A Mirror on the High Road

The Second World War interrupted this development. The revival of sociology in the first years after the war was soon suspended again – this time by Stalinism. In the period after the fall of Stalinism, in the second half of the 1950s and in the 1960s, Polish sociology was quickly reborn and reached maturity. It established itself in the institutional structures of scholarship, including internationally, and maintained a balance between empirical studies and theoretical interpretations of social reality. Although it functioned with limited freedom in the choice of research topics and scholarly publications, it documented the great social processes that were underway in postwar Poland: the consequences of introducing a communist regime (officially called “socialism”) and a planned economy; industrialization; urbanization; great migrations and changes in the social structure; and the appearance of universal education and mass culture.

In the following years, especially in the last decade of communism, sociology revealed the tensions in the system, which for some time had been called “real socialism.” Sociology presented the ongoing erosion of the system’s legitimacy and created interesting theoretical interpretations of that crisis. After the collapse of the political system in 1989, sociology turned to studying the consequences of introducing a market economy in Poland and the consolidation and effects of political democracy, all while Europe was integrating and the world was becoming globalized.

The following four essays describe the alterations in Polish sociology in connection with the great social transformation that occurred when the political system changed into a democracy. While the former essays were based on strictly historical materials, these rest on my own direct observations as well: during the last half century I have worked at the University of Warsaw and participated in the life of Poland’s sociological community. In “The Rise and Decline of Survey Sociology in Poland,” I show how the model of doing sociology that I call “survey sociology” and that was formed in Poland after 1956 lost its normative, paradigmatic nature under the influence of new, “anti-positivist” currents in world sociology and the Solidarity revolution in Poland. In the context of public opinion research in Poland, the article “Serving Society or the Authorities?” demonstrates the changing function of such research in the last decade of real socialism, on the eve of democratic government. In the next part, I show how the systemic change in Poland led to the increased credibility of survey findings, and, in general, how democracy favors the reliability of social research. In an essay entitled “On the Unpredictability of Revolutions,” written on the 25th anniversary of Solidarity, I try to answer the question of why Polish sociology was unable to predict that phenomenon, even though by 1980 the discipline was well developed and in possession of worthy techniques.

The final essay in the book is on “engaged sociology,” in which, inspired by the famous example of Max Weber’s “Wissenschaft als Beruf,” I show how sociologists in Poland, through their research, theorizing, and public pronouncements can and should help people and society. I argue that the postulate of engagement is not contradictory with sociology’s calling as a science and that engagement can be par excellence scientific in nature.

Sociology did not arise and does not exist in a vacuum; an account of it must thus be based on the broader historical and social context and will itself acquire a three-fold sociological nature.

First, a history of Polish social research displays not only the discipline’s scholarship but also the society studied, with its “questions” and problems, from the end of the nineteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century, from partition times through the interwar period, to the Great Depression, the postwar period, and then from real socialism to the fall of communism and the systemic transformation toward democracy. In this sense, sociological research is Stendhal’s “mirror carried along a high road,” where Polish society parades. The findings have been important sources for the country’s social history.

Second, the portraits contained in this book show how sociology has changed in the course of a century: from Krzywicki’s systematic observations through the description and study of cases, fieldwork monographs, and pre-war competitions on life histories, through representative surveys, and later the whole palette of qualitative research. From the example of pre-war research into unemployment we see how sociography has changed in sociology. Sociology’s methodological development does not at all consist in the replacement of certain methods by others, but in the enrichment of the discipline’s instruments through new methods and the constant refinement of each one.

Third, in studying the history of sociological research in Poland we can see how society, the political system, and institutions condition and stimulate – but also sometimes limit – the potential of social research and the possibility that findings will enter scholarly and public circulation. Such limitations can be seen, obviously, not only in considering systemic change or the outbreak of war but – in Poland – also through changes in policies. The case of research in Ossowski’s circle shows how the stiffening of the communist party’s policy toward scholarship a few years after the turning point of 1956 meant that research could still be conducted, but the findings could no longer be published.

The essays in this book were not written with the idea that they would ever form a whole, but they are not at all a random collection. A reading of the entirety should convince the reader of their connectedness, although each text is self-sustaining and can be read separately. Almost all the essays were written first as papers for conferences organized by various universities and scholarly societies – most often by the Research Committee of the History of Sociology the International Sociological Association (ISA RCHS), but also by the University of Warsaw and by Copernicus University in Toruń. All were later reworked for the purpose of publication in national and international sociological journals. These works were composed in my head and on paper over the course of many years. In this volume they appear in their original form; updating them would undoubtedly have ended in their manipulation. Occasionally minor repetitions occur in the book; removing them would have disturbed the logic of my argument or the composition of the text. All the empirical data cited in the book comes from original reports and publications, and all the unpublished data comes from reports of relevant research institutions.

This book is dedicated to the memory of Jakub Karpiński, a discerning sociologist, a brilliant political writer, and a devoted activist in the democratic opposition, who died prematurely in 2003. In 1990 Jakub gave me a copy of his book Nie być w myśleniu posłusznym: Ossowscy, socjologia, filozofia [Don’t Be a Servile Thinker: The Ossowskis, Sociology, and Philosophy] (Karpiński 1990) with a handwritten dedication “To Antek, May he take the matter further.” The present book is my attempt to do so.

I wrote the studies contained in the present volume during my years at the University of Warsaw, where I was first a student in the Department of Philosophy (1963–1968) and then later combined research and teaching in the Institute of Sociology (1968–2018). With this book I end my work at that excellent academic institution.