Weber's Analysis Research Articles

In the Grip of Freedom: Law and Modernity in Max Weber

Cary Boucock, In the Grip of Freedom: Law and Modernity Max Weber. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000, 230 pp., $60 cloth; $24.95 paper. Max Weber's analysis of modern law is among the least familiar aspects of his sociological oeuvre. This is not surprising. Unlike Weber himself, who was a qualified lawyer accredited to practice Berlin, most sociologists lack both legal training and, it would appear, legal curiosity. Combine that with the forbidding character of Weber's dense and convoluted propositions, and you have a kind of collective incomprehension that does not apply to, for instance, the writings on the sociology of religion. For a long time, we have needed a book that both clarifies the intricacies of Weber's legal theory and connects them to his wider comparative sociology. Gary Boucock's the Grip of Freedom does just that--and more, by offering a bracing reconstruction of one of Weber's more disturbing findings. The first two thirds of the book comprise a lucid account of a paradox that Weber discerned at the heart of modern life. Modern, capitalist society enables an unprecedented degree of freedom. The formal-positive legal rationality, that both preceded capitalism and that is now symbiotically bound up with it, helps produce a self that is typically unencumbered by fixed, ascribed role expectations. Under such a regime, individuals are deemed autonomous to the extent that they are socially atomistic, mobile, and purposively oriented by mean-ends calculation. Rational legality is formal the sense that it is depersonalised and abstract, indifferent to the substantive normative obligations of kin and community, and aimed at maximizing the predictability, calculability and transparency of social arrangements. Correspondingly, rational legality is positive the sense that it derives legitimacy from the belief that legal norms are derived from correct enactment and individual consent (p. 10). Taken together, formal-positive legal rationality enjoins us to obey the rule of law not the rule of man, to comply with paragraphs not sentiments, and to treat judicial idiosyncrasy as a blot on the social landscape. This legal development and its associated model of personhood have enabled modern people to escape the injuries and rigidities of tradition-bound societies. In such ways, we are free to exercise choices that, previously, did not exist. The problem is that the quest to liberate the ostensibly sovereign self from unwelcome encumbrances, to enhance control over our relationships and our environments, entraps us within legal and other rules that create new forms of coercion and dehumanisation. Just as bureaucratization has spread over most forms of modern organizations, so, with it, legal impersonality has become the template of our relationship with others. Modern individuals, caught in the grip of are liberated from traditional ascriptions and personal domination. Yet divested of commun al attachments and existential certainties, they are obliged to inhabit a world that is inhospitable, governed by techno-managerial forms of reason, and ever more subject to rules and regulations of baffling and proliferating complexity. The rights-oriented polity, far from loosening the grip of freedom, actually serves to tighten it. In an epoch where sacred norms have been disenchanted and secularised, the quest for rights is a post-traditional means of grounding objective validity claims. Yet seeking to acquire such rights so as to expand or entrench autonomy, individuals give increasing power to the regulatory state apparatus and to the judiciary. The regulatory state is, of course, required to sanction the law; the judiciary has a vital role to play establishing justice. But a major concern of Weber's is the developmental tendency of modern states to remove issues properly disputed a political arena, among citizens and their legislative representatives, and to make them instead the province of judicial decision-making. …

Rationalizations of Music

Although Max Weber's analysis of rationalization is considered indispensable to the study of modern society, his work on the rationalization of music has remained neglected because of its musicological complexity. In this paper, his unfinished work on music is reconstructed in terms of the two principles of rationalization that he distinguished : the distance-principle and the harmonic principle.Rationalization based on the distance-principle defines the relations of musical tones by the distance or the symmetry between them. Weber says that melodious music, for example, ancient Greek music and a host of non-Western music, which has no connection with rationalized polyphony (music which has two or more relatively independent parts), is characterized by the distance-principle. This principle makes possible the free and subtle movement of a melody.On the other hand, harmonic rationalization, which is based on the harmonic principle, tries to construct a musical scale by harmonious sounds. This latter rationalization is the basis of modern Western tonal music, in which all musical tones and chords are ordered around a central tone (tonic). These two principles of rationalization contradict each other, in that free movement of a melody breaks harmony and, vice versa, harmony prevents free movement of a melody.It is considered that modern tonal music has its foundations in the harmonic principle, but has gradually been shaped by the intertwining of these two processes of rationalization. Harmonic rationalization inevitably has contradictions. In order to solve these contradictions the distance-principle is coupled with harmonic rationalization. It is this contradictory process of rationalization in the historical development of Western tonal music that Weber intended to explore. This paper presents an explanation of this process of the dual rationalization of modern music.

