"Naive Theories of Society in the Past" As an Object of Sociological Research: The Case of Historiographical Discourses and Family Narratives about Polish Bourgeois Clans

The proposed paper examines multi-generational Polish-Jewish bourgeois families from the mid-19th century to the present, analyzing how their social status and history are interpreted through different lenses. The research employs Bourdieu's sociological tools, particularly his field theory, to reconstruct the historical sociological context of these families while minimizing presentist bias. This theoretical framework provides a robust foundation for understanding the complex interplay between historical reality and contemporary interpretation.

The study contrasts three distinct perspectives on these families' social positions: first, a reconstruction using relational historical sociology; second, representations in published biographies (both scholarly and popular); and third, narratives from family descendants, gathered through interviews and published accounts. This triangulation reveals mechanisms of handling family history and creating presentist interpretations of the past, while highlighting the varying ways social status and cultural capital are understood across generations.

I argue that these presentist readings can themselves be analyzed using Bourdieu's sociological framework, as they emerge from contemporary families and academic institutions whose positions can be sociologically mapped. This analysis leads to the development of a concept of "naive (implicit) theories of society/social structure" as a crucial component of both historiographical discourse and family historical memory.

While biographical studies typically focus on individual families or persons, this research demonstrates that both professional historical studies and informal family narratives contain implicit assumptions about social structures of specific historical periods. The paper will show how these "naive theories of past societies" can be systematically reconstructed and compared with more rigorously developed historical-sociological models. This comparison yields valuable insights into how different social actors conceptualize and narrativize past social structures, contributing to our understanding of historical memory, sociological interpretation, and the transmission of family legacies across generations.