The forgotten social surveys of interwar Poland

This paper looks at the vitality of Polish social surveys conducted during the interwar period. These surveys were subsequently erased from the history of the social sciences as a result of political, national and demographic upheavals. Four successive surveys are presented and described within their political, institutional and academic contexts. What links these surveys is not a single methodology or topic, but rather the social activism of their designers, who transformed the ways in which working-class experiences were collected in order to adapt these methods to changing political and social circumstances. The paper develops this argument in two directions: firstly, by emphasising the role of private institutes in conducting surveys, and their competing and complementary relationships with public institutes; secondly, by highlighting a transnational and Central European space for the circulation of knowledge that provided the references and recognition needed to bolster the institutes’ autonomy.