Sociology of Tourism in Poland

The authors outline the problems which concern Polish sociologists of tourism. In the perspective of sociology of tourism they analyze the Works of Polish theoreticians and researchers with special attention to the humanistic current of research on tourism and travel. From the humanistic and cultural point of view arises the question of accepted paradigms, methodology, definitions and terminology. From this very perspective the cited concepts and works are important for the sociology of tourism or – more generally – for the humanistic theory of tourism as well as they are useful for tourist practice. They introduce content significant for contemporarily realized multidirectional cultural dialogues, for which the catalyst (as well as the effect) is tourism. In the discussed exemplary manuscript the proposal of the ‘sociology of tourism’ has been formulated in the perspective of general ‘theory of tourism’. Included here critical review of this monograph concerns especially the language of terms. Interpretation of various dimensions and problems of sociology of tourism has to be accompanied by unified terminology, and that has not been realized in the discussed book. The basic knowledge about socio-cultural aspects of tourism should be followed by the analyses of the phenomenon of tourism in multidimensional, socio-cultural context. Unfortunately, systematic approach is not yet a common paradigm (Obodyński and Cynarski, 2003; Obodyński and Cynarski, 2004) and the works of Polish scientists is not known well enough.