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'.