Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 00:00:49 +0200
From: Claus Hansen <clausdh-AT-tdcspace.dk>
Subject: Re: Adorno and Empirical Sociology


At 17:54 24-07-03 -0300, you wrote:
>But, despite all that, the question turns to good sociological works within
>the actual "theoretical-philosophical predominance" research that are close
>to Adorno's type of "post-metaphysical" discussion. If I'm not wrong, I
>think that only one fellow have mentioned a published work since Claus have
>asked for reference: Ralf Rogowski told us about Alex Demirovic's book,
>saying that it is the best he knows (are there others not so good but
>readable?). It would be interesting to have more references (specially
>translated ones, for those who not read German), be it "empirical" or
>"theoretical". I know some interesting theoretical works on education, like
>Christoph Wulf (Introduction aus sciences de l'ducation, Paris: Arnabd
>Colin, 1995), Rodriguez Rojo (Hacia una Didctica Crtica, Madrid: Ed. La
>Muralla, 1997), H.J. Heydorn (articles published on Portuguese at
>Brazilian's reviews) and others. Althought they don't do any empirical
>research, their work are used by people that does it, althought I think it
>is really not a big deal.

I think I mentioned this book once already but the Danish sociologist 
Henning Bech has written a book about Homosexuality and Modernity that 
makes use of Adornian ideas especially the one about 'granting primacy to 
the object'. Also his way of presenting his 'empirical' results are very 
Adornian as there is no systematic in it it could be interpreted more as a 
set of constellations or an example of paratactic writing form where the 
different parts of the book is in no hierarchical order. The 'theoretical' 
part of the book however is not that much influence by Adorno, but it is 
surely worth a read anyway and some of the ideas are really original as 
well. The book is published by Polity Press, 1997 and is called. When Men 
Meet.

Does anyone know if the books Susan Buck-Morss has released especially the 
ones reconstructing Benjamins Arcades project are empirical?


>It seems that ask for sociological work from Adorno's perspectiva, be it
>just "theoretical", is still at stake, because of the most popular
>aesthetical and philosophical recent published works about Adorno ideas,
>which are mentioned more often here.

IMHO I think this is due to the fact that Adorno in the Social Sciences is 
mostly known as the guy who hated jazz, thought that you couldn't write 
poetry after Auschwitz, wrote so it was virtually impossible to know what 
he meant and were utterly pessimistic. The sociological essays he is most 
renowned for is the ones where he criticise empirical social research and 
positivism without providing any alternative. In other words, is he at all 
relevant for sociologists or social scientist in general. To this one must 
add that at the same time the Habermasian understanding of Adorno is also 
prevailing thus contributing to a further misunderstanding of him. So the 
only ones who has really read the important works (e.g. Negative 
Dialectics, Aesthetic Theory) are philosophers and most of them has no real 
interest in the social sciences and especially not in empirical studies so 
they never try to appropriate their ideas for the social sciences.

And just another quick reply: I think it was Jukka who wrote that

>Now, and back to the theme, what should one think about all that from
>the social theoretical perspective? I.e. how does the problems of one
>specialized science relate to cross-scientific thinking like critical
>theory? I think there are lots of crucial issues that could be
>clarified and discussed in order to gain insight into Adorno's views
>on sociology. For instance, one could wonder the writings in
>"Gesammelte Schriften" that are put together as his "sociological
>writings", because from the perspective of post-WW2 empiricism
>Adorno's sociology is partly non-sociological (mostly philosophical?).
>Should that view be accepted, or should it be denied? Either way, what
>will be the consequences? I think these are quite serious issues.

I don't agree with you on this. Both band 9.1 and 9.2 of Gesammelte 
Schriften is devoted solely to his empirical studies that is Authoritarian 
Personality, Stars Down to Earth, Schuld und Abwehr, Psychological 
Technique of Martin Luther Thomas. It is only band 8 where his strictly 
theoretical sociological essays are collected, they are of course a bit 
philosophical but not more than The Theory of Communicative Action is even 
if it is in a completely different way. Also one should bear in mind that 
most of his essays on music and litterature also are very sociological in 
the sense that they contain reflections on society that are interweaved 
with the analysis of the music or poem in these.

Claus