Weber's Writings Research Articles

Max Weber's Complete Writings on Academic and Political Vocation by John Dreijmanis, Gordon C. Wells (review)

256 Max Weber Studies pre-war and post-war, versions of the text. For only in the later version did Weber make strict use of the principles of 'methodological individualism', drawing on his epistemological writings—but not in the earlier text. In this review my concern was to consider some consequences of insufficient attention to philological and bibliographical problems raised by the Gesamtausgabe in recent decades. I have deliberately avoided a more substantive discussion of these three books, whose wholly uncontentious surveys rest on what has become common academic patrimony over the years. What an introduction addressed to these philo logical and bibliographical issues might look like remains to be seen. Let us hope, however, that it should not be too long in the coming.6 Klaus Lichtblau Johann Wolfgang Goethe University oi rrankiurt 6. Translator's note: Not addressed in this review, but well worth considering for concerns raised in it, is Sam Whimster's Understanding Weber (London and New York: Routledge, 2007). John Dreijmanis (ed.) and Gordon C. Wells (trans.), Max Weber's Complete Writings on Academic and Political Vocations (New York: Algora Publishing, 2008), 221 pp. ISBN 978-0-87586-548-5. $24.95. German edition: Max Webers vollständige Schriften zu akademischen und politischen Berufen (Bremen: Europäischer Hochschulverlag, 2010), 248 pp. ISBN 978-3-941482 57-9. €78.00 (hbk). The rationale for this book is, on the face of it, a good one: to (re-)translate and collect together Max Weber's writings on academic and political vocations. The two pieces that open and close this collection are, as one would expect, 'Science as a Vocation' and 'Politics as a Vocation': two lectures that offer powerful com mentaries on the logic and fate of Western culture and politics, and that deserve to be re-read in the face of the current crises of our times. These lectures have been translated many times before and are available in a number of other editions (see, for example, the recent collection edited by David Owen and Tracy Strong). The editor of the present collection—John Dreijmanis—sees no problem in this, for he states with confidence that the translations in this new book adhere 'more closely to Weber's manner of expression and style than the earlier ones' (p. 23). It is not clear however, that this is in fact the case, for little indication is given by Dreijmanis of exactly how these translations improve those already offered by Hans Gerth, Ronald Spiers, Rodney Livingstone and Michael John, among others. For me, given the availability of the vocation lectures elsewhere, the main appeal of this book lies in its translation of various 'articles on academia' that amount to roughly 100 pages of this volume. These articles are indeed intriguing, not least because they span a wide-range of subjects: from an address that summarises dif ferences between American and German universities to a statement clarifying an alleged challenge to a duel by Arnold Ruge (an adjunct lecturer in philosophy at the University of Heidelberg).© Max Weber Studies 2011. Book Reviews 257 This said, however, this is not a book for the novice reader. What is missing from this collection is a detailed editorial introduction to the translations that are presented here. Instead, the introduction focuses on Weber's 'personality type'. Without telling us why, Dreijmanis uses the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to provide a Jungian reading of Weber's personality. Dreijmanis' conclusion is that 'From what is known about Weber, an ex post facto assessment of his personality type indicates that there is a very high degree of probability that he was an extraverted intuitive with introverted thinking (ENTP) type' (p. 3). He continues: 'His superior function was extraverted intuition, the auxiliary function introverted thinking, the tertiary function extraverted feeling, and the inferior function introverted sensation' (p. 3). The introduction to the book continues in this vein, and comments briefly on Weber's personality problems and 'illness'. For readers who are interested in a Jungian inspired psychological profiling of Weber's personality this introduction is likely to appeal, but for those more interested in his writings on academic and political vocations there is little by way of...

