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Max Weber and the Making of Modernity

Max Weber and the Making of Modernity. Sociological Imagination and Investigation Lecture 8, Week 9. Weber’s Image of Society. Unlike Durkheim’s ‘organism’ or Marx’s ‘base and superstructure’, Weber’s image is of an endless historical stream, without a recurrent structure.

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Max Weber and the Making of Modernity

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  1. Max Weberand the Making of Modernity Sociological Imagination and Investigation Lecture 8, Week 9

  2. Weber’s Image of Society • Unlike Durkheim’s ‘organism’ or Marx’s ‘base and superstructure’, Weber’s image is of an endless historical stream, without a recurrent structure. • Of a tapestry, which agents weave and re-weave from what went before them and what they now confront (so the pattern changes). • Societies are in ceaseless flux and that flux is unique to each – but it does not defy generalizations. • Instead, through typological abstraction, he attempts to disengage generality from amidst specificity

  3. ‘The stream of immeasurable events flows endlessly towards eternity’

  4. The origins of Modernity are those of Capitalism Capitalism is more than a ‘material development’ (a new mode of production) it also requires a particular outlook (the ‘Spirit of Capitalism’) This is ‘instrumental rationality’ (Zweckrational) – a ‘means-ends thinking’, resulting in re-investing wealth not its enjoyment (unlike traditional, expressive or value-rational action) Thus, is concerned with explaining the (subjective) motivation of the early capitalists – what led them to reinvest rather than spending.

  5. Why not this (the Venetian Doge’s Palace)?

  6. But, rather, this?

  7. The ‘Ideal Type’ of the entrepreneur • Ideal Types are ‘abstractions’ – one-sided accentuations of the most important characteristics. No historical person necessarily conformed to it • The Ideal Type of the early capitalist aims to tell why he acted as he did –living simply, working hard, as a duty to God • Key finding: many early entrepreneurs (U.S.) influenced by Calvinist thought from Reformation, stressing the doctrine of PREDESTINATION

  8. Benjamin Franklin & Richard BaxterIn contrast to Bellini’s ‘Doge of Venice’

  9. The psychological anguish of the doctrine of Predestination • If salvation was pre-destined how could someone know he was ‘chosen’ (among elect)? • Weber argues that ‘worldly success’ was psychologically interpreted as a positive sign • The Protestant work ethic – lived out as a ‘calling’- was the missing motivational link explaining them acting with instrumental rationality • It provided the motivational ‘shoving power’ – but remained only a ‘peculiarly plausible hypothesis’

  10. What was the root of Instrumental Rationality? The studies of World Religions • Back-tracked through Ancient Hinduism, Confucianism & Judaism to answer this • Examining the ‘economic ethos’ of each • India & China were ‘traditional’ societies with traditionalistic & ‘other worldly’ religions • HINDUISM: ‘ A ritual law in which every change of occupation, every change of work technique, could result in ritual degradation is certainly not capable of giving birth to … capitalism.’ • TRADITIONALISM repulsed the instrumental rationality and calculation underpinning capitalism

  11. The prompt towards Rationality in Ancient Judaism • The Conundrum: how can the ‘chosen people’ be subject to such misfortunes? • Ones that broke up traditionalism: successive conquests by Assyria, Egypt & Babylon (latter two meaning exile → ‘diaspora’ = ‘scattering’) • The great Prophets gave answers – ‘theodicies of misfortune’ or ‘rational retrodictions’ – basically, the people had not kept the terms of the Covenant • Prophets ‘predicted’ what future behaviour could prevent recurrence? Rational as were judged on outcomes

  12. The Contest on Mount Carmel

  13. Relevance to Modernity • Rational thought passed into Christianity and surfaced in Reformation Protestantism (i.e. stress on ‘private judgement’, non-traditionalistic and unlike Catholic Magisterium (teaching authority) • Despite religion having been the midwife of capitalism, once developed, capitalism supplied its own justification (profit) and then fostered secular ‘instrumental rationality’ • Countries developing capitalism later than G.B. and U.S. did not need religion to play the same role

  14. The two Weberian features of Modernity • The ‘disenchantment of the Western World The spread of capitalism = triumph of ‘instrumental rationality’. Thereafter, religion and magic decline (secularization thesis) • The iron cage of Bureaucracy Bureaucracy and book-keeping indispensable to capitalism as a rational not a traditional way of management. Once there, it remains – even if combined with, say, State Socialism – and is the iron cage of modernity

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