The Max Weber Dictionary: Key Words and Central Concepts - Softcover

Swedberg, Richard; Agevall, Ola

Softcover

ISBN 10: 080478342X ISBN 13: 9780804783422

Verlag: Stanford University Press, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

Max Weber is one of the world's most important social scientists, but he is also one of the most notoriously difficult to understand. This revised, updated, and expanded edition of The Max Weber Dictionary reflects up-to-the-moment threads of inquiry and introduces the most recent translations and references. Additionally, the authors include new entries designed to help researchers use Weber's ideas in their own work; they illuminate how Weber himself thought theorizing should occur and how he went about constructing a theory.

More than an elementary dictionary, however, this work makes a contribution to the general culture and legacy of Weber's work. In addition to entries on broad topics like religion, law, and the West, the completed German definitive edition of Weber's work (Max Weber Gesamtausgabe) necessitated a wealth of new entries and added information on topics like pragmatism and race and racism. Every entry in the dictionary delves into Weber scholarship and acts as a point of departure for discussion and research. As such, this book will be an invaluable resource to general readers, students, and scholars alike.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Richard Swedberg is Professor of Sociology at Cornell University. His publications include The Art of Social Theory (2014) as well as Max Weber and the Idea of Economic Sociology (2000).Ola Agevall is Professor of Sociology at Linnaeus University in Sweden. He is the author of A Science of Unique Events: Max Weber's Methodology of the Cultural Sciences (1999) and The Career of Mobbing: Emergence, Transformation, and Utilization of a New Concept.

Richard Swedberg is Professor of Sociology at Cornell University. His publications include The Art of Social Theory (2014) as well as Max Weber and the Idea of Economic Sociology (2000). Ola Agevall is Professor of Sociology at Linnaeus University in Sweden. He is the author of A Science of Unique Events: Max Weber's Methodology of the Cultural Sciences (1999) and The Career of Mobbing: Emergence, Transformation, and Utilization of a New Concept.

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The Max Weber Dictionary

Key Words and Central Concepts

By Richard Swedberg, Ola Agevall

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2016 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8047-8342-2

Contents

Acknowledgments, 
How to Use This Dictionary, 
List of Abbreviations, 
The Max Weber Dictionary, 
References, 

CHAPTER 1

A

Abriß der universalen Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Outline of Universal Social and Economic History) See General Economic History

accountingSee calculation, capital accounting

acquisitive drive or instinct ([Erwerbstrieb) Weber was very critical of contemporary use of this concept to explain the emergence of capitalism, on grounds that one cannot deduce economic institutions (let alone a whole economic system) from a psychological concept (cf. CMW, 123–24; MSS, 88–89). The concept of acquisitive drive is "wholly imprecise and better not used at all," Weber says (ES, 1190–91).

See also capitalism

action (Handeln) The concept of action plays a central role in Weber's interpretive sociology. According to his definition of it in the first paragraph of Economy and Society, chap. 1, "sociology ... is a science concerning itself with the interpretive understanding of social action and thereby with a causal explanation of its course and consequences" (4; cf. CMW, 274; Weber [1913] 1981, 152).

"Action" is defined as behavior that is invested with meaning by the actor. It may be internal or external; the actor may do something, avoid doing something, or have something done to him or her. Action is "social" if it is oriented to other actors or to an order. If the element of meaning is absent, it is simply "behavior." This includes reactive behavior; and traditional action may come close to it.

According to Talcott Parsons, who made the first translation of chapter 1 of Economy and Society into English, "Verhalten [behavior] is the broader term referring to any behavior of human individuals ... [Handeln] refers to the concrete phenomenon of human behavior only in so far as it is capable of 'understanding', in Weber's technical sense, in terms of subjective categories" (Parsons in Weber 1947, 89). Social action is usually seen as the main category in Weber's sociology, but "order" (Ordnung) is also extremely important in it. According to a happy formulation by Stefan Breuer, "Weber's sociology is both a sociology of action and a sociology of order" (Breuer 2001a, 125).

