The Frankfurt Institute suppressed its labor study over methodological disagreements with Lazarsfeld

Evidence

Considerations such as these never extended beyond the hypothetical stage. Further work on the labour project later on consisted only of the Institute’s directors commissioning Lazarsfeld to produce a publishable version of the report, while Adorno tried to round the undertaking off with a series of detailed memoranda. Adorno, Marcuse and others at the Institute agreed, however, that the version produced under Lazarsfeld’s supervision did not meet the Institute’s standards, because it emphasized the quantitative sections while neglecting the qualitative ones, and because of its inadequate integration of quantitative and qualitative analysis. As in the case of the study of the working class in Weimar Germany, therefore, the research was not published. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1563

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The labor anti-Semitism study was never published like the Weimar workers’ inquiry; Financial dependence forced the Institute to adopt the contract strategy it despised in Lazarsfeld. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1858; Lazarsfeld’s methodological collaboration helped the exiled Frankfurt Institute enter American academia — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 687 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• The Institute suppressed needed objective-factor research as it returned to Frankfurt #corroborates (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1842
• Adorno rejected Lazarsfeld’s valid criticism and missed a unique learning chance #corroborates (0.85)
• Adorno’s and Lazarsfeld’s collaboration broke down by 1939 #expands (0.80) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 664