Transformation in the sociological perspective
The article starts with consideration concerning the contention over the ontological and at the same time research paradigms of transformation as a big system change. This contention over e.g. revolutionary or evolutionary changeover is strongly charged with subjective ideological attitudes that value the declining socialism and the so-called new order in a different way. The rich transformation literature also includes the contention over alternative transformation strategies — still made, yet at slower pace. The power of ‘democratic opposition’ embodied by the social movement of ‘Solidarność’ Solidarity is underlined, but at the same time the researchers deal with exclusive clusters of reformers, mainly economists and politicians, being leading actors of a big scale transformation. There is also a difficult issue of the efficiency of this multidimensional system reconstruction, but the researchers, e.g. those of big social structures, show a bipolar social system of rich elites and of typical, yet massive Polish poverty. These transformations are also the reformers’ slow achievements and conservative forces’ overt activities. The enormous monograph The Big Transformation, edited by prof. I. Krzemiński, is a summary of the current stage of the research.