Strangeness as a difference in value systems: Florian Znaniecki's stranger

Abstract The figure of the stranger was central to the ideas of sociologists of the Chicago school. Key among these works is the great tome, The Polish Peasant in Europe and in America, (1918–20). After 100 years since the publication, this research is still very actual and challenging. The study investigates the social figure of Polish emigrant, adopting a descriptive system that involves all the stages of the migration trajectory and the social processes that are at its basis. The profile of the immigrant stranger takes shape as an individual divided between two cultures, caught in the balance between two identities that can only be reconciled through a long process. This precarious, yet unwieldy, figure became a central theme of Florian Znaniecki’s research. In 1931, in “Przegląd Socjologiczny”, the oldest Polish sociological journal, of which he was a founder, he published Studia nad Antagonizmem do Obcych (1930–1931, 1, 2-4: 158–209) [Study on Antagonism towards Strangers]. Having returned to his home country, he seems to have been still immersed in the thinking of the grand project he undertook with W. I. Thomas.