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Paul Lazarsfeld and Applied Social Research: Invention of the University Applied Social Research Institute

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Allen H. Barton
Allen H. Barton*
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Extract

The rise and fall of the Bureau of Applied Social Research, and the life of its founder and mentor, Paul Lazarsfeld should ideally be presented as a drama by Brecht, accompanied by the dissonant and jazzy music of pre-Nazi Central Europe, and its depression-time equivalent in the United States (from “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime” to “Happy Days are Here Again!”).

The concept of the university applied social research organization (all the adjectives are necessary) was born in the mind of a social activist student in the intellectual hothouse of Vienna between the World Wars. He wanted new methods of research to help bring radical social change; he had to start by studying soap-buying. He created a penniless research center in a near-bankrupt society, and found his friends jobs studying the unemployed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 3 , Issue 3-4 , 1979 , pp. 4 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1979

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