Piotr Borowiec is Head of the Department of Theory and Methodology of Politics at the Institute of Political Science and International Relations, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland. He is the editor-in-chief of the international journal Teoria Polityki and author and co-author of over 70 articles on the sociology of politics, political theory, and methodology, as well as seven monographs.

Offers an in-depth analysis of the specificity of Polish social divisions from 1945 to 2022

Treats divisions as social distances arising when the existence of inequalities becomes apparent

Proposes a new category in political science, that of the practices of repartition

Introduction

Chapter I

First structural experiment: communist homogenization

a) ideological and political causes and the patterns of intervention in the structure

b) the unity of a nation as an instrument of integration and exclusion

c) revolutionary attack on the existing societal cleavages

d) the promise of non-antagonistic relations between the segments of the structure

Chapter II

The results of the experiment: the society - nomenclature cleavage

a) the mechanisms promoting and eliminating social distances

b) the experience of discrimination in a workplace

c) inequalities in a developed socialist society

d) the fundamental cleavage of the communist era "we" versus "they"

Chapter III

Second experiment: the differentiation of social structure

a) ideological and economic causes and patterns of the change in the structure

b) the problems with the structure, waiting for the middle class to emerge

c) the continuation of the communist societal cleavage

d) the transformation and further politicization of the "we" - "they" cleavage

Chapter IV

The results of the second experiment: the "winners" - "losers" cleavage

a) a new registry of grievances and the transformation of a social structure

b) the cleavage of the time of economic differentiation: "the winners" - "the losers"

c) the practice of "the united" - "the liberal" as a validation of the continuity of the cleavages

d) the practices of repartition - the consequences of a homogenous society

Chapter V

The emergence of societal cleavages and the theory of the practices of repartition

a) ideological and structural context versus societal cleavages

b) the mechanism of dichotomic practices of repartition

d) the practice of repartition - the tools to shatter homogeneity