By Theodor W. Adorno
Introduction to Sociology distills a long time of distinct paintings in sociology through one in all this century’s such a lot influential thinkers within the components of social concept, philosophy, aesthetics, and music.
It comprises a process seventeen lectures given via Theodor W. Adorno in May-July 1968, the final lecture sequence sooner than his loss of life in 1969. Captured through tape recorder (which Adorno known as “the fingerprint of the residing mind”), those lectures current a a little bit diversified, and extra available, Adorno from the person who composed the faultlessly articulated and virtually forbiddingly ideal prose of the works released in his lifetime. right here we will be able to keep on with Adorno’s inspiration within the means of formation (he spoke from short notes), endowed with the spontaneity and effort of the spoken be aware. The lectures shape a fantastic creation to Adorno’s paintings, acclimatizing the reader to the better density of concept and language of his vintage texts.
Delivered on the time of the “positivist dispute” in sociology, Adorno defends the location of the “Frankfurt School” opposed to feedback from mainstream positivist sociologists. He units out a belief of sociology as a self-discipline going past the compilation and interpretation of empirical proof, its fact being inseparable from the fundamental constitution of society itself. Adorno sees sociology no longer as one educational self-discipline between others, yet as an over-arching self-discipline that impinges on all points of social life.
Tracing the heritage of the self-discipline and insisting that the historic context is constitutive of sociology itself, Adorno addresses a variety of themes, together with: the aim of learning sociology; the relation of sociology and politics; the impression of Saint-Simon, Comte, Durkheim, Weber, Marx, and Freud; the contributions of ethnology and anthropology; the connection of technique to material; the issues of quantitative research; the fetishization of technology; and the separation of sociology and social philosophy.
“North American sociologists, social theorists, and social scientists will welcome the accessibility of this article. it truly is good translated, simply learn, and informative on Adorno’s critique of empiricist and positivist sociology... One will infrequently come across one other textual content like this one, which may make a controversy for a dialectical thought of society whereas additionally exhibiting nice sophistication within the therapy of historic fabrics in addition to within the severe appraisal of analysis equipment. All in all, Adorno’s nice highbrow ardour is seen all through those lectures. They in actual fact construct at the sequence of excellent books produced by means of the writer in Germany throughout the Fifties and 1960s.” —Critical Sociology
“Adorno an writer of an ‘intro’ e-book? This dazzling quantity is an excellent antidote to the influence that the Frankfurt university adversarial empirical research... This short paintings is thick with implications for the self-discipline of sociology, which Adorno essentially rethinks.” —Contemporary Sociology
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Extra resources for Introduction to Sociology
Sample text
Is a decisive question i n j udging present-day society. :iousness of i n The abstraction in question here is really the specific form of the exchange process i tself, the underlying social fact through which socialization first comes a bout. If you want to exchange two objects and - as is implied by the rnncept of exchange - if you want to excha nge them in terms of equivalents, and if neither party is to receive more than the other, then the parties must leave aside a certain aspect of the commodities. t ructing the concept to the extent that it is constitutive of society. This gives rise to the tempta t ion and the tendency, from which Emile Durkheim was far from l'Xcmpt, to posit the thing-like quality of society as something posit ive, to submit to it. In other words - and I believe this is very import ant for a definition of the concept of society - this view suppresses t hat fact that the concept of society refers to a relationship between people, as I attempted to make clear in my last lecture. To hypostatize t h i s relationship as a 'higher-level reality' is to disregard the fact t h;lt society is always composed of i ndividuals.
