The Question and Sociology of Culture

Abstract

As Alfred Weber’s generation challenged their predecessors within the Historical School of National Economy and moved toward “ideational studies,” they looked increasingly to culture as an alternative to the centrality of the state. In 1909, Weber began his cultural turn. Although he continued to publish short articles on economics, they were secondary to his interest in culture and its application to politics. Rather than use cultural concepts to examine capitalism, as his brother Max and Werner Sombart did, he sought to use it to reshape the classical ideal of cultivation (Bildung). He rejected the strong connection of the ideal of cultivation to the state in favor of a more purely cultural version of the ideal that retained its organic assumptions. Weber’s view of culture, which he constructed around the concept of the monad presented in Chapter 3, was reinforced by the setting of Heidelberg and by his attraction to vitalism.