The cultural specificity of sociological practices; the case of max Horkheimer's institut für sozialforschung in Weimar‐Germany and the United States

Abstract

In this article it is argued that the cultural identity of sociology cannot be fully explained in terms of national identity or of certain characteristics inherent in the nature of social sciences (e.g. its methods or methodology), but in terms of how sociological insights are related to various social practices. To illustrate this point, the case of the ‘classical’ Frankfurt School of Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno is discussed: in order to understand the contradicting ways in which Horkheimer and Adorno appreciate the role of science and liberal democracy in their philosophical and scientific work of the 1940s, one should take into account that these activities are located in different political and scientific contexts. These contexts are characterized by different ‘linkages’ of social theory with social practice. Exploring these linkages makes it possible to understand the ‘broken’ identity of the Frankfurt School, exemplified in an intellectual double‐life in which professionalism and marginality co‐existed. This identity, it is argued, is more characteristic of classical critical theory than the anti‐positivism and post‐modemism‐avant‐la‐lettre they are usually remembered by.