Field researchers studying the unemployed must embed themselves usefully in local life

Evidence

None of the research which was going on at that time was truer to this insight than the study begun in 1930 on The Unemployed in Marienthal, throughout which the standpoint constantly maintained was, according to Lazarsfeld’s introduction, `that none of our assistants should appear in Marienthal in the role of a reporter or observer, but rather that each of them should blend into life there naturally by means of some function or other useful to the people living there.’ — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 680

Categorization

• XREF: The participatory-observation methodology of the Marienthal study echoes anthropological fieldwork methods and anticipates grounded qualitative sociology; connects to participant-observer accounts like A Midwife’s Tale’s use of everyday records. — connects to: Urban research should pair empirical study with skepticism about representation. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2286; The Frankfurt School’s empirical method required trusted local interviewers rather than outside field workers — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1555; Studies living outside society attribute its outcomes to secret institutions — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 248

Broader Connections

• Studies living outside society attribute its outcomes to secret institutions #contradicts (0.80) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 248
• Urban research should pair empirical study with skepticism about representation. #expands (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2286
• The Frankfurt School’s empirical method required trusted local interviewers rather than outside field workers #expands (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1555