Psychiatry as a profession

With reference to Max Weber's timeless analysis of science and politics as a profession, the present paper describes the philosophical background and historical development of the tasks and tools, institutionalization, and socialization of psychiatry as a profession. In the mid twentieth century, psychiatrists' emergence from ideological confinement in asylums, where they were separated from urban culture and medicine in general, finally allowed them to benefit from accumulating knowledge and technological progress in the field of medicine. After its transition from a custodial to a therapeutic discipline, psychiatry has acquired a variety of new fields of action and duties that require a high degree of expertise on psychological and biological levels. At the same time, people have increasingly come to expect relief not only from disease, but also from manifold problems of everyday life. As a consequence, there has been an inflationary growth of professional psychiatric and psychotherapeutic and nonprofessional services. The professional requirements that psychiatrists should meet have also increased quantitatively and qualitatively in the wake of the historical change from a caring, paternalistic attitude towards the mentally ill to a therapeutic partnership. To a greater degree than physicians working in other medical fields, psychiatrists get personally involved with their patients. As a consequence, the mental burden of their profession is at times immense. For this reason, the ethics of a medical profession has special implications for psychiatrists. The fascinating advances in therapeutic methods, neurobiological knowledge, and the increasingly differentiated diagnostic tools, e.g., noninvasive investigation of the morphology and functioning of the brain, have turned psychiatry into one of the most interesting contemporary professions. Psychiatry is now facing an enormous challenge of meeting the standards of expertise.

Max Weber's Analysis of Marginal Utility Theory and Psychology Revisited: Latent Propositions in Economic Sociology and the Sociology of Economics

Dans son essai sur la theorie de l'utilite marginale, Max Weber a refute toute explication d'ordre psychologique, contrairement a quelques economistes de l'epoque, faisant mention de la loi de Weber-Fechner (en reference au psychologue allemand Ernst Weber). En faisant appel a la sociologie de la connaissance, l'A. nuance l'affirmation de Max Weber, a travers ses references aux conditions sociales, historiques et culturelles de son temps

Theory of Culture

The intention of this article is to show some of the contradictions which arise when Margaret Archer, in her theory of culture and agency, utilizes Durkheim's and Weber's analyses of culture as examples of cultural morphogenesis. Additionally, the intention is to explore which principles for the development of a sociological theory of culture can be deduced from these classical texts. By confronting Archer's theory with the analyses of Durkheim and Weber, it can be shown that, while Archer perceives the individual as a rational actor pursuing material interests, thetwo classical sociologists see the individual as an object of cultivation. Furthermore, while Archer perceives the relation between structure and culture as an exchange relationship, in which legitimacy is exchanged for resources, the two classical sociologists see society as the source of cultural development. The conclusion is that, if one wishes to utilize Durkheim's and Weber's analyses of culture, one has to read these texts on their own premises. A rereading of their analyses enables the development of four basic tenets of a sociological theory of culture: (1) culture is a subject–object relationship; (2) mechanisms exist, whereby objective culture is transferred to the subject; (3) as a consequence of its content, culture can influence society; (4) as a consequence of its organization, society can influence culture.

