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\"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.\"-- Provided by publisher.

This volume analyses the critique of instrumental reason from Weber through to the present day. Weber constitutes the starting point because he represents a key moment in political and theoretical transition. It explores how Habermas moves away from a Weberian-Marxist version of social theory towards a more optimistic approach.

Based on analyses of the essays written by Max Weber on China, India, ancient Judaism and also on the dispersed material about Islam, Eastern Christianity and Occidental Christianity, this book examines the economic ethics of Asian and Christian traditions and their corresponding legal systems. Drawing also on Weber's methodology (particularly the concept of adequate causation), the author reveals that the nature of Asian religions as well as the nature of customary and other not formally rational laws in Asian cultures could not lead to modern capitalism out of their own sources, although capitalism could be adopted from the outside. The culture of the Occident, upon which capitalism is based, is revealed to consist of a double rationalisation: the formal rationality of the exterior circumstances of life (administrative and legal) and the innerworldly practical rationality of the inner motivations of the Protestants, supported by a goal-oriented rational technology.-- Provided by Publisher.

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. Stephen Kalberg is Associate Professor of Sociology at Boston University and Affiliate of the Center for European Studies, Harvard University, USA. He is author of 'Max Weber's Comparative Historical Sociology' and 'Max Weber Lesen', editor of 'Max Weber: Readings and Commentary on Modernity' and translator of 'Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism'. Contents: Introduction; Part I Reconstructing Major Themes: Introduction; Max Weber's types of rationality: cornerstones for the analysis of Rationalization processes in history; Should the 'dynamic autonomy' of ideas matter to sociologists?; Max Weber on the origin of other-worldly salvation religions and the constitution of groups in American society today; The past and present influence of world views: Max Weber on a neglected sociological concept. Part II Weber's Mode of Causal Analysis: Introduction; The perpetual and tight interweaving of past and present in Max Weber's sociology; Macro comparisons: precautions, possibilities, achievements and limitations; The theoretical framework and causal methodology. Part III Reconstructing Significant Developments from Weber's Oeuvre: the Rise and Expansion of Confucianism, the Caste System, and Monotheism: Introduction; The rise and expansion of Confucianism in China; The rise and expansion of the caste system in India; The rise and expansion of monotheism in ancient Israel. Part IV Utilizing Weber I: the Importance of Deep Culture: Introduction: The legacies of ascetic Protestantism and American uniqueness: the political culture of the United States; The cultural foundations of modern citizenship. Part V Utilizing Weber II: Multi-Causal and Contextual-Conjectural Analysis: Introduction; The origin and expansion of Kulturpessimismus: the relationship between public and private spheres in early 20th-century Germany; Culture and the location of work in contemporary Western Germany: a Weberian configurational and comparative analysis. Part VI Conclusion: Bringing Weber Back In: Appendices; References; Index.

Max Weber is widely regarded as one of the foundational thinkers of the twentieth century. But how did this reclusive German scholar manage to leave such an indelible mark on modern political and social thought? Max Weber in Politics and Social Thought is the first comprehensive account of Weber's wide-ranging impact on both German and American intellectuals. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Joshua Derman illuminates what Weber meant to contemporaries in the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany and analyzes why they reached for his concepts to articulate such widely divergent understandings of modern life. The book also accounts for the transformations that Weber's concepts underwent at the hands of émigré and American scholars, and in doing so, elucidates one of the major intellectual movements of the mid-twentieth century: the transatlantic migration of German thought.

One of the world's most celebrated theologians argues for a Protestant anti-work ethicIn his classicThe Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber famously showed how Christian beliefs and practices could shape persons in line with capitalism. In this significant reimagining of Weber's work, Kathryn Tanner provocatively reverses this thesis, arguing that Christianity can offer a direct challenge to the largely uncontested growth of capitalism.Exploring the cultural forms typical of the current finance-dominated system of capitalism, Tanner shows how they can be countered by Christian beliefs and practices with a comparable person-shaping capacity. Addressing head-on the issues of economic inequality, structural under- and unemployment, and capitalism's unstable boom/bust cycles, she draws deeply on the theological resources within Christianity to imagine anew a world of human flourishing. This book promises to be one of the most important theological books in recent years.

يعالج هذا الكتاب موضوع علم اجتماع فيبر حول الحضارات الغربية والشرقية وبالتالي يلقي الضوء على بعض الجوانب والقضايا الهامة في نطاق الدراسات الإسلامية وذلك ضمن دراسة تنطوي على ثلاثة عناصر أساسية الأولى تلخيص ما كتبه فيبر فعلا عن الإسلام والرسول صلى الله عليه وسلم والمجتمع الإسلامي وربط تعليقاته غير المكتملة في هذا الصدد باهتمامه الأوسع بالدين في الأبنية الاجتماعية المختلفة وكان ماكس فيبر قد اشتهر بدراسته عن البروتستانتية ونشأة الرأسمالية الأوروبية والتي عولجت خطأ باعتبارها دراسة تدعي بأن الكالفينية قد تسببت في وجود الرأسمالية وغالبا ما كان ينظر إلى دراسات فيبر باعتبارها ردا على أفكار كارل ماركس أو الماركسية على الأقل، ولكن التصور الذي تطرحه هذه الدراسة يسير تقريبا على عكس هذين الموقفين حيث سعى تيرنر هنا إلى توضيح أن الطبيعة الوراثية للمؤسسات الإسلامية السياسية هي التي أعاقت في رأي فيبر ظهور المقدمات الضرورية للرأسمالية وبالأخص القانون العقلاني وسوق العمالة الحر والمدن المستقلة والاقتصاد النقدي والطبقة البورجوازية.

This book is an in-depth interpretation of Max Weber as a political theorist of civil society. On the one hand, it reads Weber's ideas from the perspective of modern political thought, rather than the modern social sciences; on the other, it offers a liberal assessment of this complex political thinker without attempting to apologize for his shortcomings. Through an alternative reading of Weber's religious, epistemological and political writings, the book shows Weber's concern with public citizenship in a modern mass democracy and civil society as its cultivating ground. Kim argues Weber's political thought, thus recast, was deeply informed by Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and other German political thinkers and also reveals an affinity to the liberal-republican tradition best represented by Mill and Tocqueville. Kim has effectively resuscitated Weber as a political thinker for our time in which civic virtues and civil society have once again become one of the dominant issues.