SOCIOLOGY 2111: OUTLINE--WEEK FOUR

MAX WEBER, 1864-1920

I. Background and life
A . Conflicts between his parents
B. Mental illness and limits on his teaching
C. Politics
D. Moral courage
E. Breadth of his scholarship: cross cultural and historical to an extreme

II. Basic approach to studying human society

A. Value-free sociology... willingness to face up to inconvenient facts, not use your professorship as a pulpit... not that the scientist has no values (Weber actually very active in German politics) but that his values never control his findings

B. Verstehen: need to understand people's motivations from the inside, the meaning of their actions. In general, 4 major types of motivation in Weber's sociology:

1. Instrumental-rational action (formal rationality): using the most efficient means to optimize material interests.

2. Value-rational action: Using the most effective means to reach ideal goals.

3. Affective action: Emotional and impulsive action that is an end in itself.

4. Traditional: Doing things the way we've always done them (and the way our parents and grandparents did them); relatively unreflective and habitual

C. Ideal types. Abstractions that simplify reality, dependent on your intellectual project...not timeless... thus sociology, while working to be objective, is also a reflection of current trends and understandings... "capitalism" or "bureaucracy" may not be terribly useful as concepts for understanding, for example, the 22nd century

III. WEBER'S APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL STRATIFICATION

"HISTORY IS MADE BY GROUPS ACTING ON THEIR INTERESTS, BUT THOSE INTERESTS MAY BE IDEAL AS WELL AS MATERIAL."

IN OTHER WORDS, GROUPS FORM AND COMPETE AS OFTEN BASED ON RELIGION OR RACE OR ETHNICITY AS BASED ON ECONOMIC POSITION (THOUGH THE TWO MAY BE RELATED)

A. SOCIAL CLASSES: DEFINED BY MARKET POSITION... BROADER THAN MARX'S DEFINITION BUT RECOGNIZES MARX'S CONTRIBUTION... Notice that this gives us a better handle on executives and professionals than Marx's scheme... these people are part of an upper or upper middle class group by virtue of valuable and relatively rare expertise they have accumulated.

B. STATUS GROUP: DEFINED BY CULTURE (CORE VALUES, LIFESTYLE)..."Every typical component of the life fate of men that is determined by a specific, positive or negative, social estimation of honor." Involves restrictions on social relationships and therefore normally take the shape of a "community," unlike social class. Status distinctions may be mutual, with each group maintaining its honor and superiority, or may be transformed into caste distinctions, which is actually the most normal form taken by ethnic distinctions. Includes religious, race, ethnic groups. the Puritans a good example in the 17th century, the Jews of Eastern Europe in the late 19th century, African Americans in the 1950s (and still?)

C. POLITICAL PARTY: JOIN TOGETHER WITH GOAL OF INFLUENCING DISTRIBUTION OF POWER

COMMUNIST PARTY IN SOVIET UNION, TAMMANY HALL IN NEW YORK CITY

IV. Video: "The American Dream at Groton"

How would Weber's analysis of stratification enrich our understanding of Groton?

V. WEBER'S LIFE PROJECT: EXPLAIN THE RISE OF MODERN INDUSTRIAL CIVILIZATION IN THE WEST AND HOW IT ACHIEVED WORLD DOMINION

A. THE PROTESTANT ETHIC AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM

1. The Puritans as a status group... a prime example of his contention that status groups make history, just as much as social classes. What was the the Puritan concept of how people should live? What differentiated them from other groups in terms of values and lifestyle?. How did their religious beliefs and values give them a particular affinity for successful business practices in the newly emerging capitalist system? Why would this book be viewed as a critique of Marx? What motivated people in their worklife in the period preceding capitalism?

a. Pre-capitalist economic motivations... traditional work and the round of religious holy days and family obligations... low prestige of work among the nobility... before capitalism can be created, you need to create the entrepreneur and the worker

b. Martin Luther: Work as a calling

c. John Calvin: Predestination and the anxiety about salvation that it produced... the Puritan "solution"... worldly success, accompanied by an ascetic life style that glorifies God, the best evidence of being "saved."

d. Repudiation of magical control of the supernatural... nothing we do can change God's plans and purposes... this attitude helps make possible the beginnings of science

e. Impact in the present day... this set of economic motivations becomes an "iron cage" rather than a "light cloak on the shoulders of the saints" (as one Puritan prescribed)

1)Linked technical and economic conditions of machine production... the system now produces the kind of people it needs and Weber is afraid we are on the way to becoming "specialists without spirit," "sensualists without heart.

2) Benjamin Franklin as the embodiment of "the capitalist spirit?" "Poor Richard's Almanac" described by one of my previous students as "all common sense but sometimes hard to do."