La singolarità della sfera civica americana nel pensiero di Max Weber : come si è formata, come si è estesa, che variazioni storiche ha subito

Abstract

Max Weber's analysis of the American civic sphere has been seldom investigated. Indebted to the ascetic Protestantism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, his major concepts and analytic framework are summarized here. An unusual symbiotic dualism between the civic arena and a world-mastery individualism, as well as an antagonism between this value-grounded individualism and practical-rational individualism, remain pivotal throughout his analysis. Nonetheless, although powerful, the Weberian model is seen to be foreshortened. Three complementary constructs, grounded in his rich set of concepts, extend Weber's analysis. Taken in combination, all four models provide a Weberian analysis of the American civic sphere's unique origins, expansion, and past and present oscillations across a demarcated spectrum. Weber's emphasis upon the deep cultural contexts of social action, the influence of the past upon the present, and arrays of operationalizable hypotheses diverges distinctly from Tocqueville's approach, as well as from present-day modernization, neo-functionalista, and neo-Marxist analyses of the civic sphere.