![]() Nor were these sentiments merely an expression of youthful zeal. ‘A class-conscious bourgeois’ was how he once described himself. In his first main study, which looked at the situation of agricultural laborers in eastern Germany, Weber attacked Polish migrant workers, denouncing “the Slavic invasion which would mean a cultural regression of major proportions.” Weber’s right-wing nationalism permeates his sociological theories. the broad masses of our people should become aware that the expansion of Germany’s power is the only thing which can ensure for them a permanent livelihood. As a young man, he joined the Evangelical Social Congress and the Pan German League, described by one writer, Michael Stürmer, as “the voice of Germany’s most vicious nationalism.” He was an imperialist who advocated colonization, claiming that “A class-conscious bourgeois” was how Weber once described himself. However, such a separation is not possible in reality, because Weber’s right-wing nationalism permeates his sociological theories. Writers like Wolfgang Mommsen later situated Weber’s political and social theories in the context of early twentieth-century Germany, but the dominant approach to Weber deemed this context to be irrelevant to the timeless insights that he had produced. Universities taught his theories in an abstract fashion, referring to “Society” in general rather than specific formations. One way this sociological consensus was achieved was through the construction of Weber as an apolitical figure. Wright Mills, whose book The Power Elite pointed to the interlinking of military, corporate, and political elites in US society, also saw Weber as the originator of key insights into stratification and domination. This assessment of Weber’s contribution was not just confined to the Right. And instead of offering naive hopes of a better world, he had warned against the danger of bureaucratization. As an alternative to Marx’s economic determinism, he had put forward a multifactor understanding of causation. According to this perspective, Weber had rejected Marx’s supposedly crude, two-class model of modern society in favor of a multiclass model. Max Weber owes his current reputation primarily to Talcott Parsons, the leading theoretician of US sociology during the Cold War.Ĭrucially, Weber was awarded the prize for sophistication in his debate with Marx. ![]() They selected texts that formed the core of Weber’s contribution to sociology. Editors eliminated earlier references in Economy and Society to “the flotsam of African and Asiatic savages” from the armies of Germany’s enemies during World War I. Sociology can only proceed from the action of one or more separate individuals and must therefore adopt strictly individualistic methods.Īfter the intervention by Parsons, US academics “Americanized” Weber to make him appear as a value-free sociologist. it is mainly to exorcise the specter of collective conceptions which still lingers among us. Hayek regarded Weber as an important ideological forerunner of his because his methodological individualism drew on the Austrian school of economics. In 1939, Parsons received a letter from the Austrian neoliberal ideologue Friedrich von Hayek, who urged him to revise a translation of Economy and Society. Parsons saw the German thinker as having been engaged in a fight “against the positivist tendencies of Marxian historical materialism” by emphasizing the role of values. Weber owes his current reputation primarily to Talcott Parsons, the leading theoretician of US sociology during the Cold War. In doing so, they downplayed the partisan political views that shaped Weber’s thinking and the shortcomings of his social theory. ![]() Opponents of Marxism in the social sciences seized upon Weber as an alternative to Marx in explaining how societies function and change. Weber’s subsequent rise to a position of extraordinary importance did not merely stem from a belated recognition of his intellectual virtues. ![]() Between 19, his key book, Economy and Society, sold just two thousand copies in his native Germany. Few, however, are aware of how he came to occupy such a preeminent place in its canon.Īfter all, Weber’s influence was minimal in the immediate decades after his death. Almost every student who studies sociology has heard of Max Weber. ![]()
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