Imaginative Participation: The Career of an Organizing Concept in a Multidisciplinary Context

I am Czech. In 1948 I graduated from ancient Charles' University at Prague. In 1970 I came to Canada, the country of my choice, from New Zealand where I had taught two years at the University of Canter­ bury in Christchurch. This work was begun after I left Europe. It is intended as contribution to contemporary sociological and social psy­ chological theory, or theories. For a very long time in my native country I was intellectually a Jack­ of-alI-trades. Before coming to sociology I spent two decades of study and research in the fields of philosophy, history and imaginative literature. Looking back I view this not as wasted time, but as an extraordinary introduction to the study of society, of man in society and of society in man. There are many links between these areas of scientific inquiry which I would not have been able to make had I not had this multi­ disciplinary experience. In each of my lives, past and present, I have been for a number of reasons marginal to my fellow men, marginal in several respects. In my native land I refused to conform to the line of the ruling political party. I became a "non-person" in all that implies in a totalitarian regime.