Paul F. Lazarsfeld, An Empirical Theory of Action

This book provides a critical introduction to the key writings of Paul Lazarsfeld (1901-1976), edited by two prominent sociologists. It includes Lazarsfeld's early work on youth and occupation, which shows the intellectual influences of Austro-Marxism, academic psychology, and the philosophy of the Vienna Circle, and how they were applied to specific social issues. They also show how Lazarsfeld's concerns about the intellectual and methodological aspects of sociology, which foreshadowed some of the major issues in current sociological methods, played an important role in shaping the direction of the discipline in the United States. The essays demonstrate how Lazarsfeld laid many of the foundations for reliable social survey techniques and qualitative methods for understanding key aspects of contemporary society. Some examples of these aspects are voting studies, opinion polling, occupational research, and mass media research. Lazarsfeld's early work in "administrative research" laid the groundwork for a lot of market and business research. The essays in this book are accompanied by a detailed and illuminating biographical introduction by the editors. This collection is an important addition to the history of 20th-century sociology. It is also the only English-language source of Paul Lazarsfeld's early writings.

Nico Stehr is a German cultural scientist and sociologist. From 2004 to June 2018, he held the Karl Mannheim Chair for Cultural Studies at the Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen. Stehr taught and researched at American and Canadian universities from 1967 to 2000, most recently as a research professor at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Study at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. In 2002-2003 he was the “Paul Lazarsfeld Professor” in the Faculty of Human and Social Sciences at the University of Vienna. From 2006 to 2009, he led a research project funded by the EU Commission on the socio-political approach to so-called converging technologies (i.e. biotechnology, nanotechnology, information science and cognitive science) and founded the European Center for Sustainability Research (ECS) in 2011. Stehr was a senior research fellow at the Sustainable Development Research Institute at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver), a fellow at the Essen Cultural Studies Institute, and co-founder and, until 2006, editor of the Canadian Journal of Sociology. A particular focus of his scientific work is the transformation of modern societies into knowledge societies and the associated consequences for areas such as science, politics, economics and globalization. Another important topic is the social causes and consequences of climate change. In 1986 he published the highly acclaimed and seminal book (with Gernot Böhme) The Knowledge Society. His most recent books include Information, Power, and Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2016), Understanding Inequality. Social Costs and Benefits (with Amanda Machin, Springer, 2016); Knowledge. Is Knowledge Power? (with Marion Adolf, Routledge. 2017); Society & Climate (with Amanda Machin, World Scientific, 2019); Money. A Social Theory of Modernity (with Dustin Voss, Routledge, 2020); Knowledge Capitalism (Routledge, 2022). The anthology A World of Our Making: Climate, Democracy and Knowledge is scheduled for publication in 2025. He is a member of the Royal Society of Canada and the European Academy of Arts and Science.

Christian Fleck is an Austrian sociologist and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS), Vienna, Austria. He was president of the Austrian Sociological Association (2005-09) and the ISA’s Research Committee History of Sociology (2006-10). His most recent publications are: A Transatlantic History of the Social Sciences: Robber Barons, the Third Reich and the Invention of Empirical Social Research (2011); Sociology in Austria (2016); Shaping Human Science Disciplines (2018); and Meilensteine der Soziologie (2020).

Introduction.-Part I: Youth and Occupation.- Behind the Scenes of School.- Motives in Occupational Choice.- Notes on Young Workers' Career Attitudes.- Young People on Authority and Family.- What Young People Want.-Part II: Unemployment.- An Unemployed Village .- Emotional Attitudes and Specific Moods of the Unemployed .- Marriage and the Sex Mores.- Who Gets a Job?.-Part III: Qualitative Methods.- . Principles of Sociography .- Psychological Aspects of Market Research.- The Art of Asking Why: Three Principles Underlying the Formulation of Questionnaires.- Some Remarks on the Typological Procedures in Social Research.- Notes on the Logic of Generalization in Family Case Studies.- The Quantification of Case Studies.- Remarks on Administrative and Critical Communication Research.-Part IV: Quantitative Methods.- Market Research on a Psychological Basis.- The Techniques of Market Research from the Standpoint of a Psychologist.- Interchangeability of Indices in the Measurement of Economic Influences.- The Change of Opinion During a Political Discussion.-Part V: Retrospect and Summary.- Historical Notes on the Empirical Study of Action: An Intellectual Odyssey.