Work · Sociology & Social Theory
The Polish Peasant in Europe and America
Five volumes (1918–20, with W. I. Thomas) that use letters and a life history to study the disorganisation and reorganisation of Polish peasant life through emigration.
Introduction
Thomas and Znaniecki published the five volumes between 1918 and 1920. The material comes from both sides of the Atlantic: hundreds of letters exchanged between emigrants and their families, Polish newspapers, records of parishes, courts and welfare agencies, and the long autobiography of a young emigrant, Władysław Wiśniewski, written for the authors. The study follows how traditional peasant family and community life in Poland broke down under emigration and modernisation and how emigrants reorganised their lives in America. The book became a founding work of the Chicago School and of life-history research; Herbert Blumer’s appraisal for the Social Science Research Council (1939) made it a test case for the method.
Connections
Criticized in
- An Appraisal of Thomas and Znaniecki’s “The Polish Peasant in Europe and America”1939 · Herbert Blumer
More works by Florian Znaniecki
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