Max Weber S Vision Of History

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1979.

Bringing together the author's major scholarly work on Weber over the last thirty years, Max Weber's Comparative-Historical Sociology Today addresses major themes in Weber's thought, whilst also examining the mode of analysis practised in his comparative-historical writings. By exploring Weber's concepts and procedures, the individual chapters seek to convey the rigor of his research strategies, demonstrating their uniqueness. In this light, this study proceeds to identify as incomplete and then reconstruct the analyses undertaken by Weber of the rise of Confucianism in China, the caste system in India, and monotheism in ancient Israel. The analysis then advances to the modern era, utilising Weber's research procedures to explain the origins of four independent phenomena: the singularity of the American political culture, the cultural foundations of modern citizenship, cultural pessimism (Kulturpessimismus) in nineteenth century Germany, and the 'location' of work in contemporary German society. A dialogue with a variety of recent major schools is pursued throughout this volume. Offering a rich examination of the major themes in Weber's sociology, alongside a reconstruction of his mode of analysis and application of his approach, this book will appeal to scholars around the world with interests in social theory, German and American societies, cultural sociology, political sociology, the sociology of knowledge, comparative-historical sociology, and the sociology of civilizations.

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.

This volume examines Max Weber’s pre-World War I thinking about bureaucracy. It suggests that Weber’s vision shares common components with the highly efficient Prussian General Staff military bureaucracy developed by Clausewitz and Helmuth von Moltke. Weber did not believe that Germany’s other major institutions, the Civil Service, industry, or the army could deliver world class performances since he believed that they pursued narrow, selfish interests. However, following Weber’s death in 1920, the model published by his wife Marianne contained none of the military material about which Weber had written approvingly in the early chapters of Economy and Society. Glynn Cochrane concludes that Weber’s model was unlikely to include military material after the Versailles peace negotiations (in which Weber participated) outlawed the Prussian General Staff in 1919.

This book explores the latest thinking about Max Weber and his continuing influence on theoretical and empirical interests today. Bringing together the work of leading scholars from a variety of disciplines, it illuminates Weber’s thought in a number of key areas, including the methodology and philosophy of social science, comparative religion, the rationalization process, political sociology, the sociology of law, and the Protestant ethic and the development of capitalism. An international collection that demonstrates the enduring importance of Weber’s thought to contemporary sociology and the discipline’s major concerns, The Routledge International Handbook on Max Weber will appeal to scholars in a range of disciplines, including sociology, social theory, politics, philosophy, law, and international relations.

A founder of contemporary social science, Max Weber was born in Germany in 1864. At his death 56 years later, he was nationally known for his scholarly and political writings, but it was the international reception of his oeuvre over the last forty years that has made him world-famous. "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism," "The Economic Ethics of the World Religions" and his magnum opus, "Economy and Society," with its treatment of the relations of economics, politics, law and religion, belong to the great achievements of 20th-century social science. The groundwork for the posthumous Weber reception was laid by Weber's widow Marianne, a well-known feminist writer, who followed up her edition of his collected works with one of the greatest biographies in a generation that produced many important accounts of itself. Although unavailable in English until a decade ago, the importance of Marianne Weber's 1926 work had been widely understood. Sociologist Robert A. Nisbet called it "a moving and deeply felt biographical memoir." Historian Gerhard Masur cited the book as "the foundation of all further inquiries into Max Weber's life and influence." Beginning with Max's ancestry and early years, Marianne Weber guides us through his life as student, young lawyer, scholar and political writer, quoting liberally from his voluminous correspondence. Her account of his nervous breakdown after 1897, which curtailed his academic career but ultimately strengthened his creative energies, provides deep insight into some of the personal tensions that troubled him to the end. In addition to her perceptive personal and intellectual life before the First World War, describing many scholars, social reformers, politicians and literary figures within and beyond the famous Heidelberg circle of the Webers. The new introduction by Guenther Roth situates Marianne Weber's own role in the contemporary setting and discusses the current state of Weber research and of the international Weber reception. Harry Zohn is chairman and professor of the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages at Brandeis University. He is the editor and translator of a dozen books, including The World is a Comedy. Guenther Roth is professor of sociology at the University of Washington. He co-edited Weber's Economy and Society and co-authored Scholarship and Partisanship (with Reinhard Bendix) and Max Weber's Vision of History (with Wolfgang Schluchter).

This volume clearly communicates that Weber’s influence is of great significance to the history of social science, and to appreciating the theoretical work of other social scientists in the modern age. Its insightful and timely publication comprises topical and innovative work discussing Weber in a range of historical and contemporary questions including: the controversy surrounding the Da Vinci code; the charismatic role of martyrs; the nuclear weapons strategy in a post-cold-war age and the affinity between Hindu belief systems and disenchanted computer science. Max Weber Matters illustrates the multidisciplinary and continued relevance of Weber’s work and will be of interest to scholars across a range of disciplines, including historians, sociologists, political scientists and social theorists.

This wide-ranging and assured book, written by one of the leading Weber scholars in the English-speaking world, shows us the many sides of Max Weber. The book provides an authoritative guide to the current burning issues in social theory, religion, rationalization, the body, modernization and capitalism. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in Weber's claim that the aim of sociology must be to explain what is distinctive about the times in which we live.