The establishment of sociology in Austria in the twentieth century is in many ways connected with Marxism. Numerous sociologists considered themselves as Marxists, thus at least subjectively carrying on with an "underground" Marxism in their sociological work. Others spent considerable energy in distancing themselves sharply from Marxist positions and tried (especially in times of Austrofascism and National Socialism) to banish Marxism underground within the young discipline. This precarious tension continued to exist in the postwar period and shaped the establishment of sociology as an academic discipline in Austria, but remained unproductive. This thematic issue therefore raises the question of the "latency" of Marxist concepts and positions in Austrian empirical sociology and seeks to explore whether the discussion and updating of Marxist positions can stimulate reflection on the conditions of production of sociological knowledge and research. Keywords Marxism • Sociology in Austria • History of empirical social research • Reflexive sociology Marxismus im Untergrund. Zur Latenz des Marxismus in der österreichischen empirischen Soziologie Zusammenfassung Die Entwicklung der Soziologie in Österreich ist im 20. Jahrhundert auf mehrfache Weise mit dem Marxismus verbunden. Zahlreiche Soziolog-Innen bezeichneten sich selbst als MarxistInnen und führten so zumindest subjektiv einen Marxismus "im Untergrund" mit sich; andere grenzten sich in ihrem Verständnis scharf von marxistischen Positionen ab und versuchten (gerade in Zeiten des Austrofaschismus und Nationalsozialismus), den Marxismus in den Untergrund
National Socialism marks a crisis of sociology in various regards. First, in the sense of a crucial phase of its socio-historical development (the experiences of exile by countless intellectuals and the more or less complete expulsion of some "schools" of sociology are only examples for the many forms in which the WWII-era has left its traces on the development of postwar sociology). Second, Nazi-reign marks a critical analytical challenge-both as a potential object of enquiry and as a starting point for reflecting our understanding of modern society. Third, National Socialism raises critical questions regarding sociology's cognitive identity, concerning, for example, fundamental epistemological problems such as the role of the historical in sociological analysis. Finally, all these aspects of crisis are related to the political dimension of what role sociology can and should play in the face of concrete societal developments.The main objective of this special issue is to further our understanding of these connected crises and discuss their implications. To this end, we propose an analytical scheme that relates different problem dimensions that are present, but not explicit in current debates on the relation between sociology and National Socialism. Second, we aim to extend the geographic scope of a debate that has-at least in recent
An important empirical basis for the interpretations of Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson and R. Nevitt Sanford in The Authoritarian Personality (TAP) were questionnaires and in-depth interviews conducted by William R. Morrow with prisoners at California’s San Quentin prison. A reconstruction of the historical approach exposes serious methodological shortcomings, some of which Morrow openly addressed in memoranda, revealing that the supposedly particularly authoritarian attitude of the prisoners was due, among other things, to their submission to the psychiatric authority in the authoritarian situation of the prison and due to the conditions of a hierarchical prisoner society. In TAP, the empirically inadequate survey was interpreted primarily in the context of psychoanalytic literature on crime at that time, in particular Robert Lindner’s Rebel Without A Cause, whose theory of pseudo rebellion permeated TAP. Focusing on the shortcomings of TAP, this article argues, enables its inspiring insights to be appreciated.
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