The family was chosen because authority shifts there track economic upheaval most observably.
Evidence
Page 139 is too extended to be investigated in toto. We selected therefore one of the social institutions where the oscillations in authority-relations as well as their connections with events in economic life were most readily accessible to observation. This institution is the family … We thus began to study the family from this viewpoint through various methods and in different European countries. In the period of exile in Switzerland three separate research inquiries using questionnaires were started. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 158
Categorization
- DEFINE: Explains the Institute’s rationale for treating the family as the observable site where authority relations meet economic life.
- XREF: Connects to the Frankfurt School’s project of studying authority within the family as the psychic relay of social domination. — connects to: Decline of middle-class ownership eroded the family’s role and paternal authority