Enclaving of European Community and the Aftermath of Pereat Mundus. The Dynamics of European Values in Polish Society
Enclaving of European Community and the Aftermath of Pereat Mundus. The Dynamics of European Values in Polish Society

Summary/Abstract: Values have been defined as salient and lasting beliefs shared by members of a culture about what is good or bad, desirable or undesirable, useful or useless. Together with norms, they exert influence on a person's behaviour by providing broad guidelines in all situations. Since 19th Century, various different value systems have been recognised. The main purpose if this study was to reconstruct the system of values shared by Polish society nowadays, in comparison to the system of values publicly declared by the EU leaders and institutions as the core ‘European’ ones. The analysis was based on a national representative survey carried out before the elections to the European Parliament in 2009 and 2014, with the aim of collecting spontaneous declarations on the meaning of European values. Afterwards, the value categorisation was made, followed by a semantic and collocation analyses to reconstruct the dynamics of the European axiology shared by Poles. The results showed that, in part, Polish value system goes hand in hand with the European normative discourse (with ‘freedom to travel’ at the top, and a high level of similarity encompassing the basic norms and goals like ‘solidarity’, ‘peace’, or ‘security’. However, a strong devaluation tendency of once important basic norms like ‘democracy’, or ‘tolerance’ was found. The analysis led to the conclusion that the most significant patterns of change can be attributed to the process of material instrumentalisation and pragmatic approach to abstract and high European values, being slowly replaced by the need for security and material satisfaction.

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