His main areas of research were national character and the culture and society of the Soviet Union.
In addition to being the founding editor of the Annual Review of Sociology, some of his recognitions included membership in the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and American Philosophical Society.
[2] His parents were Jewish immigrants from Poland, though lived in a neighborhood that predominantly consisted of Sicilians.
[5] He spent World War II digging telephone poles for the US Army Signal Corps.
[4] Inkeles joined the staff of Harvard University in 1948 when he was hired to lead the field work for large-scale interviews of Soviet émigrés in Europe.