Parliament and war: Weber's analysis of the German case

SUMMARY In this article, Cristiana Senigaglia shows how Max Weber, who had withdrawn from public political debate in the years before 1914, was impelled by the war to re-engage with politics. He did this in respect of a number of specific issues, like unrestricted submarine warfare, or policies of annexation, where he urged restraint in the interest of achieving a rapid negotiated peace, which would asure German security in the postwar world. In general he urged the need for radical re-thinking so that Germany could break away from Bismarck's legacy in international affairs. On internal affairs, Weber argued strongly for the full democratization of German politics through the creation of a parliamentary democracy. This must be based on universal suffrage, and responsibility of government and its agencies to the people, through comprehensive parliamentary scrutiny of their actions. But he also argued, in the light of wartime experience, for special arrangements for the handling of foreign policy, involving some modification of full democratic control. As he saw it, unrestricted public discussion of foreign policy issues was inappropriate and at times positively harmful. He suggested special arrangements for responsible political leaders, based in parliament, to be able to consider such issues, sheltered from the glare of publicity. This was a necessary condition for pursuing the confidential negotiations between states, through diplomacy, which he saw as the only means of achieving lasting agreements. Weber's proposals had little practical impact while the war continued, but had a role in the post-war debates about establishing the Weimar Republic.

Recognising Alternative Rationalities in the Deployment of Information Systems

AbstractInformation systems research and practice have been developed under the combination of scientific and economic reasoning that forms the bedrock of western modernity. Alternative ways of perceiving the value of technical innovation, often manifested in the deployment of ICT in the social context of developing countries, are poorly understood and tend to be dismissed as ‘irrational’. In this paper I review the literature that challenges the supremacy of the mutually dependent techno‐scientific and economic rationalities of modernity and I argue for a shift from a universalistic and a‐contextual notion of rationality to considering rationality as a system of reasoning arising from particular historical experiences and related to culture.Theoretical discussion on rationality draws from Weber's analysis, critical theory, constructivist studies of science and technology, and writers on postmodernity. The manifestation and significance of alternative rationalities is demonstrated with two examples of systems implementation efforts, and the paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for professional practice.

A Weberian Theory of Time

This article formulates a Weberian general theory of time. The theory is Weberian, in the sense that it is drawn from Weber's epistemological and sociological work. After a short presentation of Weber's epistemological writings, concerning how social scientists may investigate present and past events, and a brief digression on Husserl's possible influence on Weber, it focuses on Weber's sociological analysis of time in interactional and social contexts, and especially - on the interactions between formal and informal contexts. A unitary theoretical framework is then developed and analyzed in the light of classical and contemporary sociological work, concerning time as a social construction and a social constraint.

Weber's alleged emotivism

This paper seeks to refute Alasdair MacIntyre's contention that the sociology of Max Weber is emotivist. MacIntyre understands emotivism to involve the collapse of all moral judgment into statements of personal preference. It is shown that Weber's sociology analyses this condition and seeks to repudiate it. In no way does Weber embrace emotivism. MacIntyre misses Weber's repudiation because he misreads Weber's sociological project. The paper shows that MacIntyre's reading of Weber can be refuted if attention is paid to the 'Politics as a Vocation' lecture.

Peut-on lire en français L'Éthique protestante et L'esprit du capitalisme?

A scrupulous analysis of the French translation of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism reveals an acculumation of errors which seriously alter Weber's analysis in its nodal articulations (articulation of relations of causality and affinity, intrication of ideas and interests, schemes of mediation between beliefs and behaviour). The same problem arises in relation to its central conceptual mechanism (concepts of profession-vocation, of life style, of confirmation) and in relation to its theological lexicon. The analysis concludes with the urgent necessity for a new translation.

