ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with a presentation of the influences exerted by the Chicago School on the shape of Polish sociology before 1939. It focuses on the usefulness of the output of the Chicago School for the preparation and conduct of research in a society undergoing structural, social and economic changes - namely Polish society after 1989. The Chicago School dominated the American sociology of the 1920s and 1930s, and exerted indisputable influence on the formation of modern sociology worldwide. Oddly, Polish sociology lacks similar research, although it is partly connected to the Chicago School. Aleksander Wallis was one of the few Polish sociologists who believed that the Chicago School not only developed its own theories, specific terminology, and methods of conducting research. During the period of Polish sociology’s rebirth after 1956, nothing prevented researchers into urban problems and historians of sociological thought from drawing on the theories and descriptions of the Chicago School of Sociology.
