Andries Sternheim en de studie van vrije tijd in de Frankfurter Schule

Samenvatting

Andries Sternheim and the Study of Leisure in the Early Frankfurt School. From 1931 to 1938 Andries Sternheim, a Dutch sociologist and socialist, was head of the Geneva branch of the Institute of Social Research (The Frankfurt School). He has been largely overlooked in the history of Dutch sociology and in the analysis of critical theory. His main scientific interest in that period was the study of leisure. This article explores the background of this emphasis in his personal development, in the politics of the labour movement since the introduction of an eight-hours labour day and in the organization and research programme of the Institute of Social Research. It tries to explain why Sternheim remained a marginal man in Dutch sociology and in the Frankfurt School. It offers an analysis of his work on leisure and argues the relevance of his work for todays's leisure and cultural studies: the fundamental link between production and consumption, the description of working-class culture in the thirties, state intervention and ideology formation in leisure, the role of the labour movement, his international perspective and his interdisciplinary approach. Sternheim is characterized as a traditional Marxist, but in the first place as a rationalist, who believed in a scientific contribution to the emancipation of the working class.