Review

Reviewed Work(s): Max Weber and the Modern Problem of Discipline by Tony Waters
Review by: Arpad Szakolczai
Source: Contemporary Sociology , January 2020, Vol. 49, No. 1 (January 2020), pp. 100-102
Published by: American Sociological Association

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26871027

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100 Reviews
Max Weber and the Modern Problem of
Discipline, by Tony Waters. Lanham, MD:
Hamilton Books, 2018. 117 pp. $70.00 cloth.
ISBN: 9780761870586.
ARPAD SZAKOLCZAI
University College Cork, Ireland
A.Szakolczai@ucc.ie
Tony Waters’s Max Weber and the Modern
Problem of Discipline is an important,
engaged, and engaging, but more than occa-
sionally quite frustrating, book. Its message
is simple: international or national, govern-
mental or non-governmental agencies that
attempt to help ‘‘undeveloped’’ countries to
progress into a fully modern status by apply-
ing the standard recipes or rather slogans of
‘‘best practice’’ are chasing rainbows. This
is because the condition of possibility for
success—discipline, as theorized by Max
Weber—is missing.
The central question is the nature of this
discipline, its sources and meaning. Waters
is right in asserting the centrality of disci-
pline for Weber’s ideas about modern ration-
alization and has the further merit of exca-
vating, based on his earlier book (Waters
and Waters 2015), Weber’s ‘‘habitus,’’ which
became, through Elias, a cornerstone of Bour-
dieu’s thinking. The development of the
modern economy, with labor organization,
just as the modern state and its bureaucracy,
assumes the discipline that became an
ingrained habitus in the West over long cen-
turies, even millennia—as Waters traces such
discipline back to Egypt and the Roman
Army (pp. 83–85).
Still, there are two shortcomings in
Waters’s account of Weber’s discipline. First,
in his second sentence, Waters argues that
‘‘Weber defines discipline as the intrinsic jus-
tification people use to submit to authority’’
(p. 1). This is not correct, as Weber’s empha-
sis, visible from Weber quotes in the book
(e.g., pp. 82 and 107), is rather on the fact
that such submission recurrently takes place.
Second, the book ignores religion or the
Church, though for Weber these were more
important than the military. The original jus-
tification of discipline, which increasingly
became secularized and taken for granted,
was—and could only have been—religious.
Contemporary Sociology 49, 1
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Even the term ‘‘habitus’’ is from St. Thomas
Aquinas, meaning the way a freely granted
divine grace becomes transformed into
a habit.
Here we arrive at the heart of the book’s
message, though also of its problems. The
central issue for Waters concerns justifying
the spread of such discipline, through the
modern economy and the state, on a global
scale. For economists, managers, and
workers of international organizations, such
justification is simple, based on presumably
natural and rational connections between
well-being and discipline: in order to become
developed, one must fall into the line of eco-
nomic rationality and bureaucratic disci-
pline; thus, stop being lazy and erratic.
Waters, familiar with actual realities in sever-
al countries, cannot buy this, arguing that the
acts of local peasants are rational, even often
disciplined, though in a different manner,
following traditional and not legal-rational
authority.
The question concerns the stakes of
switching from one type of rationality to
the other. This is a quite general issue, and
Waters rightly feels that even the best anthro-
pologically based studies shy away from
addressing it properly, accusing James Fer-
guson, Göran Hydén, and James Scott of
being not so much humble as wimpish, fail-
ing to draw the proper consequences of their
own work by hiding behind claims of non-
generalizability. Thus, one would expect that
in the last section of the book, entitled ‘‘A Grand
Theory of Weber’s Habitus and Discipline,’’
Waters would present his own ‘‘grand
theory’’—though not without some misgiv-
ings, as the refusal of ‘‘grand theorizing’’ has
its meaning. What is truly missing, and needed,
is an honest facing up to the real stakes
involved in modernizing transformations.