Discovering the two faces of religious charismatic action – traditional and modern: a model

In this paper, the author examines the issue of charisma and prophecy in secularized societies. In traditional society the charismatic personality or the prophet brought a universalizing and rationalizing message which simultaneously expanded and penetrated the sphere of external order in the world, giving people the ability to manipulate and control the natural world. The disenchanted world is the end product of this process, when no more mysterious forces come into play, and when one can in principle master all things through rational calculation. The gift of rationality almost randomly bestowed in the ancient world becomes, for Weber, the rightful inheritance of the modern individual. Clarity brought by charisma in a dark and foreboding world loses its brilliance and its ability to beckon when the world is filled with light. In investigating charisma in only traditional societies, Weber saw charisma as one dimensional, solely as the force of rationality. So envisioned, charisma dissipates in the very act of realizing itself through the transformation of the world. Given Weber's analysis, therefore, one would not expect to find genuinely new religions emerging within our transformed and rational modern society. In the examination of the founding something that is best identified by the sociological term charisma, though obviously in modern guise, is clearly evident. This points to the possibility that charisma is not static but has the dynamic capacity to be responsive to the structural characteristics of the society in which it operates.

The Politics, Power, and Pathologies of International Organizations

International Relations scholars have vigorous theories to explain why international organizations (IOs) are created, but they have paid little attention to IO behavior and whether IOs actually do what their creators intend. This blind spot flows logically from the economic theories of organization that have dominated the study of international institutions and regimes. To recover the agency and autonomy of IOs, we offer a constructivist approach. Building on Max Weber's well-known analysis of bureaucracy, we argue that IOs are much more powerful than even neoliberals have argued, and that the same characteristics of bureaucracy that make IOs powerful can also make them prone to dysfunctional behavior. IOs are powerful because, like all bureaucracies, they make rules, and, in so doing, they create social knowledge. IOs deploy this knowledge in ways that define shared international tasks, create new categories of actors, form new interests for actors, and transfer new models of political organization around the world. However, the same normative valuation on impersonal rules that defines bureaucracies and makes them powerful in modern life can also make them unresponsive to their environments, obsessed with their own rules at the expense of primary missions, and ultimately produce inefficient and self-defeating behavior. Sociological and constructivist approaches thus allow us to expand the research agenda beyond IO creation and to ask important questions about the consequences of global bureaucratization and the effects of IOs in world politics.

Tribute, Turf, Honor and the American Street Gang:

American street gangs have always been committed to the defense of turf and the attainment of honor. Street gangs have, however, changed markedly with respect to their goals, their age and racial composition, their relationship to the wider political, economic and cultural environment, their commitment to delinquency and their level of violence. These changes have resulted from immigration, population movement, economic transformations, racial and ethnic conflict and the changing fabric of neighborhood and family life. This article identifies and analyses patterns of continuity and change in the American street gang since the 1820s by drawing on Eric Wolf's neo-Marxian analysis of modes of production and Max Weber's analysis of honor-based conflict.

Des religiosités de virtuoses aux religiosités de masses: aux origines des compromis selon Max Weber

Although not central to Max Weber's sociology of religion, the theme of compromise is nonetheless present. In fact, the question of compromise runs through all his reflections on relationships between religions, cultural traditions, magic and world. From Weber's perspective, compromise is at the heart of the passage from virtuoso religiosities to mass religiosities; the second being—under certain conditions—the destiny of the first in the long run. Weber analyses compromise in terms of feedback of the production of virtuosos, following the masses' reception of this production. Social stratification, the constitution of laity in organizational terms and their effects on religious production play important roles. The compromises appearing in the transformations of virtuoso religiosities into mass religiosities are tied to interpretations of the world and the means of salvation. In this perspective, compromise appears to be virtuoso religiosities' path to self-perpetuation.

Franz Neumann on the rule of law and capitalism: The East Asian case

The purpose of this paper is to explore, in the context of the emergence of East Asian capitalism, theoretical issues concerning the relationship between the rule of law and capitalism as expressed in the classic work of Max Weber and elaborated by Franz Neumann. More specifically, it will be argued that the optimistic Weberian vision of the growth of liberal capitalism and market rationality is clouded mainly because it is based on a distinctive model of liberal capitalism, especially one requiring an assertive bourgeoisie demanding legal restraint on the exercise of state power. State‐driven capitalism in East Asia, which has produced its own brand of legalism, is better explained in terms of Franz Neumann's analysis of the differing legal forms under various forms of capitalism, and may provide a more useful framework than the Weberian model in understanding the nature of the relationship between law and capitalism. While Weber's analysis of the emergence of rational law arises out of an historical methodology it is not able to go beyond a conception of modern law as the summit of a rational process of modernization. In contrast, Neumann provides a useful framework for the development of historical sociology of legal institutions that is able to relate forms of capitalism, political structures and legal institutions.

