Horkheimer defined a sociology of terror tracing coercion from childrearing to adult association-membership.

Evidence

Then Maus referred to Horkheimer, who had written to him that one of the most urgent tasks of German sociology was a `“sociology of terror”, beginning with the transition to child education … and so on up to the transformation of the adult into a mere member of designated associations, without whose protection he is unemployed and without rights’. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 417

Categorization

• DEFINE: Names Horkheimer’s proposed research program of a ‘sociology of terror’ as a conceptual frame within Critical Theory.
• DEEPTHINKING: The phrase fuses childhood socialization, membership in designated organizations, and the loss of work and rights into one continuous apparatus of domination — a full social-theoretic thesis in one sentence.