This book studies the different roles that jazz played in Poland in the course of the 20th century, from its implementation in the 1920s, through World War II to the Third Polish Republic. The author, sociologist and jazz musician, depicts how jazz was forbidden under Stalin, accepted and even supported in the Polish People's Republic and then welcomed in the open market of the Third Republic. The discussion of jazz in this work covers several levels: political, symbolic, cultural, and economic. The main point of the presented analysis are changes within jazz music itself, within the community of jazz musicians and relations between the field of jazz and the field of politics.

This book is an empirical study of a central European city focused on the political process. The authors use the example of the city of Wroclaw to present a condition of the urban public sphere in the context of local governance. Contemporary specificity of the public sphere is a result of a long process of system transformation in this part of Europe as well as of the impact new global challenges have had on the political process in self-governmental institutions. The book presents the practice of governance as a form of the political in both institutional and civic spheres of the city. The cases provided (related to politics of memory, the symbolic, sports, subcultures and urban movements) show how circulations of governance practices are created and how they influence the institutional borders of the political.