Sociology in Poland - History

History

The first Polish sociological text was Myśl ogólna fizjologii powszechnej (General Thought on Universal Physiology), written and published by economist Józef Supiński in 1860. The first Polish sociological thought reflected the currents of the early sociology and thoughts of the discipline's three founding fathers :Auguste Comte's (positivism), Karl Marx's (Marxism) and theories of Émile Durkheim. Prominent among the first Polish sociologists were know Ludwik Gumplowicz, Leon Petrażycki, Edward Abramowski, and Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz.

Sociology in Poland developed significantly during the interbellum period, when it came out from its niche to become a respectable, mainstream science. The first attempt to create a chair in sociology in the early 20th century in Kraków was unsuccessful, but chairs would be created in the 1920s (in Poznań in 1920, Warsaw in 1923 and Kraków, 1930). In that period, the most notable Polish sociologist would be Florian Znaniecki, who founded the first chair of sociology in Poland and whose influence made the University of Poznań a major Polish centre for sociology. Other Polish notable sociologists of that period include Ludwik Krzywicki, Jan Stanisław Bystroń, Stefan Czarnowski, and not least Bronisław Malinowski, a sociologist and anthropologist, who would gain international fame during that period. The first specialized research institutes were created around that time: The Institute of Social Economy in Warsaw (1920) headed by Krzywicki and the Institute of Sociology in Poznan (1921) headed by Znaniecki. The first sociological journals were also published in this period.

World War II interrupted the development of Polish science, as both the Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, who occupied Poland closed down Polish educational and research institutions and persecuted Polish intelligentsia, including social scientists (see Polish culture during World War II for details). In the early period in communist Poland (the Stalinist period of 1948-1956), sociology was banned by the communist authorities as a bourgeois pseudoscience (see also suppressed research in the Soviet Union). Polish sociology was, however, revived following the Gomułka's Thaw in 1956, with the foundation of the Polish Sociological Association and with Warsaw and Łódź becoming a major centers for sociological studies. Later on, Polish sociology (as all other social sciences in the communist bloc) had to deal with Marxist influence and political interference. Due to these developments, Marxist approaches were overrepresented and some studies were censored or not allowed (for example, research was restricted into political organization of society, to prevent scholars from openly advocating ideas that might have undermined the communist government). This also led to circulation of underground, illegal publications (bibuła). The notable names of the early postwar period include Stanisław Ossowski and his wife, Maria Ossowska, Julian Hochfeld, Józef Chałasiński and Andrzej Malewski. The rise of Nazism meant that Zygmunt Bauman fled the University of Warsaw to work at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom.

The history and thought of Polish sociology is a significant field in Poland, but most of the body of the work in that field has only been published in the Polish language. A biographical dictionary of Polish sociology, which had its first volume published in 2001, dealing only with scholars of surnames A to H, who had died, includes two hundred and thirteen sociologists.

Throughout its history, even during the times of partition and under the communist regime, Polish sociology was influenced by the developments of the theory in the West. Some Poles were the International Sociological Association’s officers: Jan Szczepański was president (1966-1970), Stanisław Ossowski vice-president (1959-1962), and Magdalena Sokołowska vice-president (1978-1982). The Polish Sociological Association was also relatively independent. Even under the communist regime, the freedom of Polish academics seemed to have been greater than in other communist countries, and thus Polish academics often spread Western ideas among their colleagues in the East and South.