Society, Culture, and Personality [antikvár]

foreword Since its original edition this volume has been published in Spanish, Portuguese and Hindi translations. For the last few years its American edition has been out of print. Now, like my Social and Cultural Dynamics, and Social Mobility, it is re-issued by the Cooper Square Publishers, Inc., to whom I bring my thanks for this service. The new edition is a reprint of the original edition of this work. Of course, if I were younger and were not interested more in writing new works than in revising the old ones, I could have "freshened" it by adding bibliography of the works that appeared after its publication and, perhaps, by changing here and there informational material of this or that chapter. However, these superficial alterations would not have changed anything important in the system of general sociology with its main propositions and generalizations developed and—logically and empirically—corroborated in the book. The system, propositions and generalizations have seemingly stood weU the acid test of time—what among other things is witnessed by some forty-two translations of my volumes into all main languages of humanity and by an already large and rapidly growing literature—books about my books, Ph.D. theses, and multitude of articles—devoted to an analysis, evaluation, and criticism of my theories. As the central cognitive value of any science, and especially of the generalizing sciences, like sociology, consists exactly in the validity of their conceptual system and its propositions and generalizations, these sympthomatic facts are a suflBcient justification for reprint of this volume. PrriKiM A. SOROKIN Winchester, Mass. July, 1962