sociology midterm

I Weber defines sociology as a science concerned with the interpretive understanding of social action.

I Social action is meaningful; actors act for reasons and it is up to sociologists to try to interpret and understand those reasons.

I Weber argues that it is useful to assume that people act rationally—that is, that they try to achieve certain goals by choosing appropriate means of achieving them.

I Then when we observe actions that appear to deviate from rationality, we can try to understand what sort of actions they are.

I But Weber cautions that this does not mean (a) that rational action is more common than other types of action; or (b) that acting rationally is a good thing.

I Weber argues that when we try to understand what people do, we can only come up with hypotheses.

I This is because (a) we cannot look into people’s heads, (b) even if we could, sometimes people do not themselves understand why they are doing what they are doing, and (c) there may be many factors that contribute to why someone is doing what they are doing, only some of which the actor is conscious of.

I Weber argues that sociology is probabilistic, not deterministic. I There are no sociological laws, only probabilities.

I If we state that all Protestants become businesspeople, we are dealing with a law. Finding one exception would invalidate the law.

I If we state that Protestants are more likely to become businesspeople, we are dealing with a probability. Finding some exceptions to the rule will not necessarily overturn the relationship.

I Weber argues that sociology should take individual people as its units of analysis.

I He believes that sociologists are fortunate because they have special insight into the behavior of people because they are people themselves!

I Weber cautions that we should not treat supra-individual entities like corporations or governments as actors because they do not have motivations. We should instead try to understand the motivations of the people who make them up.

I Weber argues that there are roughly four types of social action:

I Instrumentally rational: people act in rational and calculated ways towards others in order to achieve ends. (You come to class to get a good grade so you can get a good job.)

I Value-rational: people engage in some action because they believe it is valuable for its own sake. (You come to class because you believe in the intrinsic value of education.)

I Affectual: people act according to their emotions and feelings. (You come to class because you have developed an emotional attachment to some aspect of it.)

I Traditional: people act out of habit. (Somehow, you just keep ending up here without thinking much about it.)

I These are ideal types. This means that we are distinguishing them to gain conceptual clarity. It is unlikely that we will ever actually observe them in their pure or ideal form.

I Weber argues that social relationships can be open or closed. I This constitutes a non-market form of stratification. I People can bar others from economic association or competition based on non-economic characteristics, licensing, monopolies, and so forth.

Review

Review

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The Protestant Ethic

I Capitalism is not just an economic system.

I It is a way of viewing and being in the world.

I Weber is interested in how that way of being came about.

Weber starts with a correlation

I “business leaders and owners of capital, as well as the higher grades of skilled labour, and even more the higher technically and commercially trained personnel of modern enterprises, are overwhelmingly Protestant” (35)

I “Is it not possible that their commercial superiority and their adaptation to free political institutions are connected in some way with that record of piety which Montesquieu ascribes to them?” (45)

A common mistake: Weber is trying to explain the origins not of capitalism, but the spirit of capitalism

I He starts with passages from Benjamin Franklin: “Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings”

(53)

I “what is preached here is not simply a means of making one’s way in the world, but a peculiar ethic” (51)

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I “we have no intention whatever of maintaining such a foolish and doctrinaire thesis as that the spirit of capitalism...could only have arisen as the result of certain effects of the Reformation, or even that capitalism as an economic system is creation of the Reformation” (91)

I “On the contrary, we only wish to ascertain whether and to what extent religious forces have taken part in the qualitative and quantitative expansion of that spirit over the world...In view of the tremendous confusion of interdependent influences between the material basis, the forms of social and political organization, and the ideas current in the time of the Reformation, we can only proceed by investigating whether and at what points certain correlations between forms of religious belief and practical ethics can be worked out...we shall...clarify the manner and the general direction in which...the religious movements have influenced the development of material culture” (91)

I “First we will investigate whether (and in what ways) specific ‘elective affinities’ (Wahlverwandtschaften) between certain forms of religious belief and a vocational ethic (Berufsethik) are discernible. Doing so will allow us, whenever possible, to illuminate the type of influence that the religious movement, as a consequence of these elective affinities, had upon the development of economic culture. In addition, the general direction of this influence upon economic culture, as a consequence of these elective affinities, can be clarified”

