Max Weber as an Economist: Revisiting Max Weber’s Legacy 100 Years after His Passing

2020 ◽  
Vol 140 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-222
Author(s):  
Marek Louzek
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Ideal Type ◽  
Methodological Individualism ◽  
The Third ◽  
Value Neutrality ◽  
The Ideal

This article presents Max Weber as an economist and as a social scientist. Weber’s relations to economics, philosophy and sociology are discussed. Max Weber has more in common with economists than it might seem at first sight. His principle of value neutrality has become the foundation of the methodology of social sciences, including economics. The second point shared by Max Weber with standard economics is methodological individualism. The third point which a modern economist can learn from Max Weber is the concept of the ideal type.

scholarly journals Energy research and social sciences: thinking outside the box

2021 ◽  
Vol 250 ◽  
pp. 07001
Author(s):  
Wadim Strielkowski
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Renewable Energy ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Renewable Energy Sources ◽  
Energy Sources ◽  
Energy Research ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face

This paper aims at explaining the universality and broadness of the research in energy studies. Specifically, it wants to show that the energy research is not a solely engineering or natural sciences field and how it can be done in social sciences. The paper draws some relevant examples including energy research in literature and poetry, history, religion, art, as well in other social sciences and humanities. In general, it becomes apparent that energy research can boast vast depths and angles that are worth exploring for any social scientist. Given the key importance of energy research in the third decade of the 21st century and the worldwide focus on the renewable energy sources, electrification of transport and heating in the face of the threatening global warming and climate change, it seems relevant to focus on researching the perspectives and paradigms for the traditional and renewable energy sources in the 21st century using the toolbox of the social sciences.

Writing History: Problems of Neutrality

2020 ◽  
pp. 87-126
Author(s):  
Donald Bloxham
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Moral Evaluation ◽  
Important Case ◽  
Fourth Section ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Social ◽  
Value Judgements ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Value Neutrality ◽  
Made In

Part 2 Writing History: Problems of Neutrality This Part of the book challenges widespread assumptions that, where it matters, it is possible or desirable for historians to avoid value judgements and the sorts of evocative descriptions that imply or could reasonably be expected to prompt such judgements. The first section distinguishes between History and particular traditions within the social sciences in order to show why the ‘rules’ about moral evaluation can be different in these differing endeavours. The second section establishes the widespread existence of evocations and evaluations in the very labelling and description of many historical phenomena, suggesting not just how peculiar works of History would look in their absence of evocations and appraisals, but that their absence would often distort what is being reported. These arguments are key to the distinction made in the third section about rejecting value neutrality as a governing ideal while insisting on truthfulness as a historian’s primary duty. The fourth section highlights the nature of most historical accounts as composites of a range of perspectives as it considers questions of context, agency, outcome, and experience. The composition gives rise to the overall impression, evaluative or evocative, provided by the work. The fifth section brings together a number of the chapter’s themes as it examines an important case of the historian’s judgement—judgement about the legitimacy of power in past worlds where legitimacy could be as contested as often today.

Value-Relations and General Theory: Parsons’ Critique of Weber

1980 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Lassman
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Value Relevance ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Talcott Parsons ◽  
The Social ◽  
Value Neutrality ◽  
Value Relations

AbstractTalcott Parsons and Max Weber, despite the complexities and uncertainties of the latter’s work, represent two competing approaches to the nature of sociological theory. Despite his reliance upon many aspects of the work of Weber, Parsons’ critical remarks on the problems of value-relevance and value-neutrality can be interpreted in this light. The methodological views of both theorists are tied to differing views of the development of western society and of the role of the Social Sciences. Both are haunted by the spectre of relativism.

