Methodological disputes often serve as proxy arenas for substantive social conflicts.

Evidence

The controversy between Hofstätter and Adorno publicly crystallized, for the first time in the Federal Republic, something which later went down in the history of sociology as the `positivist dispute’: the use of disputes over the methodology and philosophy of science as an arena for controversies over social theory and social policy. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 503

Categorization

• DEFINE: The ‘positivist dispute’ is named and given its precise function: science-method quarrels standing in for social theory and social policy fights.
• XREF: Connects to the Frankfurt School’s recurring pattern of translating philosophical disagreements into political ones, and to Hall’s description of the positivist dispute in cultural studies.