Jeffrey Alexander on Weber and Democracy: A Critical Note

[MWS 10.2 (2010) 235-249] ISSN 1470-8078 Jeffrey Alexander on Weber and Democracy: A Critical Note Sandro Segre Preliminary Observations Jeffrey Alexander's four-volume work Theoretical Logic in Sociology, published in the early 1980s, pursued the goals of providing sociol ogy with new epistemological principles, reconstructing the thought of Marx, Dürkheim, Weber and Parsons, and evaluating it according to these principles. Alexander's work produced a spate of commen taries, mostly critical. We shall consider the volume on Max Weber (Alexander 1983), and focus on Alexander's discussion of Weber's democratic theory rather than evaluating this work in general (as in Collins 1985). Alexander's interpretation will be presented, com pared with other interpretive works on Weber's democratic theory, and then evaluated in terms of its consistency with Weber's texts. Alexander's Theoretical Project. A Synopsis Alexander examines Max Weber's writings on democracy in the course of his discussion of rational-legal domination, which is a constitutive part of his theoretical project. A brief presentation of this project, as formulated in several of Alexander's works, is there fore appropriate before considering his interpretation of Weber, and Weber's democratic theory in particular (see especially Alexan der 1987b: 379-80; 1988; 1990:1-27; 1998: 210-33; 2003:11-26; 2005). As a research program, Neofunctionalism includes, in Alexander's judgment, a new definition and conceptualization of the relations between culture and society. It does not presuppose social inte gration, in contrast to Parsons, but rather considers carefully the existence of tensions between subcultures, and also between the social and the cultural systems. The program of Neofunctionalism is multidimensional, to the effect that it sets out to offer descrip tions, explanations, and interpretations of social life which are not reductionist insofar as the problems of action and the social order are concerned.© Max Weber Studies 2011, Clifton House, 17 Malvern Road, London, E8 3LP. 236 Max Weber Studies Alexander's 'strong program' contends that culture is autonomous from all social determination, and therefore involves a new mode of conducting sociological inquiry. Action is viewed as resulting from, on the one hand, the actors' voluntary commitment to pursue their goals and make moral norms binding, on the other hand, as constrained or conditioned by an external environment. This epis temological program is of relevance to all the social sciences, and makes no distinction among them. It calls for a systematic reference to the subjective meanings individual and collective actors confer to reality, and takes into consideration the constraints actors have to deal with in their social life. All the cultural products originat ing in the social scientists' scientific community are included in this research program. Investigations that are in keeping with the 'strong program' presuppose, from an epistemological viewpoint, that the knowledge produced by the social sciences—in the sense of understanding and explaining social reality—be premised on an interpretation of cultural phenomena. These phenomena, according to this interpretation, are social products, but are in no way determined by, and are in fact autono mous from the social structure, and in general from the contents and meanings of social life. It is rather culture that shapes social life by constituting an environment which surrounds the actor, and is ana lytically separate from it. In Alexander's vocabulary, general pre suppositions are non-empirical, 'metaphysical' assumptions having a most general nature. They are not ideological, but inform ideolog ical judgments and political commitments, and provide orientation to sociological analysis in its choice of theoretical models, method ological principles, and empirical observations (Alexander 1982: 2-5, 36-46,124). The generalized problems of action and order are 'pre suppositional questions' that raise the epistemological issues of 'the sociological relevance of subjectivity and objectivity, freedom and determinism' (Alexander 1982: 90). The 'strong program' attributes great importance to meanings, symbols, narratives, beliefs, ideologies, collective representations, and in general to the cultural features of social life. It endeavors to interpret and provide a detailed reconstruction of the constitutive elements of culture. To this end, individual and collective actors are identified, and the hierarchies and social institutions that medi ate between actors and culture are taken into consideration...

Book Review: Max Weber's Complete Writings on Academic and Political Vocations

Book Review: Max Weber's Complete Writings on Academic and Political Vocations

Max Weber on Property: An Effort in Interpretative Understanding

In this article, Laura Ford explores Max Weber's writings on the subject of property. Weber, in his first dissertation, articulated legally and historically, the conception of property as a phenomenon that was dependent on organised social relationships and somewhat closed to outside participation. Later, he formulated this conception sociologically and systematically connected it to additional concepts. Ford engages with Weber's work in three broad phases (the legal phase of his first dissertation, the economic-historical phase and finally the sociological phase) in order to examine if any sociological issues emerge from the same.

