Max Weber's Interpretive Economic Sociology

Abstract

Economic sociology needs more ideas, and in this article the author suggests that economic sociologists may want to explore what a rigorous interpretive economic sociology along Weberian lines would look like. One way to proceed in an enterprise of this type would be to apply the model of analysis that can be found in chapter 1 of Economy and Society to economic sociology and its problems. This means that one has to graft onto economic sociology such key ideas and key concepts in Weber's interpretive sociology as adequate causation, the need to always explore the meaning of actors, and what consequences these meanings have for the resulting action. What a concrete Weberian type of interpretive economic sociology will be like cannot, however, be determined this way. It needs instead to be worked out through concrete, empirical analysis.