Abstract
This article analyses the role played by “participatory knowledge production” in three empirical social research projects undertaken by the Frankfurt School and its associates: a study on workers and white-collar employees from 1929/30, the study on the “authoritarian personality” undertaken in exile, and the “Group Experiment” conducted in the early 1950s in West Germany. These innovative studies allowed for more intricate engagement with individual participants, especially through the use of psychoanalytic approaches, which gave researchers insights into seemingly hidden personality-traits. The article shows how the Frankfurt School considered the use of this newly produced knowledge for political and social engineering approaches and as part of the post-war re-education mission. It subsequently reveals the persisting pitfalls of these research-projects and analyses how participation did not necessarily mean agency or empowerment for individual participants.
