The Nation as a Civilizing Form: Contribution to the Figuration of the Polish Nation

This article was inspired by the book Studien über die Deutschen [Studies on the Germans] in which Norbert Elias encourages his readers to make sociological descriptions of the habitus of other nations. It is not only a matter of once again relearning lessons from history, but to look at them from the sociological perspective of figuration theory. The author’s aim is to make an initial outline of the research perspective that would combine the macro-sociological changes of Polish society with experience at the micro-sociological level (Łuczewski) or even the biographies of individuals (Bończa-Tomaszewski). For example, the influence of the partitions on Poles’ mentality is part of common knowledge, but it has not been (perhaps precisely for this reason) addressed sociologically. These considerations inevitably lead the author to ask what, in essence, is a nation and what national consciousness is. In conclusion, the author proposes hypothetical main motifs for describing the Polish habitus