The Weberian Legacy of Thom Greenfield

This article traces through Greenfleld's work his use of Weber's interpretive social analysis, including Webers view of the individual unit of analysis, value typologies, methods of comparative history, and the construction and use of analytical ideal typologies. Compared are Greenfield 's and Weber's metaphysical assumptions, ontological perspectives, and epistemological frameworks, and their implications for research representative of interpretive or verstehende organizational study.

MAX WEBER ON THE EROTIC AND SOME COMPARISONS WITH THE WORK OF FOUCAULT

This article establishes the centrality of the erotic sphere in Weber's `Intermediate Reflection' essay ( Zwischenbetrachtung), which itself is central to Weber's analysis of the conflict between the world of religion and the social orders of society. An initial similarity is drawn between Foucault's analysis of the sexual, prior to its elaboration as a discourse, and Weber's treatment of the naive naturalism of the sexual. Foucault's technique of self offers one way of handling the tension between the realm of the private and the external social world, whereas Weber offers an intensification of the erotic as an escape from the sobriety ( Sachlichkeit) of the professional and occupational specialist ( Berufsmensch). A comparison of the different versions of the `Intermediate Reflection' essay indicates the degree to which Weber wrote his own biographical experiences into the academic text.

MASS MOVEMENTS AND PLEBISCITARY DEMOCRACY: POLITICAL CHANGE IN CENTRAL EASTERN EUROPE

High expectations of prompt establishment of stable parliamentary democracy in central eastern Europe (CEE) have been dashed by outbursts of populism. Such expectations were unrealistic. This paper argues that the key aspect of change in CEE involved first the mobilisation of mass protest movements and, subsequently, the `normalisation' of these movements into new regimes. These processes are unlikely to lead directly to stable parliamentary democracies. Rather, as Max Weber's analyses suggest, the normalisation of mass movements leads in the direction of `plebiscitary democracy'. The development of stable parliamentary democracy in post-communist CEE is hindered by the residues of the very mass mobilisations which initiated the process of democratic change.

Max Weber'sThe Religion of China: An interpretation

The Religion of China is an overlooked but pivotal key to understanding Weber's life work. A careful reading of this work shows that Weber's analysis of the rise of rational capitalism in the West and its absence in China is intrinsically contradictory. While Weber's official position is that the ultimate cause of the absence of capitalism in China (and inversely, its presence in the Occident) was to be found in religion, his political analysis indicates that the politico-legal conditions alone were sufficient to prevent the rise of rational capitalism in China. Moreover, he finds that the Chinese religion, which was unfavorable to the rise of rational capitalism, was to a significant extent the product of Chinese political conditions. This contradiction reflects the tension, never resolved, between Weber's institutional and religious explanations of the Occidental development.

Alternative Organizational Formations: A Neoweberian Typology of Polycratic Administrative Systems

Much of the critical attention given to Weber's tripartite scheme of legitimate domination has focused on the issue of its supposed incapacity to accommodate forms of organization not based on instrumental rationality. In fact substantive rationality is a continuous point of reference in Weber's analysis and surfaces in his brief and fragmentary outlines of three polycratic organizational forms: collegiality, mass democracy, and direct democracy. This article locates polycratic organizations in relation to the three monocratic structures indicated by the typology of legitimate domination. Extant examples of polycratic organizations are compared substantively. The three forms are then typologized in terms first of characteristics of participation by personnel, and second of the processes by which decisions are made.