In his 1913 essay "Über einige Kategorien der verstehenden Soziologie" ("On Some Categories of Interpretive Sociology"), Weber uses the German term Gemeinschaftshandeln (trans. as "communal action" in CMW, 484) for "social action," rather than soziales Handeln, as in Economy and Society, chap. 1.

See also behavior, interpretive sociology, meaning, order, orientation to others, social action, sociology, traditionalism

actual regularitiesSee uniformities

adaptation (Anpassung) This concept is not among the key sociological concepts inEconomy and Society, chap. 1, but it is often used by Weber in his work, typically together with its paired concept of selection (see s.v.). One of the studies that Weber was interested in having conducted refers in its title to both of these terms, "Selection and Adaptation (Choice and Course of Occupation) for the Workers of Major Industrial Enterprises" (Weber [1908] 1980).

In his analysis of Confucianism, Weber discusses its "adaptation to the world" (Weltanpassung; RC, 152). According to Claus Offe, "rules of selection for life chances and access to power lead [in Weber's work] to 'adaptation', that is, to formative effects which result from the efforts of actors to conform to the dominant rules of selection and to achieve or maintain their life chances" (Offe 2005, 54).

See Martin Albrow and Zhang Xiaoying, "Weber and the Concept of Adaptation, The Case of Confucian Ethics" (2014).

adequacy on the level of meaning (Sinnadäquanz)See causality

adequate causality (Kausaladäquanz)See causality

administration (Verwaltung) One of the great themes in Weber's sociology is that of administration, that is, organizations and their staffs, including bureaucracy.

In his general (interpretive) sociology as outlined in Economy and Society, chap. 1, Weber discusses organizations, including what he terms administrative organizations, i.e., organizations exclusively oriented to the administrative order, that is, to the order that regulates the actions of the staff, or administrative cooperation (Verwaltungsverband) (51–52).

Weber notes that what constitutes a staff has changed over history, from a few individuals assembled ad hoc to the modern bureaucratic staff. The main source of information on administrative staffs in Weber's work can be found in his writings on bureaucracy and domination (see esp. ES, 212–301, but also ES, 941–1211; EES, 99–108; GM, 295–300). If an organization has an administrative staff, it rests to some extent on domination (ES, 54).

The different types of staff that have existed throughout history have typically differed in experience, formal training, how they are paid, and what they are paid with. According to Weber, there has been always a continuous, latent struggle between chiefs and their staffs. The capacity of a chief to control his or her staff depends partly on whether it is paid in kind, with a salary, through a fief, and so on.

For Weber on public administration in the United States, see, e.g., Claus Offe, Reflections on America: Tocqueville, Weber and Adorno in the United States(2005), 58–60. For Weber's relationship to the administrative historian Otto Hintze, see Jürgen Kocka, "Otto Hintze and Max Weber: Attempts at a Comparison" (1987).

See also bureaucracy, domination, means of administration, organization or association, organization theory or organizational sociology

administrative meansSee means of administration

advantage (Chance) The German term Chance is used by Weber with two meanings, as "advantage" or "opportunity" and as "probability." For the former, see the entry for opportunity; and for the latter, probability.

adventurers' capitalism (Abenteurerkapitalismus) This type of capitalism has existed throughout history, according to Weber. It is typically irrational and speculative in nature; and it often aims at exploiting opportunities opened up by political forces. Adventurers' capitalism is usually immoral as well as traditionalistic in nature, and in many ways the opposite of the methodical, ethical, revolutionary type of modern rational capitalism on which The Protestant Ethic focuses (e.g., PE, 20, 58, 69, 76; cf., e.g., GEH, 289, 350).

Weber also notes that many of the types of capitalism that exist in the West today, especially financial capitalism, bear the mark of adventurers' capitalism (e.g., PE, 20). In terms of the typology of capitalism introduced in Economy and Society, chap. 2 (rational, political, and what may be termed commercial-traditional capitalism), adventurers' capitalism is most closely...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 080478342X
• ISBN 13: 9780804783422
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 449
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
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