Structuring of Identities in Relation to Material Possessions in Poland of the 1990s: Issues of Policy, Culture, and Individual Life-Worlds.

This paper explores the re-defining and re-creating of individual, group and social identities in relation to material possessions in the context of private property becoming one of the fundamental principles of organization of the socio-cultural reality of Poland in the 1990s. These processes can be seen as a crucial part of the cultural and civilizational transformation of Polish society towards a more individualistic and materially oriented one. Part of this development is the mostly uncritical adoption of the materialistic paradigm 'to have is to be; which threatens to destroy the capital of humanist values traditionally existing in Polish society, and which renders problematic the facilitation of socio-cultural conditions of a 'secure moral order' or a 'moral economy'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]