| Summary: | "Theodor Adorno is a widely-studied figure, but most often with regard to his work on cultural theory, philosophy and aesthetics. The Sociology of Theodor Adorno provides the first thorough English-language account of Adorno's sociological thinking. Matthias Benzer reads Adorno's sociology through six major themes: the problem of conceptualising capitalist society; empirical research; theoretical analysis; social critique; the sociological text; and the question of the non-social. Benzer explains the methodological and theoretical ideas informing Adorno's reflections on sociology and illustrates Adorno's approach to examining social life, including astrology, sexual taboos and racial prejudice. Benzer clarifies Adorno's sociology in relation to his work in other disciplines and the inspiration his sociology took from social thinkers such as Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Kracauer and Benjamin. The book raises critical questions about the viability of Adorno's sociological mode of procedure and its potential contributions and challenges to current debates in social science"--
"The Sociology of Theodor Adorno reads like an anachronistic title for a book. This is not because the ink of Adorno's last written word dried four decades ago. Many disciplines, notably philosophy and aesthetics, still cite his oeuvre as a timely source. It is Adorno's sociology that seems so far out of touch with basic trends in contemporary social science as to no longer warrant attention. Adorno conceived sociology as a demarcated discipline insofar as 'there are specifically sociological methods and ... questions' (IS 99) and insisted that this discipline required a concept of society. These convictions appear to clash head-on with present-day ideas for sociology's cross- or post-disciplinarity (Urry 2000aRFA-312: 199-200; 2003RFA-314: 124), its reunification with other disciplines as twenty-first-century historical science (Wallerstein 2000RFA-318: 33-4) and its abandonment of the concept of society . At first glance, Adorno's sociology promises little more than reactionary obstacles for the discipline's advance into the new millennium"--
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