However, the ending of the book is anti-
cathartic. The concluding section is less
than two pages, hardly suitable for pre-
senting a ‘‘grand theory,’’ and its central mes-
sage is contained in two Weber quotes—one
offering a summary of Weber’s ideas about
the link between rationalization and disci-
pline, and the other evoking, for the fourth
time, the well-known passage from the end
of the Protestant Ethic about the ‘‘nothing-
ness’’ of mere specialists. The problem is

not only that this is not exactly unknown for
sociologists, but that Waters does not draw
the conclusions from his genuine insights
concerning the stakes of ‘‘modernization’’
and ‘‘development.’’ For this, he need only
have returned to his previous claims, about
the rise of modern mass discipline implying
destruction—whether in the way of capital-
ist labor markets or Stalinist collectivization
(p. 61). As formulated with particular poi-
gnancy in a section entitled ‘‘My Reasons
for Writing This Book’’: ‘‘I want the reader
to understand that destroying older worlds
is just that—destructive’’ (p. 13). Mass disci-
plining is not just education in the Enlight-
enment sense of elevating ‘‘people’’ out of
their oppression and ignorance, but literally
breaking all their social and cultural ties and
reorienting them toward the new global
mass society. It is this project that presum-
ably requires ‘‘justification,’’ which—as the
slogans of progress, development, and
well-being proved empty—it simply cannot
have.
Waters did a great service, among others to
sociologists, by laying bare the enormous and
unjustifiable price of global modernization—
which does not mean that it cannot ‘‘suc-
ceed.’’ As he rightly notes (pp. 14–15), the
project of modernization through bureau-
cratic disciplining does not address a ‘‘prob-
lem’’ that needs to be ‘‘solved’’—this way of
framing the question, reducing the complex-
ities of culture to problem-solving, only
exposes the limits of the ‘‘high modernist
world-view’’ (p. 7), held by bureaucrats,
managers, and technocrats who ‘‘do not real-
ly know themselves’’ (p. 12) and especially
are unable to realize the limits and the dog-
matic and slogan-like character of their
world-vision (p. 3). Thus, not surprisingly,
as he rightly notices in a footnote, the homog-
enization into a global mass society, darling
project of bureaucratic managerial techno-
crats and media intellectuals, is increasingly
resisted even in the advanced world (fn. 6,
p. 99)—though this is not without its own
grave problems. It is unfortunate that Waters
does not offer a more comprehensive conclu-
sion to his book.
Without imposing a different perspective
on the book, rather working from inside, I
offer three suggestions about how the book
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Reviews 101
could have been better wrapped up. First,
there is no good reason why perspectives
compatible with Weber’s, even briefly men-
tioned in the book (pp. 12–13, 17–18, 98),
like Foucault’s and Elias’s, were not dis-
cussed in some detail. The last sentence of
the book says that ‘‘Nothing has changed,’’
implying that there is no need to add any-
thing to Weber’s diagnosis; but this just can-
not be true, and it risks reducing Weber’s
ideas to a mere slogan.
Second, the book relies on studies by
anthropologists on Burma and Congo, hard-
ly making any reference to Tanzania and
Thailand, areas Waters is more familiar
with. Finally, and closely supporting the first
point, Waters’s exclusive reliance on Weber’s
tripartite terminology of power is problemat-
ic. ‘‘Traditional’’ is just an omnibus category;
the traditional-modern dichotomy that
Waters accepts in a rather simplified manner,
almost reducing Weber to Tönnies, is sheer
dualistic thinking, among other things con-
flating ‘‘traditional’’ and ‘‘feudal.’’ A further
illustration is the promising but unsatisfying
evocation of Kafka (pp. 87–91), whose func-
tionaries are declared, without a reason giv-
en, ‘‘inherited from feudalism.’’ Similarly,
the term ‘‘charismatic’’ is problematic, espe-
cially as paired in concrete contexts with
references to ‘‘traditional’’ modalities of
rule. Most contemporary rulers mentioned
in the book are neither traditional (whatever
that could mean concretely) nor charismatic,
but rather use an odd combination of means
and techniques, many very modern, while
others are indeed old, even archaic, recalling
the anthropological figure of the ‘‘trickster.’’
Weber’s work offers a crucial reference point
for tackling such issues. But to argue that all
we have to do is to return to Weber, as noth-
ing has changed since, is not sufficient.
