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116 P. F. Lazarsfeld
ments are written in his style. The whole situation becomes aggravated by the
position of the ‘positivists’. One of the main German centers of empirical
social research is undoubtedly the University of Cologne. At the Fourth World
Congress of Sociology (1959), its senior sociologist, R. Konig, gave apt de-
scriptions of critical theory backed by well-chosen references.97 He comes
to a pessimistic conclusion: one should make a sharp distinction between a
‘theory of society’ and ‘sociological theory’ and beware of the former. The
critical theorist deals in speculation where he ‘uses material data in an uncritical
and uncontrolled way and rushes in too hasty a way to its conclusions. ...
Research has no meaning in itself, e.g., in order to corroborate or reject a
hypothesis, but is just used for sustaining a revolutionary action’. By thus
divorcing the two areas he in turn forecloses the possibility of utilizing per-
ceptive elements in critical theory for the enrichment of the total field. The
consequence can be exemplified by the important German text on empirical
social research which the Cologne group has published. The section on the
philosophic foundations of social research makes no mention whatsoever of
critical sociology. Neither does its author find a place for it in his reader on the
foundation of the social sciences.98
Onemust go to another country to find the only attempt I am aware of to
make dialectics something like a research operation which can be taught and
learned. I refer to the work of a French sociologist who has made a serious
effort along this line. Georges Gurvitch in a book on Dialectique et Sociologie99
gives an extensive review of dialectic ideas in the history of philosophy. He
then describes his own position which he calls operational dialectis and which
he considers important as a tool of sociological research. He warns against
making dialectics a cure-all. According to him, the fetishism of contradiction
is dangerous. Rather, one should distinguish five specific dialectical procedures
which in various combinations are a useful starting point for any sociological
work. It is not easy to condense Gurvitch’s ideas, but the following summary
should give a broad picture.
A dialectic operation consists in the selection of two elements in a social
situation and then seeing how they are related. They may complement and inter-
act with each other and may create ambiguities for the participants. It is this re-
lation and the outcome to which it leads which is at the core of the different
operations. The substantive content of the elements can vary greatly from one
case to another. I give the French titles and one brief example for each proce-
dure. A reader of Anglo-Saxon literature will at many points find ideas with
which he is familiar in a different terminology.
I. La complimentaritidialectique. Here the subject matter is the relation between
us and the others, between planned and spontaneous activities, and so on.
Some of the examples are close to the notion of role conflict (p. 196 f.).
2. L‘implication dialectique mutuelle. This covers mutual interaction between
social structure and technology, between broad cultural patterns and social
interaction on the more macroscopic level. In this second procedure of
dialectization Gurvitch also includes the way cultural importations to a
country are adapted to its own tradition.