Biografie pojęć-pechowców. Dlaczego powinny nas interesować?
Biographies of Unlucky Concepts. Why Should We Be Interested in Them?

Summary/Abstract: The article focuses on the assumption that it is worth getting interested in sociologicalconcepts in the spirit of sociology of sociology. It happens that biographies of sociologicalconcepts themselves are interesting. Above all, however, they tell a lot on the more generalmechanisms, which construct the field of sociology-science.The basic part of the article focuses on unlucky concepts: (1) concepts which divergedfrom their original theoretical context, (2) concepts which started functioning as summariesof theories (at a loss for the concepts and summarized theories) and (3) concepts which havebeen promising as tools for analysis and description of the social world, but have neverbeen included in the dictionary of key sociological terms as they were “killed” by endlessdiscussions on their status and usefulness.The attempt to examine the history of (selected) unlucky concepts has two goals: first,recognizing mechanisms pushing sociology-science out of the field; second, identificationof some development barriers of contemporary sociology.

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