POLITYKA, SYSTEM AKADEMICKI I ANTYSEMITYZM
Politics, the academic system, and anti-Semitism

Two crises in the Polish field of power

Author(s): Tomasz Warczok
Subject(s): Sociology
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: crisis; field of power; anti-Semitism; degree inflation
Summary/Abstract: The chapter is devoted to two fundamental and seemingly disparate crises in Poland – the anti-Jewish riots at Polish universities in the 1930s and the anti-Semitic campaign in March 1968 (along with the acute conflict in the core of the Polish United Workers’ Party), occurring in the context of the student revolt of the time. Both crises, contrary to the dominant narratives and common-sense as well as scholarly explanations, were based not so much on negative beliefs, stereotypes, and self-reproducing ideologies, but on structural changes, namely, the inflation of university degrees. This inflation, however, affected the sectors of the field of power to varying degrees, with the result that anti-Semitic riots appeared only where there was a problem with reproducing social positions. This highlights the importance of structural analysis, which explains the emergence of conflicts, crises and hateful ideologies more precisely and accurately than even the most complex formal analyses (of discourses, prejudices, attitudes, etc.).

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