Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 14:35:55 -0300
Subject: Re: Articles/books on Adorno and (empirical) sociology
From: filipe ceppas <fceppas-AT-terra.com.br>


Thanks for your answer Neil. Well, I work on Educational and Phlosophical
departments here at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and I did an empirical work
about teaching philosophy, a case study with professors of philosophy on
High School level, trying to understand their own way of thinking about
teaching philosophy and the "critical" nature people uselly ascribe to it,
and I did that not only confronting it with Adorno's ideas about the nature
of philosophical thought on our "late capitalist societies", but also moved
by some hints about what would count as a philosophical thought that sees
itself as social theory. When I have to think about methodological questions
of my empirical work, I needed the contributions of the empirical case study
routine and Goffman!! (I chose Gofmann because I was working mainly with a
group in professional meetings. I did read H. Becker too, but I found
Goffman more usefull. Maybe I will be crucified when I put my work for
judgment ?:-). But of course Adorno's ideas about methodological questions
were important ones, even for the appraisal of the more practical
methodological routine. I made an "excurs" about the Positivistic Dispute on
German Sociology, and I think that Adorno says very interesting things about
some crucial methodological issues there, specially about the subjet-object
dialetics. But my work is not a sociological oriented one. The case study is
just a chapter of the whole work, which is mainly a theoretical discussion
about teaching philosophy and Critical Theory. This is my Phd thesis, which
I'm finishing this very week, I guess!!! I would love to talk more about it,
if someone would be interesting, but only after I put the ending point on
it.

Cheers, flp.


> From: Neil McLaughlin <nmclaugh-AT-mcmail.cis.mcmaster.ca>
> Reply-To: frankfurt-school-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 12:47:01 -0400 (EDT)
> To: frankfurt-school-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> Subject: Re: Articles/books on Adorno and (empirical) sociology
> 
> 
> 
> Filipe's point is a good one, and well put.
> Yes, it makes sense to me to break apart a theory-empirical dualism.
> Robert Alford's book The Craft of Inquiry (1998), for example, makes the
> very important point that theory and methods, and theory and research are
> always in a dialectical relationship. A method only makes sense in the
> context of a theory that provides the framework in which a certain
> evidence makes sense. And research without theory, is not possible nor
> desirable. Many on this list will have thoughts about the philosophical
> roots of ideas such of these, but the tough part is doing this in
> practice.
> So another way of putting my question is what theoretical ideas and
> methodological approaches specifically  from
> Adorno can help move sociology forward today?
> No-one is expected to have these ideas all worked out - trying stuff out
> on a list-serve is what they exist for.
> But I would be interested in hearing the outlines of a research agenda
> flowing from Adorno...
> 
> 
> Neil G. McLaughlin                 KTH-620
> Associate Professor            McMaster University
> Department of Sociology            Hamilton, Ontario
> E-mail: nmclaugh-AT-mcmaster.ca        L8S 4M4
> Phone (905) 525-9140 Ext. 23611        Canada
>