Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology

Max Weber

University of California Press, 1978 - Business & Economics - 1469 pages

Max Weber's Economy and Society is the greatest sociological treatise written in this century. Published posthumously in Germany in the early 1920's, it has become a constitutive part of the modern sociological imagination. Economy and Society was the first strictly empirical comparison of social structures and normative orders in world-historical depth, containing the famous chapters on social action, religion, law, bureaucracy, charisma, the city, and the political community with its dimensions of class, status and power.

Economy and Status is Weber's only major treatise for an educated general public. It was meant to be a broad introduction, but in its own way it is the most demanding textbook yet written by a sociologist. The precision of its definitions, the complexity of its typologies and the wealth of its historical content make the work a continuos challenge at several levels of comprehension: for the advanced undergraduate who gropes for his sense of society, for the graduate student who must develop his own analytical skills, and for the scholar who must match wits with Weber.

When the long-awaited first complete English edition of Economy and Society was published in 1968, Arthur Stinchcombe wrote in the American Journal of Sociology: "My answer to the question of whether people should still start their sociological intellectual biographies with Economy and Society is yes." Reinhard Bendix noted in the American Sociological Review that the "publication of a compete English edition of Weber's most systematic work [represents] the culmination of a cultural transmission to the American setting...It will be a study-guide and compendium for years to come for all those interested in historical sociology and comparative study."

In a lengthy introduction, Guenther Roth traces the intellectual prehistory of Economy and Society, the gradual emergence of its dominant themes and the nature of its internal logic.

Mr. Roth is a Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. Mr. Wittich heads an economic research group at the United Nations.

