The Social Role of the Man of Knowledge

by Florian Znaniecki

In this seminal contribution to the sociology of knowledge, first published in 1940, Florian Znaniecki develops a typology of the variety of specific social roles that scholars have played, and investigates the normative patterns that govern their behavior. A central tool for the investigation of these problems is the notion of “social circle”, the audience to which intellectuals address themselves. Znaniecki shows that thinkers do not speak to the total society but address selected segments and markets. Specific social circles bestow recognition, provide material or psychic support, and help shape the self-image of the thinker.

236 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1975

About the author

Florian Znaniecki was born on January 15, 1882 in Świetniki, Poland. He studied in Geneva, Zurich, and Paris, and obtained his PhD at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Znaniecki came to Chicago in the United States in 1914 and returned to the Second Polish Republic in 1920 to accept the first Polish chair in sociology at the University in Poznań. There he organized the Polish Sociological Institute (Polish Polski Instytut Socjologii) and began publishing The Polish Sociological Review (Polish Polski Przegląd Socjologiczny). Keeping in touch with American sociologists, he lectured at Columbia University in New York in 1931-1933 and during the summer of 1939.

This summer ended the Polish stage of his career, since the German invasion on Poland and the start of World War II prevented his return to Poland. He then moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he taught until his retirement, deciding not to return to the communist People's Republic of Poland. He died on March 23, 1958 in the town of Champaign, Illinois, USA.

Florian Znaniecki characterized the world as caught within two contrary modes of reflection; these were idealism and realism. Znaniecki proposed a third way, which he labeled culturalism (Polish kulturalizm). Znaniecki's culturalism is one of the ideas that founded modern sociological views of antipositivism.

His focus and subsequent impact lay mainly in the realms of sociology, philosophy, and secondarily psychology. According to the culturalist perspective, sociology should deal with the effects of culture, as sociology is a study of human meaning, and subsequently dualistic with a locus of empirical reality. Znaniecki responds to demands for objective reality as a focus, those that would use Descartesian arguments of fancy, and those with pre-postmodern malaise, in this way: "Therefore, whether we agree that the individual can contribute to the evolution of the objective world or not, whether we treat the objective realities or thoughts which the individual reaches as creations or mere reconstructions, as new objectively or new only for him, we must take the other, active side of the experiencing individual, the creative personality into account." (wiki)