Different Times, Different Places, Different Standpoints

• Published in: Sociological research online Vol. 16; no. 3; pp. 1 - 2
• Main Author: Morawska, Ewa
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.08.2011; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Biographies; Europe; France; History of sociology; Marxism; Marxism-Leninism; Poland; Social Theories; Social theory; Sociological theory; Sociologists; Teachers; Universities; Weber, Max
• ISSN: 1360-7804; 1360-7804
• DOI: 10.5153/sro.2351

I was born in communist Poland five years after the end of World War II and I grew up in a home with an open-to-the-world, cosmopolitan orientation, untypical for the inward, ethno-particularist orientation prevalent in Poland. My studies at Warsaw University specialized in sociology (history of social ideas, staffed by teachers of the Weberian persuasion with a Durkheimian twist) and history (early modern East European history, under a strong influence of the French Annales school). In particular, my participation in the so-called Flying University or the informal seminars conducted in our professors' homes, taught me the different traditions of Western social theory on the one hand and, on the other, an appreciation of the inherent multi-dimensionality and Zusammenhang or interlocking of historical processes-approaches that attractively contrasted with the official Marxist doctrine. For the same reason-I should mention here that I was also actively involved in the student dissident movement which we saw as a fight against the intrinsically evil Marxism-Leninism and the oppressive system it created - I was particularly drawn to Florian Znaniecki's view of the social world as "permeated with culture" and always "pulsating with change". Adapted from the source document. Reproduced by permission of Sociological Research Online