The Institute’s China fieldwork gathered comparative data on authority structures in the family.

Evidence

The expenses for the research trip were shared between the Institute and the New York Institute of Pacific Relations. The result the Institute hoped for was a follow-up volume to Wittfogel’s study on Economy and Society in China, which had been published in the Institute’s series of publications, and questionnaire material on authority structures in the Chinese family which were to be compared with the Institute’s European and American studies. The Wittfogels returned with, among other things, recordings of interviews with modern industrial workers' and traditional clan families, and with questionnaires filled in by 1725 school pupils and students (in which there were questions about great’ personalities and favourite books, films and newspapers, for example), and also with extensive source materials on Chinese economic and social history. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 717

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Institute’s broader empirical project on authority and the family across cultures, a recurring Frankfurt School theme from The Authoritarian Personality and Studies in Prejudice.