Before the Public Sphere: The Frankfurt School, Public Opinion, and the Group Experiment of 1950

FAIN: RZ-50623-06

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC 27599-1350)
Andrew J. Perrin (Project Director: November 2005 to August 2009)

A translation and critical edition of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research's Gruppenexperiment (Group Experiment). (12 months)

In 1950, members of the Frankfurt School undertook a major research project on residues of Fascism in postwar Germany. Inspired by research methods they had absorbed and practiced during their U.S. exile, yet skeptical of the apparent disappearance of Fascist values indicated by occupation authority opinion polls, the so-called Group Experiment sought to probe opinion statements in focus groups for what the authors called the hidden nonpublic opinion. The Group Experiment formed a crucial link between American survey research and later theories of the public sphere. It also makes a durable contribution to the theory and methodology of public opinion research. We propose a translation and critical edition of the Group Experiment.

Associated Products

Guilt and Defense: On the Legacies of National Socialism in Postwar Germany (Book)
Title: Guilt and Defense: On the Legacies of National Socialism in Postwar Germany
Author: Adorno, Theodor W.
Editor: Perrin, Andrew J.
Editor: Olick, Jeffrey K
Abstract: Beginning in 1949, Theodor W. Adorno and other members of the reconstituted Frankfurt Institute for Social Research undertook a massive empirical study of German opinions about the legacies of the Nazis, applying and modifying techniques they had learned during their U.S. exile. They published their results in 1955 as a research monograph edited by Friedrich Pollock. The study’s qualitative results are published here for the first time in English as Guilt and Defense, a psychoanalytically informed analysis of the rhetorical and conceptual mechanisms with which postwar Germans most often denied responsibility for the Nazi past. In their editorial introduction, Jeffrey K. Olick and Andrew J. Perrin show how Adorno’s famous 1959 essay “The Meaning of Working through the Past,” is comprehensible only as a conclusion to his long-standing research and as a reaction to the debate it stirred; this volume also includes a critique by psychologist Peter R. Hoffstater as well as Adorno’s rejoinder. This previously little-known debate provides important new perspectives on postwar German political culture, on the dynamics of collective memory, and on Adorno’s intellectual legacies, which have contributed more to empirical social research than has been acknowledged. A companion volume, Group Experiment and Other Writings, will present the first book-length English translation of the Frankfurt Group’s conceptual, methodological, and theoretical innovations in public opinion research.
Year: 2010
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/guilt-and-defense-on-the-legacies-of-national-socialism-in-postwar-germany/oclc/456170080&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat listing.
Secondary URL: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674036031
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's listing.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Type: Translation
ISBN: 9780674036031
Translator: Perrin, Andrew J.
Translator: Olick, Jeffrey K.

Group Experiment and Other Writings: The Frankfurt School on Public Opinion in Postwar Germany (Book)
Title: Group Experiment and Other Writings: The Frankfurt School on Public Opinion in Postwar Germany
Author: Pollock, Friedrich W.
Author: Adorno, Theodor W.
Editor: Olick, Jeffrey K.
Editor: Perrin, Andrew J.
Abstract: During the occupation of West Germany after the Second World War, the American authorities commissioned polls to assess the values and opinions of ordinary Germans. They concluded that the fascist attitudes of the Nazi era had weakened to a large degree. Theodor W. Adorno and his Frankfurt School colleagues, who returned in 1949 from the United States, were skeptical. They held that standardized polling was an inadequate and superficial method for exploring such questions. In their view, public opinion is not simply an aggregate of individually held opinions, but is fundamentally a public concept, formed through interaction in conversations and with prevailing attitudes and ideas “in the air.” In Group Experiment, edited by Friedrich Pollock, they published their findings on their group discussion experiments that delved deeper into the process of opinion formation. Andrew J. Perrin and Jeffrey K. Olick make a case that these experiments are an important missing link in the ontology and methodology of current social-science survey research.
Year: 2011
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/group-experiment-and-other-writings-the-frankfurt-school-on-public-opinion-in-postwar-germany/oclc/587209820&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat listing.
Secondary URL: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?recid=30883
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's listing.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Type: Translation
ISBN: 9780674048461
Translator: Olick, Jeffrey K.
Translator: Perrin, Andrew J.

---