Adorno and Empirical Sociology

[Andrew Perrin]

On Tue, 22 Jul 2003, Neil McLaughlin wrote:

>
> First, I see a big difference between "grounded theory" and what Adorno
> does.  Adorno knew what he thought about a variety of cultural, political
> and artistic questions before he did his research, something that goes
> against the ideas of grounded theory as I understand them.
> He really does not seem the type to do research, and then say, "hey, I
> guess I was wrong about the enlightenment" based on empirical evidence of
> any kind, as far as I can see.

I have to agree with this. Grounded theory---and its cousin,
"interpretavism"---assumes that the true social relations in a situation
can be found by exhaustively interrogating the people in that situation.
That's almost diametrically opposed to a critical theory approach, which
(thanks at least in part to its psychoanalytic roots) assumes that
subjects can be *wrong* about what they're doing and why they're doing it.
That fact makes, as Neil writes, any empirical work hard to handle,
although there are some directions one could go. But I find it very
difficult to see grounded theory as compatible with critical theory.

FYI, Adorno's essay "Meinungsforschung und Oeffentlichkeit," published in
the Soziologische Schriften volume, speaks directly to this question. It's
only in German now, but I've submitted a translation for publication and
hope to have it out in English soon.

Cheers,
ANdy Perrin

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew J Perrin - andrew_perrin@unc.edu - http://www.unc.edu/~aperrin
 Assistant Professor of Sociology, U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
      269 Hamilton Hall, CB#3210, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3210 USA