Sex and Society

W. I. Thomas, an American sociologist, received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago after studying at the universities of Berlin and Gottingen. He published several important books on a variety of subjects, but he probably would not have become famous had he not written The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1984), a study of the Americanization of Polish immigrants to the United States at the turn of the century. Coauthored with Florian Znaniecki, a Polish sociologist who helped him interpret Polish culture, this massive two-volume work became a classic example of how such personal documents as letters and diaries can be combined with interviews to study social change. Ten years after its publication, in a journal article, Thomas used the phrase "If men define situations as real they are real in their consequences"---a phrase extensively quoted to this day in order stress the importance of perception over reality in people's lives. 020