The Frankfurt School’s promised empirical program quietly collapsed by the late 1930s

Evidence

While Lazarsfeld was attempting, at the Princeton Radio Research Project, to reconcile Adorno’s ideas, as a European, to the kind of American empirical researchcontract researchthat Lazarsfeld himself represented at its best, empirical research had entirely ceased at the International Institute of Social Research itself. 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 collection and analysis of empirical materials on as large a scale as possible, which Horkheimer had announced in 1935 in the foreword to Studies on Authority and the Family, had failed to take place. There is no evidence to show that there was even any development of the plan, announced by Horkheimer in the foreword, for a continuation of collective research work. The fusion of constructive and empirical methods' seemed in practice to have been abandoned completely. Continuous collaboration between various specialists’ had been left to improvisation, and had consequently been reduced to a matter of connecting various topics and points of view through frequent personal contacts and informal editorial meetings. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1025

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the gap between Horkheimer’s programmatic 1935 foreword rhetoric and the actual retreat into theory — parallels the later split between critical theory and empirical social science. — connects to: Frankfurt empirical research on family and authority ceased entirely by the late 1930s — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1025; The Institute abandoned empirical research at the end of the 1930s — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1035; The Institute suppressed needed objective-factor research as it returned to Frankfurt — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1842 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• The Institute abandoned empirical research at the end of the 1930s #corroborates (0.95) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1035
• Horkheimer’s 1951 reopening speech abandoned the empirical research program of 1931 #corroborates (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1906
• The Institute suppressed needed objective-factor research as it returned to Frankfurt #expands (0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1842