Polski szlak The American Soldier. Przyczynek do historii wędrówek idei socjologicznych

The study conducted by Samuel Stouffer and his team in the US Army during the World War II is generally considered to be a founding research of empirical sociology. The book The American Soldier (1949–1950) played a major role in the process of development and institutionalization of empirical social research. Joseph Ryan’s monograph Samuel Stouffer and the GI Survey (2013) analyzes the history and reception of this research and the book in the United States. This paper goes one small step further. It investigates the reception and impact of this book far away from the US: in Poland. Apart from its purely descriptive value, this paper provides an analysis of the diffusion of sociological innovation.