Joachim Radkau replies to his critics: Reviving an Icon or, Eros versus Logos in Max Weber Revisited

The negative status of biography in writing history and in the social sciences is discussed. It is argued that the individual human life needs to be placed within the general situation of the world and that structural history and social systems are denatured by excluding the human person. The author discusses and replies to critical reactions to his biography of Max Weber. A caesura in Weber's writings occurred in autumn 1909 when Else Jaffé released Weber from both erotic and intellectial blockages, resulting in the insights of 'Intermediate Reflections'.

Understanding the Role of the Football Manager in Britain and Ireland: A Weberian Approach

Using semi-structured tape-recorded interviews with twenty-two players and eighteen managers, this paper utilizes the work of Max Weber in exploring the role of the manager in professional football (soccer). More specifically, Weber's writings on legitimate authority are used to explore traditional aspects of the role of the contemporary football manager. The findings highlight the lack of formal management training and the widespread assumption within football that previous playing experience is sufficient preparation for entry into management. While many aspects of the management of football clubs have involved increasing professionalization and bureaucratization, the role of the manager has proved remarkably resistant to these processes. The authority of the football manager continues to be based on traditional forms of authoritarianism and this allows managers an unusually high degree of autonomy in defining their own role and places few constraints on the appointment of their support staff.

Varieties of Moral Beliefs in the "Sociology of Religion"

The article analyses the distinction in Weber's writings between conviction ethics and other types of ethics. Schluchter has situated this distinction in a sociological manner rather than religious meanings, as that between heroic (elite) ethics and mass religiosity. I argue that an ethic of conviction, in the Sociology of Religion, belongs to Weber's analysis of both ethical and exemplary prophecy; his analysis of priests and laity tends to obscure this point. Evil is overcome by an effort of inner conviction not priestly ritual. Contra Schluchter, ethical norms are not internalized and routinized into the convention of duty. Instead ethics are demonstrated by exemplary action of heroic individuals as religious virtuosi. The second half of the article pursues the difference between ethical sanctification through institutional grace, on one hand, and a virtuoso conviction ethic, on the other. The former is attained by duty, the latter through the will of the individual and the belief that salvation is attained through faith alone. One important conclusion is that conviction ethic, prominently displayed in Politik als Beruf, is an outcome of a religious conviction ethics. Faith is pursued through will and exemplary deeds and action. This places the argument on Nietzschean rather than Kantian grounds. In choosing to act in an exemplary way out of conviction, the consequences of actions and one's responsibility for them do not come into consideration. This renders conviction ethics consequential in their own right. Nietzschean moral autonomy puts the individual at moral risk. Weber demanded of these heroic moments intellectual honesty in place of self-deception. In rising to these moments, conviction ethics offer dignity to the modern individual.

'Hellenic Intellectual Culture' and the Origins of Weber's Political Thinking

This essay explores what Thucydides in particular, and classical studies in general, meant to Max Weber. Of course, only a handful of Weber's writings make use of directly classical material; but judging his work quantitatively in this way tells us relatively little about his perspective on the world, and the stance he adopted to it. Hennis finds a way into this problem through consideration of Roscher's own Habilitation dissertation, Leben, Werk und Zeitalter des Thukydides (1842). Taking up Weber's comment in the methodological essay on Roscher, that it is directed to Roscher's early writings, Hennis shows how this can illuminate our understanding both of Weber's classical background and his 'historical methodology'.

