The Sociological Eye: Selected Papers

by Florian Znaniecki

This major expression of one of the leaders of the Chicago School, one of the most important schools of thought in contemporary American sociology, includes his recognized masterpieces of sociological research and writing. Hughes pioneered studies in a variety of sociological social institutions, racial interaction, work and occupations, and research methodology. Cumulatively, these essays show the obvious magnitude and scope of thought of one of the century's most distinguished scholars. In their introduction to this edition, Riesman and Becker provide a biographical background to Hughes' writing, describing his pervading influence on the field of sociology and on younger sociologists through his teaching, fieldwork, work in professional associations, and personality. The essays are grouped into four the relationship of social institutions to changes in their surroundings and to the personalities and careers of persons; problems of multi-ethnic societies; the development of occupations, the monopoly license of professions, the determination of public policy about a line of work, and the relations between work and social role; and social observation and analysis.

Genres: Sociology

614 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

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)