Based on original empirical work conducted in Poland and the US, this book presents the results, insights, and interpretations of the relationship between social structure and personality. The work extends and goes beyond Kohn`s Class and Conformity (1969) and Kohn and Carmi Schooler`s Work and Personality (1983). The hallmark of this new study is innovative comparative methodology used in testing the hypothesis that `position in the social structure has generally similiar psychological effects in capitalist and socialist society.` Social Structure and Self-Direction is a thoughtful extension of the work cited above; it summarizes and interprets a corpus of earlier literature in the light of Kohn and Slomczynski`s new findings. It is an important addition to the literature on work, social class, personality, and social structure, and is essential reading for students of stratification and cross-national research. R. P. Mohan, 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 colleague, 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 longitu-dinally and cross-culturally, learning much of different conceptual levels, and being self-critical. Aaron Antonovsky, Social Forces Melvin L. Kohn is Professor of Sociology at the Johns Hopkins University. Kazimierz M. Slomczynski is Professor of Sociology at the Ohio State University; he is also affiliated with the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the Polish Academy of Sciences.
