Updating Max Weber on the racial, the ethnic, and the national

Abstract

Weber said that his work would soon be superseded. While his 1911 drafts about race, ethnic community, and nation have recently attracted attention, his concern for the growth of objective knowledge has not been followed through. Weber maintained that a shared belief in common descent does not of itself constitute a group, but he failed (i) to develop his distinction between the concepts of the historian and the sociologist; (ii) to analyse the ways in which physical and cultural differences were used to mobilize for collective action; and (iii), while writing about social closure, to examine the opening of previously closed relationships. Contemporary social scientists working in this field may cite Weber as an authority, yet they have not built systematically upon the advances he pioneered. The possible future development of his line of analysis is sketched.