Adorno and Empirical Sociology

Tue, 22 Jul 2003 15:35:04 -0400 (EDT)

A great quote from Adorno Claus. I learned something from this, so thanks
for sharing it.
And it is important that you find other places in Adorno's work where he
revises his thought based on empirical material.

But let's not get too carried away with this. A good researcher would, one
would think, spend a large part of one's career finding out things one
did
not know before the research, changing one's theories and perspectives in
response to research findings.
Is it such a radical idea that the popular classes do not uncritically
take all the messages coming from the culture industries, as posited by
the Frankfurt School?
Sociologists have been working decades now trying to understand the
complexities of how culture works, in relation to people who are agents as
well as objects in our analysis.
The trick would be to outline what Adorno adds to this methodologically,
over than the extreme argument of the culture industries, something worth
building on as well as treating with some scepticism.

Neil G. McLaughlin     			KTH-620
Associate Professor			McMaster University
Department of Sociology			Hamilton, Ontario
E-mail: nmclaugh@mcmaster.ca		L8S 4M4
Phone (905) 525-9140 Ext. 23611		Canada

On Tue, 22 Jul 2003, Claus Hansen wrote:

> Thank you both of you. I will take these things into consideration - and
> especially the book by Alford looks promising from what I can find on the net.
>
> Just a quick comment on the Grounded Theory thing: It is true that one of
> the criteria put forward by Glaser & Strauss is that the concepts generated
> from the empirical study should be 'readily understandable to laymen
> concerned with that area'. Adorno would of course never accept a criteria
> like this which is why he talks of these preliminary observations as
> 'physiognomic registrations' - the understanding ordinary people have of
> the situation, their way of interacting with each other are only 'surface
> phenomena' that is this is only the manifestations of the societal totality
> not this totality itself, and the task of sociology is to gain knowledge of
> this. So there are big differences between Grounded Theory and Adornos
> Social Physiognomics. However, as a starting point - the idea of Grounded
> Theory is good because it exemplify the very idea of 'granting primacy to
> the object' that governed Adorno's whole approach.
>
> As for the common belief that Adorno would never change his major ideas as
> a result of the 'falsification' of these by empirical data you might have a
> point. However, I would like to cite a passage from Adorno where he is in
> fact relating to empirical data that speaks against his ideas of the
> culture industry:
>
> "A few years ago at the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research we
> conducted a study devoted to this problem. Unfortunately, the full analysis
> of this material was postponed in favour of more pressing tasks.
> Nevertheless a passing inspection of it does reveal something which might
> well be relevant to the so-called problem of free time. The study concerned
> the wedding of Princess Beatrix of Holland with the junior German diplomat
> Claus von Amsberg. The objective was to assess the reactions of the German
> public to the Wedding, which was broadcast by all the mass media, dwelt on
> incessantly by the illustrated weeklies, and so consumed but the public in
> their free time. Since the way in which the event was presented, like the
> articles written about it, accorded it an unusual degree of importance, we
> expected the spectators and readers to treat it just as seriously. In
> particular we expected to observe the operation of the characteristic
> contemporary ideology of personalization; through which, as a clear
> compensation for the functionalization of reality, the value of individual
> people and private relationships is immeasurably overestimated in
> comparison to actual social determinants. I should now like to say with due
> caution, that these expectations were too simplistic. In fact the study
> offers a virtually text book example of how critical-theoretical thought
> can both learn from and be corrected by empirical social research. It was
> possible to detect symptoms of a split consciousness. On the one hand
> people enjoyed it as a concrete event in the here and now quite unlike
> anything else in their everyday life: it was to be a 'unique experience' to
> use a cliché beloved of modern German. To this extent the reaction of the
> audience corresponded to familiar pattern, according to which even the
> relevant, possibly political news was transformed into consumer item by the
> way in which the information was transmitted. The format of our interview,
> however, was devised in such a way that the questions concerned with
> determining the immediate reactions of the viewers, were supplemented by
> control questions about the political significance that the interviewees
> ascribed to the grand event. Here it turned out that many of the people
> interviewed - we shall ignore the exact proportion - suddenly showed
> themselves to be thoroughly realistic, and proceeded to evaluate critically
> the political and social importance of the same event, the well publicized
> once-in-a-lifetime nature of which they had drooled over breathlessly in
> front of their television sets. What the culture industry presents people
> in their free time, if my conclusions are not too hasty, is indeed consumed
> and accepted, but with a kind of reservation, in the same way that even the
> most naive theatre or filmgoers do not simply take what they behold there
> for real....but I think that we can here glimpse a chance of maturity,
> which might just eventually help to turn free time into freedom proper."
> (Adorno, Free Time, 1969)
>
> So I don't think it would be possible to dismiss the respect Adorno had the
> empirical studies and their results totally. To what extent he used these
> to 'correct' his views in other situation I do not know yet...
>
> Thank you again,
>
> Claus
>
> At 11:29 22-07-03 -0400, you wrote:
> >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
>
> ____________________________________________________________________________
> "Hos mange mennesker er det allerede en uforskammethed, når de siger 'jeg'"
> (T.W. Adorno)
>
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