A Weberian Theory of Human Society: Structure and Evolution.

Abstract

Max Weber is considered by many to be the preeminent social theorist of the twentieth century. Nearly every aspect of modern social science, including the role of culture, modernization, and ethnic and race relations, can be traced to Max Weber's legacy. A Weberian Theory of Human Society sets forth a general theory of human society whose primary basis is the work of Max Weber. Integrating the often confusing and conflicting aspects of Weber's work and connecting them to the work of other social theorists, Wallace casts a broad new light on human society, addressing the most widespread and central theoretical concerns of late twentieth-century social science. Opening with a description of the nature of the individual as the most fundamental element of society, Wallace includes a generic definition of human rationality that interrelates Weber's, and others', many uses of that term. Wallace presents human society as a system consisting of one set of institutions that takes in and prepares new participant individuals, a second set that organizes the activities of these individuals, and a third set that lets (or puts) them out when they become in some way incapacitated, emigrate, or die. The book focuses heavily on the middle, participant-organizing, set of institutions, their distinctive products and their evolving causal relations to one another. In exploring these relations a new interpretation is offered of Weber's best-known work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. This interpretation identifies two different ethics and two consequent spirits of capitalism--one for the entrepreneurs, and the other for the wage-workers.