Contents

• LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS: xxv
• PARLIAMENT AND GOVERNMENT IN A RECONSTRUCTED: xxix
• Feudalism Stdndestaat and Patrimonialism 1070: xxxi
• INTRODUCTION by Guenther Roth: xxxiii
• Sect Church and Democracy 1204: xxxiv
• BUREAUCRACY 956: xxxvi
• Hi THE PATRICIAN CITY IN THE MIDDLE AGES: xl
• Chapter XVI: xli
• PATRIARCHAL1SM AND PATRMON1ALISM 1006: lxii
• Notes 1296: lxiv
• The Structure of Economy and Society: lxvi
• Chapter 1: lxxxi
• FORMAL AND SUBSTANTIVE RATIONALIZATIONTHEOCRATIC: lxxxii
• POLITICAL COMMUNITIES 901: lxxxiii
• The Destruction of Patrician Rule Through the Sworn Confraternity 1301: xcviii
• THE CITY NONLEGITIMATE DOMINATION: xcix
• Parliament and Government in a Reconstructed Germany 1381: civ
• CONCEPTUAL EXPOSITION ChapterI: 1
• Basic Sociological Terms: 3
• The Definitions of Sociology and of Social Action: 4
• INDEX: 8
• The Maintenance of Patrimonial Officials Benefices in Kind: 10
• Acknowledgements: 13
• b Social Action: 22
• Types of Social Action: 24
• The Concept of Social Relationship: 26
• Usage Custom Selfinterest: 29
• Legitimate Order: 31
• Convention and Law: 33
• Tradition Faith Enactment: 36
• Conflict Competition Selection: 38
• Communal and Associative Relationships: 40
• Open and Closed Relationships: 43
• Representation and Mutual Responsibility: 46
• The Organization: 48
• Consensual and Imposed Order in Organizations: 50
• Administrative and Regulative Order: 51
• Enterprise Formal Organization Voluntary and Compulsory Association: 52
• Power and Domination: 53
• Political and Hierocratic Organizations: 54
• Notes: 56
• Chapter II: 61
• Sociological Categories of Economic Action: 63
• The Concept of Utility: 68
• Modes of the Economic Orientation of Action: 69
• Typical Measures of Rational Economic Action: 71
• Types of Economic Organizations: 74
• Media of Exchange Means of Payment Money: 75
• The Primary Consequences of the Use of Money Credit: 80
• The Market: 82
• Formal and Substantive Rationality of Economic Action: 85
• The Rationality of Monetary Accounting Management and Budgeting: 86
• The Concept and Types of ProfitMaking The Role of Capital: 90
• Calculations in Kind: 100
• Substantive Conditions of Formal Rationality in a Money Economy: 107
• Market Economies and Planned Economies: 109
• Types of Economic Division of Labor: 114
• Types of the Technical Division of Labor: 118
• Types of the Technical Division of LaborContinued: 120
• Social Aspects of the Division of Labor: 122
• Social Aspects of the Division of LaborContinued: 125
• The Appropriation of the Material Means of Production: 130
• The Appropriation of Managerial Functions: 136
• The Expropriation of Workers from the Means of Production: 137
• The Expropriation of Workers from the Means of Production Continued: 139
• The Concept of Occupation and Types of Occupational Structure: 140
• 24a The Principal Forms of Appropriation and of Market Relationship: 144
• Conditions Underlying the Calculability of the Productivity of Labor: 150
• Forms of Communism: 153
• Capital Goods and Capital Accounting 1 54: 154
• The Concept of Trade and Its Principal Forms: 156
• The Concept of Trade and Its Principal FormsContinued157: 157
• 29a The Concept of Trade and Its Principal FormsConcluded: 159
• Notes 939: 160
• The Conditions of Maximum Formal Rationality of Capital Accounting: 161
• The Principal Modes of Capitalistic Orientation of ProfitMaking: 164
• Currency Money: 166
• Restricted Money: 174
• Note Money: 176
• The Formal and Substantive Validity of Money: 178
• Methods and Aims of Monetary Policy: 180
• A Critical Note on the State Theory of Money: 184
• The NonMonetary Significance of Political Bodies for the Economic Order: 193
• The Financing of Political Bodies: 194
• Repercussions of Public Financing on Private Economic Activity: 199
• The Influence of Economic Factors on the Formation of Organizations: 201
• The Mainspring of Economic Activity: 202
• Notes 206: 206
• THE TYPES OF LEGITIMATE DOMINATION: 212
• The Three Pure Types of Authority: 215
• U LEGAL AUTHORITY WITH A BUREAUCRATIC ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF: 217
• The Pure TypeContinued: 220
• Monocratic Bureaucracy: 223
• Types of Patrimonial Codification 856: 236
• THE ROUTINIZATION OF CHARISMA: 246
• FEUDALISM STANDESTAAT AND PATRIMONIALISM 1070: 248
• FEUDALISM: 255
• Combinations of the Different Types of Authority: 262
• COLLEGIALITY AND THE DIVISION OF POWERS: 271
• The Functionally Specific Division of Powers: 282
• DIRECT DEMOCRACY AND REPRESENTATIVE ADMINISTRATION: 289
• Representation by the Agents of Interest Groups: 297
• Notes 954: 299
• Excursus on Collegiate Bodies and Interest Groups 994: 305
• THE ECONOMY AND SOCIAL NORMS: 311
• The Economy and Social Norms 3 11: 312
• The Economic Relationships of Organized Groups: 339
• The Origins of Discipline in War 11 50: 354
• Household Neighborhood and Kin Group: 356
• Household Enterprise and Oikos: 370
• Ethnic Groups: 385
• Religious Groups The Sociology of Religion: 399
• Canonical Writings Dogmas and Scriptural Religion: 457
• POLITICAL AND H1EROCRATIC DOMINATION 1158: 463
• Preaching and Pastoral Care as Results of Prophetic Religion: 464
• THE FORMAL QUALITIES OF REVOLUTIONARY: 469
• Aristocratic Irreligion versus Warring for the Faith: 472
• The French Civil Code 865: 480
• The Religious Disinclinations of Slaves Day Laborers and the Modern: 484
• The Differential Function of Salvation Religion for Higher and Lower: 490
• INDEX: 495
• Notes: 499
• The Religious Impact of Proletarian PettyBourgeois and Pariah: 507
• Elite and Mass Intellectualism in Medieval Christianity: 513
• Predestination and Providence: 522
• Notes: 529
• Salvation Through Good Works: 532
• The Certainty of Grace and the Religious Virtuosi: 538
• Mysticism versus Asceticism: 544
• The Decisive Differences Between Oriental and Occidental Salvation: 551
• SOTERIOLOGY OR SALVATION FROM OUTSIDE: 557
• Salvation Through Faith Alone and Its AntiIntellectual Consequences: 563
• Salvation Through Belief in Predestination: 572
• Familial Piety Neighborly Help and Compensation: 579
• Tensions and Compromises Between Ethics and Politics: 593
• Notes: 601
• The Tensions between Ethical Religion and Art: 607
• Jewish Rationalism versus Puritan Asceticism: 615
• The ThisWorldliness of Islam and Its Economic Ethics: 623
• Jesus Indifference Toward the World: 630
• Its Impersonality and Ethic Fragment: 635

About the author

Max Weber, a German political economist, legal historian, and sociologist, had an impact on the social sciences that is difficult to overestimate. According to a widely held view, he was the founder of the modern way of conceptualizing society and thus the modern social sciences. His major interest was the process of rationalization, which characterizes Western civilization---what he called the "demystification of the world." This interest led him to examine the three types of domination or authority that characterize hierarchical relationships: charismatic, traditional, and legal. It also led him to the study of bureaucracy; all of the world's major religions; and capitalism, which he viewed as a productof the Protestant ethic. With his contemporary, the French sociologist Emile Durkheim---they seem not to have known each other's work---he created modern sociology.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology; Volume 1 of Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology, Claus Wittich
• Author: Max Weber
• Editors: Guenther Roth, Claus Wittich
• Translated by: Ephraim Fischoff
• Edition: reprint, revised
• Publisher: University of California Press, 1978
• ISBN: 0520035003, 9780520035003
• Length: 1469 pages
• Subjects: Business & Economics / General; Social Science / Sociology / General