Społeczeństwo wyboru czy wybór społeczeństwa? Teoretyczno-historyczna analiza kategorii wyboru na tle ewolucji struktur społecznych

The article deals with the question whether western modern society can be understood as a society of choice. It shows how choices (their scope and functions) made by people have been changing over the years. It underlines that the changes of choice making were always accompanied by the evolution of social structures – starting with the destruction of traditional communities and establishing the individual as the basic social category – through the emergence of social classes, while differentiating people more and more at the same time, until contemporary individualization, which is supposed to develop based on reflexive modernization. The articles indicates three stages of a gradual transformation of choices in order to diagnose the condition of contemporary ones – their nature and the possible influence they may have on future social structures. In its analysis it combines psychological and socio-cultural perspectives.