Invite you to a lecture 

THE AMBIVALENCE OF POST-COMMUNIST EXPERIENCE: 
A CASE OF  POLAND

by 

Dr. PIOTR SZTOMPKA
Professor of Sociology at the Jagiellonian University 
 Cracow, Poland

We regret to announce that 
the lecture has been cancelled.

Attempting to construct the theoretical model that would fit the experiences of East-Central European societies since the "revolutions of 1989", Sztompka is particularly concerned with the mental (psychological) and cultural (axiological) dimensions of transition and its meaning and implications for the everyday life of the citizens. He claims that there is a persistent ambivalence with the tremendous liberating benefits for democracy, market economy and freedom of thought, being unfortunately counter-balanced by the persistent social and cultural traumas.

Professor  Piotr Sztompka is the Chair of Theoretical Sociology at JU and at the Center for Analysis of Social Change "Europe '89". He has been a visiting professor at numerous universities in the USA, Latin America, Australia and Europe. He is a member of Academia Europaea (London), the Polish Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Cambridge, Mass.). Since 1998  he is the Vice-President of the International Sociological Association (ISA). 

Professor Sztompka was not able to attend the Symposium FROM TOTALITARIANISM TO DEMOCRACY: TWISTED ANDUNFINISHED ROAD / On the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, organized in Montreal in October 2009 by PIASC and PAU, at which the processes of transformation of the post-communist countries, the heritage of those transformations and their impact from the point of view of human rights, feminism, ecology and globalization were examined by a panel of international scholars. 

The above lecture is considered as a contribution to the Symposium and its text will be included in the publication of the Proceedings of the Symposium