Adorno
T Sociology and Empirical
Research
Sociology studies a number of objects, the individual, the social,
sub-systems and so on. Its methods include empirical research or
speculative theory. The main point of social theory is to find out what
really holds societies together, in a suitably disenchanted spirit
rather than philosophical sense. However, this is denied by empirical
sociology which is positivist. Or social theory needs is a new relation
to experience rather than some regimented method, in order to grasp the
concept of totality. It also needs to avoid dogmatism, requiring a
transformation of its theoretical concepts 'into those which the
object has of itself' (69) [strongly reminiscent of Bourdieu and
his notion of understanding].
Social events express 'a field of tension of the possible and the
real' (69) [so there are 'methodological' reasons for
social theory to be critical -- 'methodological' being used here
in its sense of being adequate to the object]. Social events cannot
just be used as data to generate hypothesis and predictions. Such an
approach would gain in concreteness but lose penetration. The proper
sense of totality is lost by generalising from the concrete into
classificatory higher concepts. These can simply be too abstract, as
when the concept of political economy fail to grasp the real nature of
capitalist society. Nor is a solution to be found in some technical
systematisation of levels as in Parsons. What's required is an insight
into the essence of social life rather than empirical contributions.
The tensions between the theoretical and the empirical are to be
'brought to a head in a fruitful manner' rather than naively
harmonised (70).
The empirical level is now considered to be prime because it is useful
to do so. However, subjective pre-scientific judgements are still
involved, empirical methods are allowed to swamp and dominate the
object, and the focus is on the [bourgeois] individual rather
than on social objectivity. Empirical sociology can be openly tied to
the interest of administration or control. As usual, the assumption in
such work is that the individual consciousness will somehow give
immediate access to the social. This permits a quantitative sociology,
but one which is indifferent as to the effect of social power -- a
humanist anthropology. The methods used promise to guarantee
objectivity rather than being aimed at fully grasping the object.
Methods rapidly become procedures which pre-define the object. The
initial definitional problems are then forgotten in the drive to
clarity and purity.
Society itself is too complex for the employment of natural scientific
methods. This is not just because a certain 'subjectivity'
remains. Far from it, since social life itself reduces humans to
objects, and sociology's methods merely mimic this process: in this way
they are actually more adequate than interpretive sociology! However,
sociology is unaware of this process and takes the epiphenomenon as the
object itself. In this way, positivist sociology presupposes
reification.
The categories in questionnaires often do relate closely to what people
actually think about themselves, but the problem arises when these are
seen as natural or final opinions -- how they become natural is the
real issue (75). It is the genesis of perception, the
objectification of meaning that should be our concern. Durkheim was
right to associate statistical regularities with social constraint, but
modern sociological research just sees such regularities as 'natural'
[seen at its best in the claims that the bell-shaped curve is natural?
Or in the whole paraphernalia of correlations and tests of
significance?].
Sociology needs not just quantitative methods, nor the easy division of
labour between quantitative and qualitative which can then support each
other, but a recognition that the quantitative and qualitative are
linked [by social power -- qualities turn into quantities?], just as
the particular and the general are linked [for a further
elaboration of this and several other arguments see Adorno's Introduction]. In the strain towards being
systematic [for sociology and for social life?], necessary
tensions are eliminated, so that there is quantification even of the
qualitative [best seen in my view in those absurd social psychological
tests that offer scales and measurements of things like
'spirituality'].
Preserving inconsistency is crucial, and so is the attempt to describe
the complex unity between inconsistent terms -- as in totality. The use
of generalisation, abstraction, and the development of higher concepts
is not the way to achieve this. Irregularities in the human and social
worlds arise from a general inconsistency between the general and the
particular, and from the tensions involved in concretisations of
particular antagonisms (77) [try this on various Marxist
attempts to unify what looks like abstract and separate dimensions of
stratification such as class and 'race' --e.g. this one]. The notion of
individualism is itself a general abstract principle, and such notions
fit people in capitalist societies only because there is no real
individualism but conformity (78) [I think this would work
nicely as a critique of the later work of Giddens and the self in modernity].
The splits in social sciences are arbitrary as well. Empirical analysis
can correct theory, while the empirical also needs a theory of the
whole. Similarly, the social totality is constitutive as is the knowing
subject (80). The real is connected to the conceptual just as is the
law of exchange -- there are conceptual elements in it [like the
concept of 'equivalence'], though it is also independent of
consciousness. Equivalence is of course illusory, but the notion itself
[and practices based on it] is very real and dominating (80). It
is necessary that sociology pursues a critique of illusions in this
way, but positivist science forbids it -- another way in which it
maintains ideology. An adequate analysis would grasp wholes and parts,
values and methods [and the discussion here, pp 81 and 82,
follows closely to that in the Introduction]
and pursue insights as well as dedicated application of methods.
Insight in this case arises not as a mere flash, but from attention to
experience over a long period, the gradual recognition of its truth.
There is yet no combination available of theory and practice. The idea
would be to offer some connection of subjective opinions with social
contexts, but sociology operates with shifting categories, stretching
from individual institutions of the structure of society, from
consciousness to ideology. Empirical findings of the concrete level are
still significant, but we need to inquire into the genesis of the
empirical and whether there is something essential in social
objectivity, something that remains the same (84). This is how
empirical enquiry could correct theory and its blind impositions. Such
inquiry could also show that appearances are not simply the
result of an illusion, but appearances of an essence, which has
undergone certain modifications. To take an example, a worker is still
a worker 'objectively' even if he sees himself as not a worker:
we must modify the concept of the worker to explain this.
Any given sociological facts are mediated through society. They are
never final but affected by societal conditions: 'For the
findings of what is called... opinion research... Hegel's
formulation... is generally valid: it deserves to be respected and
despised in equal measure' (85). In other words, the results might be
right, but the conditions that produces these opinions are concealed.
However, it is simply assumed that truth is the same as quantitative
measures of agreements or consensus, and is better than some notion of
real opinion [see the sections in the Introduction
on the jazz subject]. Inconsistencies of opinion is the issue, and
these can be detected best through immanent critique and external
criticism. Thus 'opinions' are not to be despised in terms of
some absolute concept of Truth [as in denunciations of false
consciousness?] but explained as the result of an untrue society.
Thus '... [for] human subjects... their being as subjects depends
on the objectivity upon mechanisms they obey and which constitute their
concept' (86). This is the way to correct positivist sociology's view
of subjective opinion as simple truth.
[The whole discussion in the last few paragraphs reminds me of later
work, such as that of Poulantzas,
which try to explain how despite countless surveys showing an absence
of class consciousness, some sort of Marxist class system can still be
defended. As with the examples of 'race'suggested above, the
argument seems to be that the class system also produces a variety of
apparently separate stratification dimensions, and an ideological
understanding of them. On another tack, I am sure that white working
class racism in the UK could conceivably be explained by marxists in
the same way. However, many of the more 'right on' ones prefer
straightforward moral condemnation.]
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