Działania ekonomiczne jako przejaw działań obywatelskich w perspektywie interakcjonistycznego kontekstu znaczeń

Abstract

A common feature of different theoretical approaches to civil society is regarding the citizen’s subjectivity as a precondition for this phenomenon to exist. One of the aspects of implementation of the subjectivity of individuals and social groups is citizens’ economic activity. The fundamental thesis of the paper is the conviction that coming into existence and functioning of civil society in a rural area can take the form of economic initiatives. This process has been illustrated with an example of activities of the Educational Agritourism Homesteads Route in Żarki Municipality, Śląskie Voivodship, wherein the citizens’ economic activity is implemented in the form of tourism services and educational activities. The choice of the interactionist concept of society as a sociological reference theory became an inspiration to undertake analyses of economic activities as civic activities in the categories of interactions between the existing ways of defining the world of common knowledge, scientific knowledge and activity of individual and institutional actors. The investigated effect is implemented by a number of symbolic interactions understood as an exchange of communicative messages between the actors who are carriers of different distinguished symbolic worlds. The use of the concept of the definition of the situation made it possible to distinguish from the analyzed empirical material three significant types of data concerning: 1) objective socio-cultural conditions influencing the development of the civil society in rural areas, 2) awareness dimension of the definition of the situation, 3) the process of assuming the role of an agritourism farm owner and local businessman by means of specific interactive activities. The results of the performed analysis clearly prove that the two-way economic activities undertaken by the rural inhabitants under scrutiny contribute to a civil revival in this area and to the beginning of the process of formation of the civil society in the local community.