Jakub Motrenko (Warsaw): “Sound Science or Junk Science: Polish Sociology facing the Solidarity Movement (Solidarność)”

Abstract: Polish sociologists in the early 80s observed a sudden and entirely unexpected appearance of a huge, long‐lasting and unprecedented in the Soviet Bloc social movement Solidarność (Solidarity movement). Renowned researchers, who had been doing research on Polish society for over two decades, were able neither to predict the appearance of the movement, nor to explain it ex post. Polish positivist sociology, despite unfavourable political context, conducted methodologically advanced empirical research and inventive epistemological reflection drawn on American model of empirical sociology and tradition of Polish analytical philosophy (called the Lvov-Warsaw School of Philosophy). The discipline which was flourishing, facing the new social phenomenon, turned out to follow a ‘degenerating research programme’.