2022 SP Social Theory Mitsuno

Week 4 The Classical Tradition of Max Weber

Max Weber (1864-1920)
 Born in Germany
 Trained as a lawyer and a historian
 Professor of economics and later political science
 A break from research and academic work due to depression between 33 (1897) ad 39(1903)
 Sociologist

Major works
The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism (1904-1905)
Economy and Society (1922)

Weber’s questions (two Webers: a liberal individualist and a nationalist)

 Why did modernization initially occur in the West and not in Eastern civilizations?
 If we are no longer afraid of God, what will make us moral?/ If we are not engaged in sacred
meanings, what will make our lives meaningful?
 Who could save Germany’s future if there is no revolution or no Third French Republic?
“Weber’s social vision blends a championing of individualism with an equally passionate about
nationalism.” (Seidman, 2013. 49)

“There was, in fact, no German counterpart to the French Revolution or to the English or American
revolutions; there was no middle-class revolution in Germany. Although the German middle class
prospered, it did not challenge the social and political power of the Junkers. Instead of becoming a
political force mobilized to overthrow Junker rule, the German middle classes took over their conservative,
nationalistic values.” (Seidman, 2013, 49)

Weber’s research method

“Meaning is a causal component of action since we cannot act unless we know the meaning of other acts .”
(Morrison, 2006, 278)

To understand society, Weber argued that we need to understand both structural and action approaches.
3 levels of sociological explanation
1. Structural causes (conditions and resources outside individuals: the division of labor, capitalism,
urbanization, industrial revolution, etc.)
1. Verstehen (human understanding, a key word in Weber’s theory of social action)
2. Social action (An action that takes into account of other individuals or is influenced by them)
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Structural causes Verstehen Social actions

Changes in social structures can You need to understand the 1. Traditional Action
lead to changes in people's world meaning before you can 2. Affectual Action
view and therefore their understand the cause of the 3. Vale Rational Action
behavior. action. 4. Instrumental Action

Action (≠behavior): the form of activity in which an actor attaches a subjective meaning to an act
(Morrison, 2006)
Verstehen: an interpretive understanding of subjective motivations (Calhoun, 2007)
1. Direct understanding (Aktuelles Verstehen) : Understanding of actions in the world through
observation (You just observe what people are doing.)
e.g. Your friend is eating cookies.
2. Explanatory understanding (Eklarendes Verstehen) : understanding of actions in a complex of meaning
attached to it; understanding an action within a context
e.g. Your friend is a young doctor. She has been working long hours at a hospital everyday, including night
shifts. She barely has time for herself. She is eating cookies in those rare moments when she could spare a
minute to put something into her body. What does this mean?

4 Type of social action (Morrison, 2006, 279-280)

1. Traditional action: an action in which an actor reacts automatically to habitual stimuli which guide
behavior in a course which has been repeatedly followed
(An actor doesn’t have to imagine a goal.)
2. Affectual action: an action that satisfies a need for “revenge, sensual gratification, devotion,
contemplative bliss, or the working off of emotional tensions”
(Again, an actor does not necessarily have to imagine a goal and a means to achieve that goal.)
3. Value rational action: an action that is oriented to a value; an action that puts into practice an actor’s
conviction of what seems to be required by “duty, honor, the pursuit of beauty, a religious call, personal
loyalty or the importance of some cause no matter in what it consists, regardless of possible costs to
themselves”
(An actor has a good reason to take an action, and the meaning of action does not lie in the achievement of
a result, but in carrying out the specific type of action for its own sake.)
4. instrumentally rational action (instrumental action): an action in which “the ends, the means and the
secondary ends are all rationally taken into account and weighed”
(In instrumental action, an actor is free to choose the means of action purely in terms of producing
outcomes or achieving goals.)
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Rationality: an orientation to reality which systematically assesses means and ends for efficacy

The Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism

“in the early stages of capitalist development, there was no market mechanism that enforced self-
sacrificing, risk-taking behavior. Weber wanted to understand why individuals would become
entrepreneurs. … ” (Seidman, 2013, 50)

Weber’s thesis: Protestantism played a key role in the cultural origins of capitalism.
(Weber focused on cultural reasons instead of structural reasons of capitalist development.)

Weber’s view of the Protestant Ethics: Two new ideas developed from the Protestant ethics and became a
capitalist spirit.
Vocation (or calling from Luther) : Occupation/employment. An individual can be described as having a
vocation when he or she attaches a strong sense of purpose to his or her work. (Swedberg and Agevall,
2020)
Predestination (from Calvin): It was impossible for Calvin’s followers to know whether they belonged to
the selected few or now. The response to this situation was an attempt by Calvinists to control their
behavior and search for “signs” that they were not among the damned. (Swedberg and Agevall, 2020)

“the spirit” of capitalism (Morrison, 2006)

1. The devotion to amassing wealth and profit beyond the personal needs of the individual
2. The commitment to unrelieved hard work coupled with self-denial
3. The avoidance of the use of wealth for purposes of personal enjoyment
☆Compare Weber’s analysis of the spirit of capitalism with the spirit of the Enlightenment
(magical→religious→scientific).