Still, and in spite of its shortcomings, the
book deserves a wide reading and should
also be read by academic sociologists, whose
deep-seated inner convictions about the actu-
ality of evolutionary and the necessity of rev-
olutionary changes it might help to problem-
atize. ‘‘People,’’ in most parts of the world, do
not want to ‘‘progress’’ and ‘‘develop,’’ nor
even ‘‘unite,’’ but rather wish to be left in
peace and in a way ‘‘alone’’—not in the sense
of solitary confinement by mechanistic
Contemporary Sociology 49, 1
102 Reviews
discipline, rather in the everyday sense of
‘‘leave me alone.’’
Reference
Waters, Tony, and Dagmar Waters, eds. 2015.
Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society: New
Translations on Politics, Bureaucracy, and Social
Stratification. New York: Palgrave.
Others’ Milk: The Potential of Exceptional
Breastfeeding, by Kristin J. Wilson. New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press,
2018. 296 pp. $27.95 paper. ISBN:
9780813593838.
SHANNON K. CARTER
University of Central Florida
skcarter@ucf.edu
In Others’ Milk: The Potential of Exceptional
Breastfeeding, Kristin J. Wilson centers the
breastfeeding/nursing experiences of indi-
viduals whose practices may be considered
marginal in contemporary western societies.
This includes parents and other caregivers
who engage in peer breast milk sharing,
queer and transgender parents who partici-
pate in breastfeeding or chestfeeding, exclu-
sive pumpers, those who engage in ‘‘extend-
ed breastfeeding’’ by breastfeeding toddlers
or young children, black women who are
the first in their families or communities to
breastfeed, and anyone else who self-
identifies as an ‘‘exceptional breastfeeder.’’
Wilson’s focus on marginalized breast-
feeding practices is contextualized within
the broader doctrines of the United States
and similar western societies that idealize
breastfeeding as not only the optimal form
of nutrition for babies, but as a central ele-
ment of good mothering—a prototype based
on a white, cisgender, heterosexual, middle-
class ideal that is nearly impossible for even
the most privileged mothers to achieve.
Wilson hopes that centering marginalized
breastfeeding practices—what she calls
‘‘exceptional breastfeeding’’—will expand
societal definitions of what counts as breast-
feeding, thereby shifting whose caregiving
activities are valued within current societal
standards.
Contemporary Sociology 49, 1
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The first chapter of the book, ‘‘Nursing is
Public,’’ highlights the ways that breast-
feeding is political, including the current def-
initions of what counts as breastfeeding and
what does not, who are the normative sub-
jects expected to engage in it, and under
what conditions it should occur. The chapter
contextualizes the study within social sci-
ence literature that, on the one hand, illus-
trates the strict written and unwritten rules
about breastfeeding that portray breast-
feeding as an individual practice, yet, on
the other hand, facilitates social criticism of
mothers regardless of how they breastfeed
(which may be too short, too long, too fre-
quent, too infrequent, too public, and so on)
and excludes many parents and caregivers
who engage in feeding breast milk. Wilson
explains that the concept ‘‘others’ milk’’ (as
opposed to ‘‘mother’s milk’’) highlights the
social nature of breastfeeding, includes indi-
viduals other than just mothers as breast-
feeders, and expands definitions of what
constitutes breastfeeding.
The following five chapters report on the
central themes that characterize exceptional
breastfeeders’ experiences. Chapters Two
and Three explain how individuals come to
be exceptional breastfeeders in the first place
and how and why they persist. Wilson dem-
onstrates that becoming an exceptional
breastfeeder is typically a response to an ordi-
nary situation—the need to feed a baby with-
in a cultural model that overwhelmingly
defines human milk as superior to artificial
substitutes. The decision to breastfeed entails
a variety of challenges that must be navigat-
ed, including managing anxieties over the
quality and quantity of breast milk, judgment
from loved ones, and social stigma associated
with breastfeeding in general and especially
in public. Wilson shows that exceptional
breastfeeders engage in what she calls ‘‘adap-
tive breastfeeding,’’ defined as creative solu-
tions utilized to persist with exceptional
breastfeeding. Adaptive breastfeeding can
entail the use of consumer products such as
breast pumps or supplemental nursing sys-
tems, redefinitions such as responding to
stigma by defining one’s exceptional breast-
feeding as social activism or public educa-
tion, or resisting cultural preoccupation
with precision and measurement, instead