Piotr Sztompka

Piotr Sztompka (born 2 March 1944) is a Polish sociologist known for his work on the theory of social trust. He is professor of sociology at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, and has also frequently served as visiting professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and at Columbia University in New York City.

From 2002 to 2006 he was the 15th president of the International Sociological Association. Sztompka has held multiple residential fellowships (Spring 1990, Spring 1992, Spring 2015) at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala, Sweden.

In November 2007 he received Kraków Book of the Month Award for the book Zaufanie: fundament społeczeństwa.

Contributions Sztompka's principal sociological interests include the social phenomenon of trust, social change, and, recently, visual sociology.

Works System and Function (Studies in Anthropology, 1974). Sociological Dilemmas (1979). Robert K. Merton: an Intellectual Profile (1986) The New Technological Challenge and Socialist Societies (editor, 1987). Rethinking Progress (with Jeffrey C. Alexander, 1990). Society in Action: the Theory of Social Becoming (1991). Sociology in Europe: in Search of Identity (with Birgitta Nedelmann, 1993). The Sociology of Social Change (1993). Agency and Structure: Reorienting Social Theory (International Studies in Global Change, vol. 4; editor, 1994). Robert K. Merton, On Social Structure and Science (editor), Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1996. Trust: a Sociological Theory (1999).