Social Structure and Self-direction: Comparative Analysis of the United States and Poland

This text presents the results of a major research project on the relationship between social structures and personal values in both capitalist and socialist societies. Based on original empirical work and using new and sophisticated cross-national methodologies, it gives a comparative interpretation of the links between social class and social stratification, working conditions and personality in the US and Poland. Melvin Kohn's earlier work "Class and Conformity" is commonly regarded as a classic in the field, providing an exploration of the causal connection between social stratification and values in terms of the close relationship between social stratification and the conditions of work that facilitate or restrict occupational self-direction. This new work aims to go beyond this, integrating an entire corpus of research and interpretation into a generalized model of the social structure and personality relationship in industrialized societies, demonstrating the key role of social class, and developing an innovative method for cross-rational comparative inquiry.

Table of Contents:
Introduction - a rationale for cross-national inquiry into the relationship of social structure and personality; the methodology of the research; social class and social stratification in capitalist and socialist societies; class, stratification and psychological functioning; occupational self-direction as a crucial explanatory link between social structure and personality; issues of causal directionality in the relationships of class and stratification with occupational self-direction and psychological functioning; social structure and the transmission of values in the family; interpreting the cross-national differences; a re-evaluation of the thesis and its implications for understanding the relationship between social structure and personality.

About the Author :
Melvin L. Kohn is Professor of Sociology at the Johns Hopkins University. Kazimierz M. Slomczynski is Professor of Sociology at the Ohio State University.

Review :
"Fascinating and important book." Social Forces "An important addition to the literature ... must reading for students of stratification and cross-national comparative research." Choice "It is not often that one scientific discipline makes an original contribution to another. In this volume, representing the culmination of more than two decades of creative thinking and painstaking research, Melvin Kohn - together with his Polish colleagues, Kazimierz Slomczynski - have accomplished nothing less." Urie Bronfenbrenner, Contemporary Psychology "As a sociologist, read [this book] (and give it to your graduate students) as one that exemplifies the best in asking a core sociological question, formulating theory, devising appropriately sophisticated methodology and data analysis, working longitudinally and cross-culturally, learning much on different conceptual levels and being self-critical." Aaron Antonovsky, Social Forces