The Golem Narrative in Max Weber's Work

This paper provides a new metaphor for reading Weber's writings by exposing an underlying cultural pattern–the Golem narrative–and showing how it is reflected in Weber's work. We depict the Jewish story of the Golem and the German demonic version of the narrative as presented in the movie Der Golem. We analyze the structure of this story and distinguish three components in this cultural narrative: the will to be empowered; the use of a non-human material instrument to garner this power; culminating in the instrument developing an autonomous spirit, which fatefully makes it turn against the master, leading to personal and social destruction. We show how this narrative appears in Weber's conception of the role of spirits and gods in world history and moral life. We then provide two expanded examples of the way the narrative of the Golem unfolds in Weber's work: the rise of capitalism and his observations about charisma and its institutionalization.

Max Weber's "Sociology of Domination" in the Light of Recent Publications

Book Reviews 139 My overall impressions are that the volume is a remarkable work of recovery of the life and work of Marianne Weber and her network within the women's movement. It is also striking how effectively Wobbe can recover Weber's sociology of 'weibliche' culture for contemporary sociology. This stands in contrast to the refractory nature of Wilhelmine society (and worse, beyond) and the sheer toughness and determina tion of the women's movement (irrespective of their internal arguments). It is also a tribute to the life world of Heidelberg—a 'notoriously provincial town' as Krüger terms it. Its critical—here 'weibliche'—spirit confronted Wilhelmine patriarchalism, even though future historians and sociologists have had to go much deeper to bring to light the structural basis of the discontents of that society. Sam Whimster London Metropolitan University Sam Whimster 'Max Weber's "Sociology of Domination" in the Light of Recent Publications', review of Edith Hanke and Wolfgang J. Mommsen (eds.), Max Webers Herrschaftssoziologie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), pp. 363. ISBN 3-16-147649-2. €49.7 The work of editing a Complete Edition of Max Weber has recently led to the appear ance of a series of publications, by-products as it were, which are all concerned to go further into important areas of Max Weber's writings.8 As the introduction to this volume (a collection of the papers given at a conference on Max Weber's sociology of domination) acknowledges, it should be regarded as being closely related to the forthcoming edition of Max Weber's Herrschaftssoziologie as part of the Complete Edition. It will therefore come as no surprise that in addition to the textual history, which allows us to relate this text to the other 'Sociologies of' as categorized by Marianne Weber in her editions, many other connections to con temporary debates are also drawn and these show the context within which the various drafts of the sociology of domination were produced. These contexts can be thought of as Max Weber's 'ideale Bibliothek' or 'conceptual library' to borrow the expression M. Montinari used in relation to Nietzsche. Last but not least, the universal 7.

La fin du monopole de la violence légitime ?

By using an accurate interpretation of Max Weber's writings and taking into account texts by contemporaries (in particular, jurists), the well-known definition of the state as exercising a monopoly over legitimate violence is reexamined. Rather than an ontological decision dogmatically linking the state to violence, this definition can be seen as summarizing a thesis on the history of law, specifically on the conditions of the effectiveness of subjective rights. It thus turns out to be a Weberian alternative to classical theories of sovereignty. As such, it provides an original grid for interpreting institutional transformations in our times.

Young Man Weber

Scholarship on Max Weber and in social theory has taken an interest? ing and important turn in recent years. The new perspective involves the rediscovery of Weber as an economist and his writings on topics in political economy and social economics?Sozial?konomik in his terminology?or, as we would tend to say today, economic sociology. In the English-speaking world the work of Richard Swedberg has assisted the movement in this di? rection (Swedberg 1998, 2000, 2002, 2003; Weber 1999a), following upon earlier efforts by Keith Tribe, myself (Scaff 1989, ch. 2) and others (see Tribe 1989; Schluchter 1980). In Germany the shift in interest has received en? couragement from the editing of Weber's collected works, the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe, and particularly the recent contributions of the economist Knut Borchardt to understanding Weber's early writings in the 1890s on the stock and commodity exchanges, commercial relationships, and the institu? tions of modern capitalism (Borchardt 1999, 2000; Weber 1999b; also Lesti tion 2000). As Borchardt acknowledges, the economic dimension to Weber's thought was already highlighted previously in some of the essays of Wilhelm Hennis devoted to Weber's relationship to the economists of his day, men like Carl Menger, Gustav Schmoller, and his Heidelberg teacher, Karl Knies, whom he replaced in 1897 (Hennis 1998, 2000). These figures framed the late nineteenth-century debate over theory and method, setting the histori? cal school dominant in Berlin against the marginalists prominent in Vienna, a disputation that Weber sought to resolve in some of his methodological writings and work in social economics, including the systematic presentation in Part I of Economy and Society. In addition to these contributions, this hid? den side of Weber's thinking and its historical and biographical sources has been given a corrective reading in Guenther Roth's extensive investigations of the international cosmopolitan bourgeoisie, with emphasis on the Weber family and their transnational business and financial connections (see Roth 2001, 2002, 2003.)

