The Max Weber Dictionary

Key Words and Central Concepts, Second Edition

Richard Swedberg, Ola Agevall

• Publisher: Stanford Social Sciences
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781503600225
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology
• Index: Social Sciences

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.

A

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

accounting See 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 regularities See uniformities

adaptation (Anpassung) This concept is not among the key sociological concepts in Economy 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 means See 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 related to political capitalism. What Weber calls robber capitalism (Raubkapitalismus) is also related to political capitalism and adventurers’ capitalism (e.g., PW, 89, GPS, 322).

Georg Simmel’s 1911 essay “Das Abenteuer” (“The Adventure”) inspired the term “adventurers’ capitalism” (PED, 119).

See also capitalism, economic superman, political capitalism

affectual action (social action that is affektuell) This is one of the four major types of social action in Weber’s general (interpretive) sociology, together with instrumentally rational action, traditional action, and value-rational action. It is a type of action that is determined by the actor’s emotions.

Affectual action is “determined by the actor’s specific affects and feeling states” (ES, 25). Weber adds that “action is affectual if it satisfies a need for revenge, sensual gratification, devotion, contemplative bliss, or for working off emotional tensions (irrespective of the level of sublimation)” (ibid.).

Like value-rational action, affectual action is carried out for its own sake, rather than for some result. Affectual action can have its origin in an uncontrolled reaction, and it thereby comes close to lacking the element of meaning (and hence to qualifying as “action” in Weber’s sense; cf. CMW, 274; Weber [1913] 1981, 152). It may also consist of a controlled release of emotion. Weber often groups together emotional factors with irrationality and error (e.g., ES, 6, 9).

The mother who loses control of herself and slaps her child because of bad behavior and the soccer player who loses his temper and hits another player exemplify affectual action (Aron 1970, 221).

An increasing amount of attention—and mainly critical—has recently been directed at Weber’s concept of affectual action and his view of emotions more generally. See, e.g., J. M. Barbalet, “Beruf, Rationality and Emotion in Max Weber’s Sociology” (2000), and id., Weber, Passion and Profits (2008).

See also body, emotions, social action

affinities See elective affinities

agency and structure See methodological individualism, social structure

Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations (“Agrarverhältnisse im Altertum,” trans. 1976) This book-length study originally appeared as an article in 1909 in Johannes Conrad’s Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften (for earlier and considerably shorter versions, see Weber 1897, 1898). Its main focus is on the social and economic structure of countries in antiquity, including Greece and Rome, as well as Egypt, Israel and Mesopotamia. Weber also addresses the extent to which the categories of modern economic analysis are applicable to precapitalist conditions.

The English edition of this work also contains Weber’s important essay “The Social Causes of the Decline of Ancient Civilization” (1896; see also Weber [1896] 1950, 1999).

According to Marianne Weber, Agrarian Sociology can be characterized as “a sort of sociology of antiquity—a historical analysis and conceptual penetration of all important structural forms of the social life of classical antiquity” (Marianne Weber [1926] 1988, 329). The word “sociology” does not appear in the original title in German, but Weber may well have defined himself primarily as a sociologist at the time when he wrote this work.

For a general discussion of Weber’s study, see, e.g., Arnaldo Momigliano, “The Instruments of Decline” (1977), and R. I. Frank, “Translator’s Introduction,” 7–33 in The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations. For the reception of this work during Weber’s lifetime, see, e.g., Dirk Käsler, Max Weber (1988), 199–200.

The definitive German texts of Weber’s writings on the subject are reprinted, with a valuable introduction, in MWG I/6 (2006).

“Agrarverhältnisse im Altertum” See Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations

alienation See depersonalization

Alltag See everyday life

America See United States

Amt See office

Amtscharisma (charisma of office) See charisma

analogy Weber was very interested in the role of analogies in social science and sometimes commented on their use by various scholars. He also traced the history of the analogy, arguing that the origin of analogical thinking is to be found in magic (ES, 407). Analogies have also for a long time been used in legal thought, according to Weber. The latter use inspired the idea of syllogism, and in this way helped to introduce formal reasoning into philosophy. Weber mainly writes about the analogy in his methodological writings, his sociology of religion, and his sociology of law (e.g., 17, 787, 976).

Memory is involved in analogy making; and Weber’s phenomenal memory clearly helped him construct structural similarities across time and social behavior. So presumably did his habit of taking notes on what he had read, a habit he had picked up already as a teenager (Marianne Weber [1926] 1988, 46). For a well-known analogy, as used by Weber in his own work, see the entry for elective affinities. For Weber’s critique of Simmel’s use of analo...