Valentin Behr (2022) Postwar Polish Historiography as a Battle Field. A Study in Sociology of Knowledge and Politics, Editions de l'université de Varsovie

Presentation

The book proposes a sociological analysis of Polish historiography of the contemporary period that treats the creation of Polish history as a type of public policy. Based on rich empirical material and using a number of research methods, most notably Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of fields, the author argues that policy of this kind was pursued, albeit using somewhat different methods, both in the People’s Republic of Poland and after the fall of communism. In keeping with this approach, the historians he studies are also seen as co-creators of historical policy, inevitably entangled in processes of instrumentalizing history, which Valentin Behr systematically investigates in terms of interrelations between social fields.

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