Rationalization and the disenchantment of the world

Rationalization: the process by which nature, society, and individual action are increasingly mastered by
an orientation to planning, technical procedure and rational action (Morrison, 2006)

Rationalization of economic interests: Rationalization or a means-to-an-end thinking leads to the decline

of magical thinking and religious beliefs.
“Man is dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life . Economic
acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as the means of satisfaction of his material needs” (Weber
1930, 53)

McDonaldization: the process whereby the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate
more and more sectors of American society as well as the rest of the world . The term is coined by the US
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sociologist George Ritzer. It refers to the irresistible dissemination of business systems associated with the
US fast food industry. These systems aimed to achieve intense control over workers and customers, and the
supply of cheap, standardized, but quality products in pleasant surroundings.
The nature of the McDonaldization process may be delineated by outlining its five basic dimensions:
efficiency, calculability, predictability, control through the substitution of technology for people, and,
paradoxically, the irrationality of rationality. (Ritzer, 2016)

Disenchantment of the world : a process through which people no longer explain the world and their
cosmos with the help of magical forces (such as demons and angels), but instead rely on science and
rational forms of thinking (Swedberg, 2020)
(i.e. Things which are mythical become meaningless.)

Why the rise of a working-class revolution is complicated

Weber’s view of society: Society is made up of different social spheres: political, legal, economic, and
religious.
(c.f. Marx believed that all aspects of society, politics, law and religion, were expressions of underlying
economic forces.)

“The Protestant work ethic would give way to motivations based on survival, status, and power.” (Seidman,
2013, 51)

Class, status and party

Class: similar to Marx’s notion of class
Status: social ranks determined by positive or negative estimations of honour. (Woodman and Threadgold,
2021)
Party: a group oriented to the acquisition of power. Parties are always directed towards the
accomplishment of a particular goal. (Woodman and Threadgold, 2021)

Power: the likelihood that an individual realizes his or her will in a situation of social action (Morrison,
2006)
1. According to Weber, there are more than two classes
 Propertied class (ruling class owners of property)
 The intelligentsia (professionals such as lawyers and doctors, highly educated white-color
workers)
 The petty bourgeoise ( small business owners, family farms, self-employed tradesman, shop-
keepers)
 The working class (divided between well-organised occupations such as miners and skilled traders
and factory workers and casual workers)
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 The unemployed

2. People can organize politically around status groups and values.

e.g. “old money” versus “new money”

Domination: the probability that a specific command will be obeyed by a given group of persons by virtue
of the legitimate right of a ruler to issue commands (Morrison, 2006)
Legitimacy: the extent to which officials, groups and individuals actively acknowledge the validity of a
ruler in an established order and the right of a ruler to issue commands
Authority: Legitimate power (legitimate domination) in which people believe that the differences in power
are just and proper—that is, people view a leader as being entitled to give orders.

Max Weber identified three types of authority: traditional, charismatic, and legal-rational.
Traditional authority: A type of authority that relies on the sanctity of time-honored norms that govern the
selection of someone to a powerful position (chief, king, queen) and that specify responsibilities and
appropriate conduct for the individual selected.
Charismatic authority: type of authority that derives from the exceptional and exemplary qualities of the
person who issues the commands.
Legal-rational authority: type of authority that rests on a system of impersonal rules that formally
specifies the qualifications for occupying a powerful position.
e.g. How you would get other people to do what you want?

The rise of bureaucracy

“Weber distinguishes the “patrimonial” bureaucracy of China from the modern Western bureaucratic state
by its essentially personalistic character.” (Seidman, 2013, 52)

Bureaucracy: the most efficient and (formally) rational way in which human activity can be organized
(Swedberg and Agevall, 2020)

Bureaucratic organization Patrimonial organization

Power and authority positions persons
exist in
Positions are filled by recruitment, based on objective criteria appointment

Clients are treated without emotions with emotions

Relationships are impersonal personal

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The link between bureaucracy and democracy

“Modernization also entails political democratization (e.g., the spread of civil rights, political parties,
representational political bodies) which, in turn, requires bureaucratic administrative structures to sustain
it. Gradually, but inevitably, bureaucracy spreads to virtually every social sphere – the economy,
government, political parties, church, welfare, military, education, and science.” (Seidman, 2013, 56)

The iron cage: a metaphor that refers to the harsh capitalist order that the individual is forced to live in,
with its unrelenting demand that he or she will work hard and methodically. A prison that is impossible to
break out of. (Swedberg and Agevall, 2020)
Weber’s view of science, truth and values
“The scientist, says Weber, never approaches reality with a blank mind. Reality is always filtered through a
conceptual lens. We always know the world from a particular standpoint. A standpoint involves a series of
assumptions about the nature of the world. … He was convinced that values inform science in its problem
selection, concept formation, methodological criteria (e.g., economy, precision, consistency), and
interpretive function. Moreover, if broad social interests and values are the prime movers of social
scientific change, perhaps Weber should have surmised, with his usual sober and disillusioning candor,
that the idea of science as a pure sphere of knowledge is itself an illusion of the modern West!” (Seidman,
2013, 59-60)
References
Calhoun, C., et al. (2007). Classical Sociological Theory, Blackwell Publishing.
Illouz, E. (2012). Why Love Hurts: A sociological explanation, Polity
Morrison, K. (2006). Marx, Durkheim, Weber: Formations of Modern Social Thought, Sage.
Seidman, S. (2013). Contested Knowledge: Social Theory Today, Wiley Blackwell.
Swedberg, R. and O. Agevall (2020). The Max Weber Dictionary, Stanford University Press.
Ritzer, G. and J. Stepnisky (2016). Sociological theory, Sage publications.
Woodman, D. and S. Threadgold (2021). This Is Sociology, Sage.