Social Marginality as Epistemic Resource?Exiled Polish-Jewish Sociologists in Cold War America
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4467/2543702XSHS.26.021.22710Keywords:
History of sociology, social marginality, exile, multiculturalism, racism, antisemitism, Cold WarAbstract
The massive violence unleashed by World War II forced many European scholars and scientists to emigrate, with the United States being the most common destination. While émigré scholars often experienced the loss of their familiar surroundings and their professional status as a biographical crisis, exile also created new opportunities for the transcultural circulation of knowledge and scholarly innovation.
The article analyzes the trajectories of Aleksander Hertz (1895–1983) and Feliks Gross (1906–2006), two Polish-Jewish sociologists who both found permanent refuge in the United States after fleeing German-occupied Poland and who devoted much of their scholarly attention to the problem of how to organize multiethnic societies peacefully.
Drawing on sociological theories that link social marginality to cultural and intellectual innovation, the article argues that Hertz’s and Gross’s own experiences of marginalization as Jews in interwar Poland and as newcomers to American society provided an epistemic resource for the comparative analysis of multiethnic societies, but also set limits on the contemporary reception of their ideas.
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