Editing Theodor W. Adorno (section)

==Standardization==
The phenomenon of standardization is "a concept used to characterize the formulaic products of capitalist-driven mass media and mass culture that appeal to the lowest common denominator in pursuit of maximum profit".{{sfn|Laughey|2007|loc=204}} According to Adorno we inhabit a media culture driven society which has product consumption as one of its main characteristics. Mass media is employed to deliver messages about products and services to consumers in order to convince these individuals to purchase the commodity they are advertising. Standardization consists of the production of large amounts of commodities to then pursue consumers in order to gain the maximum profit possible.

They do this by individualizing products to give the illusion to consumers that they are in fact purchasing a product or service that was specifically designed for them. Adorno highlights the issues created with the construction of popular music, where different samples of music used in the creation of today's chart-topping songs are put together in order to create, re-create, and modify numerous tracks by using the same variety of samples from one song to another. He makes a distinction between "Apologetic music" and "Critical music". Apologetic music is defined as the highly produced and promoted music of the "pop music" industry: music that is composed of variable parts and interchanged to create several different songs. "The social and psychological functions of popular music [are that it] acts like a social cement"{{sfn|Adorno|1990|loc={{Page needed|date=April 2015}}}} "to keep people obedient and subservient to the status quo of existing power structures."{{sfn|Laughey|2007|loc=125}}

Serious music, according to Adorno, achieves excellence when its whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The example he gives is that of Beethoven's symphonies: "[his] greatness shows itself in the complete subordination of the accidentally private melodic elements to the form as a whole."{{sfn|Laughey|2007|loc=125}}

Standardization not only refers to the products of the culture industry but to the consumers as well. Many times every day consumers are bombarded by media advertising. Consumers are pushed and shoved into consuming products and services presented to them by a media system that takes advantage of musical hooks mass produced via electronic media. The masses have become conditioned by the culture industry, which makes the impact of standardization far more widespread. Not recognizing the impact of social media and commercial advertising, the individual is caught in a situation where conformity is the norm: "During consumption the masses become characterized by the commodities which they use and exchange among themselves."{{sfn|Laughey|2007|loc=124}}

Tony Waters and David Philhour have tested Adorno's ideas and used musical intros from pop songs, and asked students in the United States, Germany, and Thailand what they recognize.  They found that indeed, as Adorno hypothesized, the song intro recognition has spread around the world for some specific commercial pop songs.  But they also demonstrate that there are still national differences in recognition. <ref>Tony Waters and David Philhour (2019). Cross-National Attunement to Popular Songs across Time and Place: A Sociology of Popular Music in the United States, Germany, Thailand, and Tanzania Social Sciences, 8(11), 305; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci8110305</ref>

===Adorno's responses to his critics===
[[File:Ffm-adorno-ampel001.jpg|thumb|276px|right|The "[[Adorno traffic light]]" on Senckenberganlage, a street which divides the Institute for Social Research from the [[University of Frankfurt am Main]]. Adorno requested its construction after a pedestrian death in 1962, and it was finally installed 25 years later.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.rezensionen.ch/buchbesprechungen/frank-berger-christian-setzepfandt-101-unorte-in-frankfurt/3797312482.html|title=Frankfurt gnadenlos entdecken|access-date=2012-12-16|author1=Berger, Frank |author2=Setzepfandt, Christian |date=2011-05-07|website=rezensionen.ch}}</ref>]]
As a pioneer of a self-reflexive sociology who prefigured [[Bourdieu]]'s ability to factor in the effect of reflection on the societal object, Adorno realized that some criticism (including deliberate disruption of his classes in the 1960s) could never be answered in a dialogue between equals if, as he seems to have believed, what the naive ethnographer or sociologist thinks of a human essence is always changing over time.<ref>For a comparison of Adorno's and Bourdieu's rather divergent conceptions of reflexivity, see: Karakayali, Nedim (April 2004). [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0038038504040869 "Reading Bourdieu with Adorno: The Limits of Critical Theory and Reflexive Sociology"], ''[[Sociology (journal)|Sociology]]'' (Journal of the British Sociological Association), '''38'''(2), pp. 351–368.</ref>