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Max Weber and the Contemporary Political Crisis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Talcott Parsons
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Extract

We are living in a time when men most urgently feel the need of intellectual clarification of the social and political situation in which they stand. By no means all the great masters of social thought who have made important potential contributions to such clarification are sufficiently well known, even among social and political scientists. One of these is Max Weber who, in the English-speaking world, is known more as a sociologist of religion and a methodologist of social science than as an interpreter of the political scene. Weber's scope of interest in institutional problems, with specific reference to the modern Western world, was, however, exceedingly broad, and a substantial part of his work was centered o nthe field of political institutions, particularly in their relations to the economic order and to other aspects of the social structure.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , January 1942 , pp. 61 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1942

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References

1 Most directly documented in the volume Gesammelle Polilische Schriften.

2 Most fully developed in Wirtschaft und Ceselhchaft, Part I, Chapter III and Part III, both under the title “Typen der Henschaft.” An English translation of Part I of this work, edited by the present writer, is soon to be published by Wm. Hodge and Co., Ltd.. London.

3 See especially the three volumes of Cesammelte Aufsatze zur Religionssoziologie.A fairly full secondary account of this phase of Weber's work is given in the present writer's Structure of Social Action, Chapters XIV and XV.

4 Wirtschaft uni Cesellschafi, Part I, Chapter I, Sec. 12.

5 Ibid. Part I, Chapter I, Sec. 17.

6 For the definitions of these types see Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Part I, Chapter III, Sec. 2. They are also briefly characterized in “Politik als Beruf” in Cesammelte Politische Schriften, pp. 398–399.

7 Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Part I, Chapter III, Seen 3–5. The fullest secondary discussion is in Goldhamer and Shils. “Types of Power and Status,” American Journal of Sociology, 09 1939Google Scholar.

8 Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Part I, Chapter III, Sec. 6–9.

9 In Wirischaft und Cesellschafi, Part I, Chapter III, Sec. 10–12.

10 In especially, Wirlschafl und Gesellschaft, Part I, Chapter II“Die Soziologischen Grundkategorien des Wirtschaftens” as well as various other parts of the work.

11 On power-systems see especially “Deutschland unter den Europäischen Weltmächten.” Politische Schriften, pp. 73–93.

12 In particular see his “Agrarverhältnisse im Altertum” in Cesammelle Aufsãalze zur Sozial und Wirtschafisgeschichte.

13 On Weber's view of the modern legal system see especially his “Rechtssoziologie,” Wirtschafl und Cesellschafl, Part II, Chapter VII.

14 This field is one which is only lately taking full shape. There is considerable evidence of the relation of social disorganization to religious movements in anthropological studies of the impact of white culture on primitive societies, and on the background of various important historical religious movements such as certain aspects of Early Christianity, Hazidism, Methodism. See Nock, A. D., Conversion, Israel Kazis', Hazidhm (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University)Google Scholar, Nottingham, E. K., Methodism and the Frontier. Also an as yet incomplete doctor's dissertation (Harvard University)Google Scholar by Theodore Sprague on Jehovah's Witnesses.