The sociology of law in global perspective

Although the term sociology of law was first coined by the Italian legal philosopher Dionisio Anzilotti in 1892, and Eugen Ehrlich's Grundlegung einer Soziologie des Rechts appeared as early as 1913, it wasn't until the 1950s that American sociologists-inspired by the works of Europeans Eugen Ehrlich, Nicholas S. Timasheff, and Georges Gurvitch-began to cultivate an interest in sociolegal theory. It was at this time that some of Max Weber's theoretical writings on the sociology of law were first made available in English (see Rheinstein, 1954). The following year witnessed the publication of an abridged volume, Law and Morality (1955), that presented, to readers of English, the psychosocial legal theory of Polish jurist Leon Petrazycki. By the end of the 1950s, the sociology of law had evolved to the point where Philip Selznick (1959) felt comfortable assessing its past, present, and future. By the mid-1960s Jerome Skolnick (1965) could, in a lengthy thirty-nine printed pages, review the major empirical work in sociolegal studies that had been conducted during the previous decade. Sociology of law has come a long way since the midtwentieth century, not only in the United States but in many other countries around the world

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.

Latent Theoretical Convergence upon a Pluralist Conception of Economic Action: Adam Smith and Max Weber

This paper engages in exploring certain latent theoretical convergences between the works of Adam Smith and Max Weber. The fact that these two have been major protagonists in the establishment and development of political economy and sociology respectively gives a rationale to such an endeavor. Another rationale is provided by the paucity of attempts at exploring the theoretical relations between Smith and Weber in the current economic and sociological literature. Helping fill in this gap in the literature is the paper's intended contribution. That Weber's writings contain pertinent convergences with Smith's work is the general premise of this article. In particular, the treatment of economic action epitomizes these congruencies between Smith's political economy and Weber's economic sociology.

Modernity's Machine Metaphor

Discussions of «modernity» have been influenced by mechanical metaphors of the type to be found in Weber's writings on religion and politics. Through a detailed examination of Maurice Halbwachs' analysis of collective memory and social order, the appropriateness of these mechanical metaphors is called into question. It is argued that the Durkheimian school generally has a more nuanced account of the nature of «modern» society; one which pays closer attention to the cultural preconditions of the workings of machine-like modern organizations and social relations. At the core of these organizational forms is actors' capacity to act appropriately which is in turn grounded in tacit knowledge which cannot be deduced from formal procedures or explicit rules

