EARLY AMERICAN SOCIOLOGY AND THE POLISH PEASANT.

The article presents information on early American sociology and the Polish peasant. "The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1918-20)," 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; Zarelsky, 1984; Eider, 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 attitude-value scheme is at a level of secondary importance. This scheme was mortgaged to the very scientism from which the authors were trying to escape. The inconclusiveness of their epistemological break, however, is not a fatal flaw for the scheme, and its similarity to contemporary European theory suggests its continued usefulness. By laying claim to the epistemological turf that defines sociology.