Institute research projects on family and unemployment quietly collapsed unfinished

Evidence

The various projects on the family, authority and unemployment, which had been drafted as continuations of Studies on Authority and the Family, had slowly ground to a halt. … The fusion of constructive and empirical methods' seemed in practice to have been abandoned completely. — <cite>Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1025</cite> (#corroborates`, via linked claim)

It was not easy to assess this accurately against the dismal background of European fascism, which was marching from victory to victory. Towards the end of the 1930s, it was no longer possible for the Institute to carry out empirical research simultaneously in Europe and the USA, and it had to be restricted to America. To identify a complex of critical problems related to society which suited American conditions and at the same time fitted in with the Institute’s policy of caution required time. Horkheimer was increasingly impatient in his criticism of the various scientific disciplines, and increasingly severe in his labelling of every theoretical and philosophical tendency which was not critical of society, and which was successful in the USA, as a form of recognition and acceptance of existing conditions. This may partly explain why empirical and collaborative research ceased at the Institute altogether, why from the mid-1930s onwards it was left to Lazarsfeld, who for Horkheimer and Adorno belonged to the positivists, to represent the research methods which had been used by the Institute up till then. It may explain, too, why it was only the journal which continuedand in German. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1035 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The Frankfurt School’s French unemployment study collapsed for want of trained interviewers.; The Institute abandoned empirical research at the end of the 1930s — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1035; The Institute’s worker research stalled partly out of reaction to troubling early results — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 474 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Frankfurt empirical research on family and authority ceased entirely by the late 1930s #corroborates (0.95) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1025
• The Institute abandoned its announced program of large-scale empirical collective research #corroborates (0.90)
• The Institute abandoned empirical research at the end of the 1930s #expands (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1035
• The Institute’s worker research stalled partly out of reaction to troubling early results #expands (0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 474
• Grand well-funded intellectual projects often end in dead ends #exemplifies (0.80) — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 134