The question of max weber today

Max Weber is perhaps the most troublesome figure in twentieth cen tury social and political thought. His work has been the subject of widely differing interpretations and evaluations, from varying political and socio logical standpoints. But while a myriad of critics and analysts have been at work, even more has happened during the intervening decades since his death. Changing historical realities have pressured sociologists to create more comprehensive and meaningful theoretical perspectives, a truer vision of sociology's calling, and a fuller relationship with its past. The need to see the tumultuous political, social and cultural upheavals of twentieth cen tury modernity in the context of the wider and deeper streams of "universal history" has further enhanced Weber's special claims on our attention, since no other thinker has approached sociology with a greater sensitivity to the deep historical origins of our contemporary situation. While the literature about Weber is far from unanimous in its judgment of him and his work, its very size implies that he cannot be ignored. Few of those attempting to reconstruct Weber's work have expended as much energy as Wolfgang Schluchter. He has carried through this effort on at least three major fronts. Schluchter is one of the editors of the on going Max Weber Gesamtausgabe which promises a complete and thoroughly edited collection of all of Weber's writings (including his correspondence). He has also edited several volumes of collected studies by specialists as sessing the contemporary standing of Weber's sociological efforts, including his sociology of Confucianism and Taoism, Hinduism and Buddhism, and his uncompleted projects on Islam and Western Christianity (see the ref erences in Schluchter, 1996: 360, 363-365). Finally, he has written a number of books which offer his own reconstruction of Weber's work, a list which promises to grow in coming years. For English readers, this series was be gun in a joint volume with Guenther Roth on Weber's vision of history (see Roth and Schluchter, 1979). The translation of his book on Weber's

Christelijke ethiek en de geest van het kapitalisme

SummaryMax Weber's century old thesis on christian ethics and the spirit of capitalism, written has been the object of an endless discussion. This has much to do with the interest of the author: Weber was neither intrigued by the fact of a connection between protestantism and capitalism, nor by the influence of Calvinism on the development of the modern capitalism. His interest, however, was exclusively focused on the question “how can the relation between protestant ethic and capitalism be conceived and reconstructed”. We try to explain many misconceptions by recovering what Weber really has said. Therefore the concepts of ‘spirit of capitalism' and ‘protestant ethic’ are clarified and discussed. First, the spirit of capitalism is not an economic system, but an ethos. The definition of it in respect with the content, the motivation, the aim, and morality is elaborated in a comparison with the commercial ethos of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This makes clear that Weber's first concern was an analysis of the origin of the modern spirit, not as an intellectual construction, but as an expression of behavior.Second, we investigate what is meant by the terms ‘protestantism’ and ‘ethics’ and what the religious roots of the new spirit are: innerworldly ascetism, the notion of calling, and the concepts of wealth and poverty.It is no wonder that there was a lot of criticism because Weber's writings on the above topic were situated on the crossroads of sociology, theology, history and economy. We present and comment on the main criticisms: (1) protestantism rejects capitalism; (2) the spirit of capitalism is much older than the Reformation; (3) there is no monocausal relation between the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism; (4) the role of catholicism in this development was as/more important in the rise of capitalism. Most of these criticisms result from a superficial presentation of Weber's writings and explanations in his own Anticritics, and don't do justice to Weber's ‘idealtypische’ and ‘verstehende’ approach. This approach was not intended to give a complete and exhaustive ‘last’ explanation of the essence of a social phenomenon.

Max Weber's comparative-historical sociology

The revival of historical sociology in recent decades has largely neglected the contributions of Max Weber. Yet Weber's writings offer a fundamental resource for analyzing problems of comparative historical development. Stephen Kalberg rejects the view that Weber's historical writings consist of an ambiguous mixture of fragmented ideal types on the one hand and the charting of vast processes of rationalization and bureaucracy on the other. On the contrary, Weber's substantive work offers a coherent and distinctive model for comparative analysis. A reconstruction of Weber's comparative historical method, Kalberg argues, uncovers a sophisticated outlook that addresses problems of agency and structure, multiple causation, and institutional interpretation. Kalberg shows how such a representation of Weber's work casts a direct light upon issues of pressing importance in comparative historical studies today. Weber addresses in a forceful way the whole range of issues confronted by the comparative historical enterprise. Once the full analytical and empirical power of Weber's historical writings becomes clear, Weber's work can be seen to generate procedures and strategies appropriate to the study of present day as well as past social processes. Written in an accessible and engaging fashion, this book will appeal to students and professionals in the areas of sociology, anthropology, and comparative history.

Max Weber and the Sociology of Culture.

The thematic unity of Weber's writings the uniqueness of the East the rise of the West the iron cage of modern rationalism the sociology of culture - Weber and beyond.