Rationality in discourses on work and entrepreneurship. Institutional reflexivity vs. dominating methods of defining reality in (post)transformational Poland

Abstract

Text is dedicated to: (a) the presentation of the meaning of “rationality” and its consequences for social life in the era of institutional reflexivity; (b) a brief introduction to the problems of power resulting from “relations of defining”; (c) the presentation of small fragment of the research I still have been doing: the discourse analysis and membership categorization analysis of the articles from the socio-political weeklies (Polityka, Wprost, W Sieci, Do Rzeczy), the analysis of all exposé given by the Polish prime ministers during the Third Republic of Poland and the analysis of the regular radio program involving symbolic elites/experts as illustration of the problem of “relations of defining” as relations of power: deciding who, in what circumstances and under what conditions can count on the job, to what extent should expect to be safe, who is the creator or co-creator to various risks etc.

Keywords

• rationality
• power
• relations of defining
• expert elites
• capitalism