Explaining Economic Backwardness: Post-1945 Polish Historians on Eastern Europe / Anna Sosnowska

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sosnowska, Anna, 1969- author.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Summary:

This monograph is about an exciting and valuable string in the intellectual history of Eastern Europe: the debate of leading Polish historians on the origins of the economic divisions within Europe. The work covers nearly fifty years that span between the publication of two pivotal works in 1947 and 1994. The author focuses on the works of four leading participants in the debate, Kula, Małowist, Topolski and Wyczański. The analysis provides an insightful interpretation of how local and generational experience shaped the post1945 Polish historians' notion on Eastern European backwardness, and how their debate on backwardness influenced Western historical sociology, discussion on origins of capitalism, social theories of development and dependency in peripheral areas, and image of Eastern Europe in western, Marxisminspired social science. Although created under the pressure of the adverse conditions of state socialism, censorship in particular, this scholarship, with its emphasis on international comparisons and global perspective, as well as its stress on social theory and explanations, is an important part of social science of the postwar period. Its analysis helps also to understand current differences that occasionally lead to conflicts between Europe's richest and economically most developed core and its southern and eastern peripheries.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1. In the Eyes of Others: Historical Sociology and its Image of Eastern Europe

Chapter 2. The Main Participants of the Debate: Sociological Historians in Postwar Poland

Chapter 3. Eastern Europe Compared to Other Regions: The Historical Geography of Development

Chapter 4. Development Studies: Sociology and History: Models of Backwardness

Chapter 5. Rentiers and Victims of Backwardness, and Pioneers of Progress: Images of Polish Society

Conclusion

Biblilography

Index

Index of names

ISBN:

9789637326318

OCLC:

1078953916