SOCIETY OR CIVIC SOCIETY? FROM ANCIENT IDEAS TO TODAYS PARADIGMS OF SUBJECT CITIZENSHIP (Spoleczenstwo czy spoleczenstwa obywatelskie? Od dawnych idei do dzisiejszych wzorów podmiotowego obywatelstwa)

The article dwells on the evolution of the concept of civic society, which has been undergoing, and continues to undergo, the influence of changes in the socio-political context. This contextuality can be seen, in particular, in its history, which simultaneously persuades that there is a common vector which may be perceived in the parallel fates of a concept and of its designates; what is significant here is the turbulent and non-uniform process of society's emancipation which has been occurring in modern times. This perspective also makes it possible to look at contemporary civic societies as positioned along the same vector. Its image is being re-constructed on the basis of a taxonomical analysis of aggregated data obtained from research carried out under the International Social Survey Programme 2004: Citizenship. The diversification of attitudes and of the paradigms of citizen activity in contemporary democracies is certainly multidimensional; however, the direction of its main axis is set out by post-industrial social formation and post-materialist orientations.