Hysteresis, academic biography, and political field in the People’s Republic of Poland

Abstract

I enter a debate about state-socialism elite's reproduction and higher education to propose an implementation of Bourdieu's hysteresis effect. I argue that the intelligentsia and the interwar university shaped biographical paths of academics stronger than the political factors, which are usually brought to the forefront by contemporary researchers. I analyse academic biographies shaped by the socialist university and reconstruct a model academic biography in the post-WWII period, in particular, in Poland. I compare it with biographies of professors from working-class and peasant backgrounds, and arrive at the conclusion that the differences are minor. Those who formed a seemingly perfect new intelligentsia were socialized by the traditional academic habitus. A few who entered the new academic world from working class or peasant backgrounds had to embrace the interwar university ethos in order to justify their own merits in belonging. I propose a model of opposite hysteresis vectors to explain tensions between academia and political field. Keywords Academia. Bourdieu. Eastern Europe. Hysteresis. Poland. The socialist university B[…] the ruse of academic reason, by which the institution leads the teacher to serve it by disposing him to make use of it, ultimately serves a function of social conservation which academic reason cannot recognize.^(Bourdieu and Passeron 1990, p. 125) For over a decade, Pierre Bourdieu's theory has been facing a revival, indicated by the rising number of conferences, debates, and research projects inspired by his intellectual framework (Ollion 2015). Problems of elite reproduction and the education system in

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