JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. American Sociological Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Sociological Theory. , by W.I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki, is something of a forgotten classic in sociology. The book has been kept alive in recent decades primarily by social historians (Handlin, 1951;Cravens, 1978; Persons, 1958;Zaretsky, 1984;Elder, 1981) American sociologists did not fully appreciate its theoretical importance when it appeared nor have they since.'The main importance of the book was in founding the discipline of sociology, in the epistemological sense of clarifying the unique intellectual space into which this discipline alone could see and explore (Foucault, 1973: 344-348;Husserl, 1970a). The Polish Peasant did not achieve this feat singlehandedly, for American sociology had been attempting to legitimize itself, theoretically, or rather meta-theoretically, for several decades. But the Polish Peasant was the clearest, most successful and ritually most important step in this process. Earlier legitimation, such as naming the field, acquiring departments in some universities, establishing a professional association and founding the American Journal of Sociology, was more "external" than "internal" (Basalla, 1968:xiii). The unique logical content of the field, as it contrasted with other fields and offered something new, was only slowly clarified.2 Intellectual historians (Stocking, 1968:234-269; Matthews, 1985; Persons, 1958:361; Cravens, 1978:120-153, 213-215) have long recognized the * For advice and comments on previous drafts, thanks are due to The Polish Peasant itself is out of print at this writing (August, 1985), but a useful abridgement has recently appeared (Zaretsky, 1984) along with an equally useful editor's introduction (53 pages), written from the point of view of a social historian. On the Zaretsky abridgement see Denzin, forthcoming. 2 Thomas Kuhn's (1970) terminology is not helpful here. He speaks of an early, pre-paradigm stage in a science, but he does not distinguish paradigm space from the would-be space fillers. (3) the Poles themselves. Sociological Theory, 1986, Vol. 4 (Spring:20-40) 20 This content downloaded from 195.78.108.114 on Fri, 9 May 2014 13:30:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
EARLY AMERICAN SOCIOLOGY AND THE POLISH PEASANT The Meta-Theory and the Founding of the Disciplinary SpaceIn an earlier paper (Wiley, 1979a:50-54) I described the emergence of American sociology as comprising four trends: the escape from evolution, economics, German historicism and value commitment. To retrace this ground with the Polish Peasant at the center of attention different emphases are needed. The escape from evolution, an...