978 90 5867 196 7, 2002, English