Max Weber’s famous thesis on the relationship between the Protestant ethic and the “spirit of capitalism” was one of his most important theoretical proposals, and it has since been much discussed and critiqued. In an upcoming issue of State of Affairs we would like to take a closer look at the question of this “spirit” in the light of what classic thinkers of the social sciences, such as Weber’s contemporaries, Georg Simmel and Werner Sombart, and earlier Karl Marx, wrote about capitalism. First of all, we want to ask questions about the spirit of today’s capitalism from different perspectives.

In this issue of State of Affairs, we would like to invite writers to reflect on the following themes. Free time:

• as an idea – transformation, reconfiguration – from antiquity to contemporary times
• in sociological, philosophical, or anthropological theory
• in connection with reimagining work in late capitalist conditions
• in connection with the shaping of social ties
• as a sphere of rivalry for status (the new and old “leisure class”)
• in connection with lifestyles – new forms of social stratification
• in contemporary culture – from theory to criticism
• as a mass phenomenon – a condition and result of mass culture
• in connection with the culture industry – the problem of the appropriation (colonisation) of free time by the capitalist system.

We invite authors to reflect on preparing for crises, based on the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. We are seeking scholarly articles with practical conclusions, accessible to researchers from different disciplines, experts, and policymakers, not just to a highly specialised audience.

Weber's work covers a wide field of problems in the social and historical sciences. At the same time, Weber is a classic, and a classic work is one in which we can find answers to our own questions. We expect texts devoted to Weberian themes and problems from the point of view of the authors' own research and theoretical interests.

This issue of State of Affairs explores what social sciences could contribute to furthering our understanding of the social, political, economic, and cultural aspects of the energy transition process.

A new sociology of leadership – is it even possible? Although some of sociology’s classic thinkers analyzed the question of leadership, later the topic fell into disgrace and was overtaken by psychology, organizational development, and expansive leadership studies, which eventually constituted the field itself. Leadership's export solely to business or politics, left universities helpless in face of the managerial revolution and political polarization, which entered academia and eliminated models of leadership tailored to its needs. On the other hand, new trends in social science have promising potential to cast a new, long-sought light on leadership. 

In this special issue of Stan Rzeczy (State of Affairs), we set out to seek new and more robust models that would enable us both to understand leadership in a sociological way. We invite all scholars who are interested in our daring endeavor of approaching leadership from a sociological perspective to contribute to our upcoming issue. We want to maintain a strong practical inclination towards conclusions that could help contemporary academia (and the world) in overcoming intractable conflicts, ideological differences, and the inevitable tensions grounded in the structure of social reality.

Many times a funeral has been organised for metaphysical thinking. On the other hand, more and more of the empirical evidence recorded by the social sciences indicates a return to metaphysical thinking. This return is not simply the renewed presence of the same phenomenon – it is not a rejection of the critique of metaphysics. Metaphysics is returning with the stigma of its demise and is seeking a place for itself again in answering new questions about the end of the world as we know it.

In this thematic issue of State of Affairs, we intend to focus our attention on evidence of metaphysics understood not so much as a branch of philosophy but as reflection underlying social practices, while situating these practices in the broader context.

We invite representatives of various disciplines to join in constituting the anti-disciplinary field of reflection on design as a socio-cultural phenomenon, as well as on the relations between design and the social sciences. We are also interested in the role of design and the designer in contemporary culture. Moreover, we want to recognize new areas of design theory and practice: experimental, speculative, critical, and social design.

Historical sociology is a research trend that differentiates the subject and its character: on the one hand, it is a sociological analysis of past phenomena and, on the other hand, the study of social processes that started in the past but whose consequences are an important contemporary phenomenon.

The semi-annual State of Affairs would like to invite you to discuss the achievements of historical sociology and the results of your own research in the field of historical sociology in its micro or macro version.

By dedicating this issue of State of Affairs to predatory identities, we wish to encourage reflection on the contexts and mechanisms of the formation of such identities. We do not want to focus only on the perspective of the victim – the identities being eliminated or attacked by various predatory “we” groups. We are interested in the potential of the relational nature of the concept of identity; we are striving to understand the description of predatory identity as an authentic reflection of the collective perception of a group of people who experience this identity as their own.

Monuments are a phenomenon as ancient as historical communities. Etched in stone or other material resistant to the passage of time, they were made to pre serve a memory. Placed on pedestals, plinths, or columns, they were intended to ensure the visibility of those events, persons, or ideas that had obtained social recognition.

We have decided to devote the next issue of State of Affairs (Stan Rzeczy) to the idea of heresy. We want to test its dialectical potential in contemporary debate. We are interested in how the idea of heresy can function not only in the theology of various religious faiths but above all in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities. In what manner could the idea of heresy be used by anthropologists, economists, cultural anthropologists, philosophers, religious scholars, or sociologists? We are also interested in theoretical texts on the category of heresy itself, as well as studies of particular instances (historical phenomena).

Though “fake news” and “alternative facts” have predominantly been discussed with reference to the US and Western Europe, this issue of ​State of Affairs will mainly focus on the former Warsaw Pact countries, where the  negotiation  of  truth  has  a  specific  history.  After  1989,  Marxism  lost  its  official  monopoly  on interpretation to other – often “Western” – truth regimes. Yet dissidents and social movements, after having emphatically (re-)claimed “truth” as a weapon against regimes before 1989, have since lost their impact, perhaps as an effect of political pluralization and/or the digital atomization of perspectives.

These shifts in epistemological landscapes cannot be observed and described easily along the well-known lines of propaganda, information, disinformation, and so forth. The idea of this issue of ​State of Affairs ​is to systematically assess such changes. We will therefore examine the practical contexts in which truth claims are embedded, the (trans-)formation or (de-)stabilization of “truth scenes” (e.g., the trial) and “truth figures.” We want to take a closer look at the shift(s) of truth regimes from the heyday of the Cold War in the 1960s until today. We will pay special attention to the transformation of the media settings for information flows, and the processes of forming public opinion in relation to the complicated history of (Eastern) Europe’s political epistemologies. Of course, it is not only in the US or in post-Soviet spaces that these phenomena can be spotted. Therefore, we are very interested in comparative case studies involving other global regions, without specific post-Soviet experiences.