Group Experiment and Other Writings

“The “group experiments” were once famous and should be again. Perrin and Olick make a signal contribution by bringing this work together here. It is of pivotal importance for the history of social science, for themes that remain vital in public sphere research, and for its empirical contributions to understanding postwar Germany.”—Craig Calhoun, President, Social Science Research Council

“In the long history of the Frankfurt School, perhaps nothing expresses the concept of negative dialectics as clearly as the tortured relationship between Critical Theory and empirical research. Without ever abandoning its suspicion of positivist social science, its members nonetheless sought to go beyond mere speculations about the contradictions of society and craft a research methodology that would either confirm or modify their hypotheses. The value and limitations of the results are nowhere as evident as in the investigation of German public opinion that occupied them when they first returned home from exile. Scrupulously edited and translated by Andrew J. Perrin and Jeffrey K. Olick, Group Experiment is not only a fascinating document in the Frankfurt School’s history, but also a still suggestive contribution to a non-positivist science of society.”—Martin Jay, University of California, Berkeley