ABSTRACT
Most will recognize that empirical social research carries certain normative presumptions about real and ideal social orders, even if those foundations are not acknowledged by the researchers themselves. Wesolowski and Slomczynski emphasize the Marxist heritage of Poland’s stratification research, noting Poland’s prewar legacy in sociology and the special postwar theoretical contributions by S. Ossowski, J. Hochfeld, and J. Szczepanski. Empirical sociological research blossomed under the direction of Szczepanski, with twenty-eight monographs on the working class and intelligentsia being produced between 1955 and 1965. Blau and Duncan’s status-attainment research is an exemplary model of scientific investigation. Its original paradigm was simple and clear in its concepts and in their operationalizations, as well as in establishing the relationship between variables. Even before that freedom was supported by the Polish state, it seemed that Solidarity’s example led more and more sociologists to ask questions in the framework of their research that had roots in the normative commitments generated by Solidarity.
