A Polish Scholar in Europe and America – on Florian Znaniecki’s autobiographical essay

Abstract

Florian Znaniecki, co-author of the famous book on "The Polish Peasant in Europe and America", was himself also an emigrant who came to America from Poland. He described these experiences in an autobiographical text he wrote for a project on americanisation. This time, however, the scholar did not participate in the study as a researcher, but as a research participant. Thus, one of the founders of the biographical method himself became the subject of a sociological analysis carried out in this way. The author of the article attempts to point out the elements common to both Znaniecki’s autobiographical essay and his scholarly work on the theory and methodology of sociology (or more generally of the cultural sciences).

Keywords

• Florian Znaniecki
• biographical method
• personal documents
• autobiography