(Kalberg translation 2009: 97)

I “Second, only after this influence has been satisfactorily established can an attempt be made to estimate to what degree the historical origin of the values and ideas of our modern life can be attributed to religious forces stemming from the Reformation, and to what degree to other forces”

(Kalberg translation 2009: 97)

Religion is only one cause of the spirit of capitalism

Religion is only one cause of the spirit of capitalism

Religion is only one cause of the spirit of capitalism

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The importance of ideas

I “The following study may thus perhaps in a modern way form a contribution to the understanding of the manner in which ideas become effective forces in history” (90)

I “In addition, it is necessary to have a frame of mind that emancipates the worker, at least during the workday, from a constant question: With a maximum of ease and comfort and a minimum of productivity, how is the accustomed wage nonetheless to be maintained? This frame of mind, if it manages to uproot the workers from this concern, motivates labor as if labor were an absolute end in itself, or a ‘calling.’ Yet this frame of mind is not inherently given in the nature of the species. Nor can it be directly called forth by high or low wages. Rather, it is the product of a long and continuous process of socialization” (new Kalberg Translation 86)

Traditional economic ethic ⇒ Protestant ethic

I Traditional economic ethic

I “A man does not ‘by nature’ wish to earn more and more money, but simply to live as he is accustomed to live and to earn as much as is necessary for that purpose...The opportunity of earning more was less attractive than that of working less” (60)

I Protestant ethic

I “at least one thing was unquestionably new: the valuation of the fulfillment of duty in worldly affairs to the highest form which the moral activity of the individual could assume” (80) I “Labour must, on the contrary, be performed as if it were an absolute end in itself, a calling. But such an attitude is by no means a product of nature. It cannot be evoked by low wages or high ones alone, but can only be the product of a long and arduous process of education” (62)

I “Surely it scarcely needs to be proven that the spirit of capitalism’s comprehension of the acquisition of money as a ‘calling’—as an end in itself that persons were obligated to pursue—stood in opposition to the moral sensitivities of entire epochs in the past” (94)

I “Remarkably, the real peculiarity in the ‘philosophy of avarice’ contained in this maxim is the idea of the credit-worthy man of honor and, above all, the idea of the duty of the individual to increase his wealth, which is assumed to be a self-defined interest in itself. Indeed, rather than simply a common-sense approach to life, a peculiar ‘ethic’ is preached here: its violation is treated not simply as foolishness but as a sort of forgetfulness of duty” (71)

I “The ability of mental concentration, as well as the absolutely eternal feeling of obligation of one’s job, are here most often combined with a strict economy which calculates the possibility of high earnings, and a cool self-control and frugality which enormously increase performance. This provides the most favorable foundation for the conception of labour as an end in itself, as a calling which is necessary to capitalism: the chances of overcoming traditionalism are greatest on account of the religious upbringing.”

Where does rationality come from?

I “Rationalism is an historical concept which covers a whole world of different things. It will be our task to find out whose intellectual child the particular concrete form of rational thought was, from which the idea of a calling and the devotion to labour in the calling has grown, which is, as we have seen, so irrational from the standpoint of purely eudamonistc self-interest, but which has been and still is one of the most characteristic elements of our capitalistic culture” (78)

From Lutheranism?

I No.

I Lutheranism introduces the idea of divine Providence, but I “The stronger and stronger emphasis on the providential element, even in particular events of life, led more and more to a traditionalistic interpretation based on the idea of Providence. The individual should remain once and for all in the station and calling in which God has placed him, and should restrain his worldly activity within the limits imposed by his established station in life” (85)

I “Thus the mere idea of the calling in the Lutheran sense is at best of questionable importance for the problems in which we are interested” (86)

Ascetic Protestantism: Calvinism?

I Yes.

I “We thus take as our starting-point in the investigation of the relationship between the old Protestant ethic and the spirit fo capitalism the works of Calvin, of Calvinism, and the other

Puritan sects” (89)

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