The medical sociology and the sport sociology in Poland – the dissimilar twins

The article concerns the medical sociology of and the sport sociology in Poland. Despite some similarities (cooperation with institutional fields outside the humanities, partial sharing of the subject of interest and dealing with various dysfunctions in this area, the applicative nature of their research and analysis, emergence at a similar time), an important difference can be noticed in the academic functioning of both sub-disciplines, including their attractiveness for subsequent generations of sociology students. The purpose of the article is to identify the reasons for this situation. The global conditions analysed by the author include greater interest of the classic authors of sociology in the discussion of medicine rather than sport, the depreciation of sport as a subject of sociological reflection, as well as a different level of prestige of the disciplines with which the specific sociologies cooperate. Among the national determinants of the relatively weaker academic establishment of the sport sociology is the fact that – in contrast to the medical sociology – it developed in a certain isolation from the general sociological milieu, and did not manage to avoid ideological entanglements.