How to use Max Weber’s ideal type in sociological analysis

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 181-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Swedberg
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Ideal Type ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Alfred Schutz ◽  
Sociological Analysis ◽  
Practical Guide ◽  
Alfred Schütz ◽  
The Ideal

The main problem that is addressed in this article is how to use Max Weber’s concept of the ideal type in concrete sociological research. The ideal type was invented by Weber more than a century ago, but has rarely been used in empirical research. One reason for this is that Weber was not very clear on what is meant by an ideal type. Another is that students of Weber’s work have not been very interested in presenting the ideal type in such a way that it can be used. Instead, it has been surrounded by an air of difficulty and unresolved theoretical questions, something that has made the average social scientist confused and unable to use Weber’s concept in his or her own research. In this article, it is argued that despite existing difficulties, we know enough today about the ideal type to use it effectively. A practical guide for how to construct as well as use an ideal type is provided. As a background to this argument, the development of the ideal type in Weber’s work is presented, drawing on a suggestion by Alfred Schutz that Weber originally designed this concept with history in mind, but then switched to sociology.

Schoenberg, Boulez, and Twelve-Tone Composition as “Ideal Type”

2001 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 585-625 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arved Ashby
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Ideal Type ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Twelve Tone ◽  
Pierre Boulez ◽  
Scientific Problem Solving ◽  
History Of ◽  
Compositional Practice

Abstract Twelve-tone music is often defined empirically, in generalized terms of compositional practice. I contend that historians and theorists have neglected a heuristic perspective of twelve-tone composition. One heuristic model proves particularly helpful: the “ideal type,” first described by social scientist Max Weber in “Objectivity' in Social Science and Social Policy” (1904). Weber's ideal type can help to move the discussion away from scientistic ideas of problem solving and overly abstract invocations of “the twelve-tone idea,” and toward what Weber would call the “cultural significance” of twelve-tone methodologies (a move in line with influential revisions to the historiography of scientific “problem solving” proposed by Thomas Kuhn and Imre Lakatos). Differences of perspective between Arnold Schoenberg and the young Pierre Boulez, at about the time the latter first arrived at Darmstadt, highlight the difficulty in establishing a coherent history of twelve-tone compositional practice (as opposed to a heuristic “ideal type”). The anonymous typescript “Komposition mit zwöölf Töönen,” linked with Schoenberg's Viennese circle of the early 1920s, reveals how the early twelve-tone “discovery” described by Schoenberg is, no less than the later descriptions by Boulez, an a posteriori construct—or, as Kuhn and Lakatos might say, an ideological colonization of past practice.

Robert K. Merton et al.,

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward C. Page
Keyword(s):  
Social Stratification ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Ideal Type ◽  
Historical Comparative ◽  
Class And Status ◽  
Bureaucratic Behavior ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Ideal

This article offers a critique ofA Reader in Bureaucracy, by Robert K. Merton et al. It examines four themes in the papers and debates in the book, many of which were central to the study of bureaucracy in the 1950s and 1960s: the debate with Max Weber over his historical-comparative ambitions of the ‘ideal type’ of bureaucracy, formality and informality, the relationship between social stratification and bureaucracy, and the problematization of authority. The discussion outlines Weber’s perspectives on bureaucracy, particularly the ideal type of bureaucracy, his preconditions of bureaucracy, and the bureaucratizing tendencies in modern society. The chapter then turns to the problematic link between social class and status and bureaucracy, together with the role of formal rules and hierarchy in explaining bureaucratic behavior. It concludes by assessing the influence of sociology in general, and of theReaderin particular, on contemporary public policy studies.

Pierre Bourdieu on the Verstehende Soziologie of Max Weber

2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 232-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Curtis Hutt
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
Ideal Type ◽  
The West ◽  
Ancient Judaism ◽  
Mary Douglas ◽  
The Ideal

AbstractPierre Bourdieu was influenced by and critical of the work of Max Weber. In articles written in the early 1970's on Weber's analysis of prophets and priests in ancient Judaism, Bourdieu questioned key elements of Weber's verstehende soziologie including his predecessor's privileging of the conceptual over the non-conceptual in the understanding of human behavior and utilization of the ideal type "charisma." Bourdieu, at the same time, extended Weber's work on religious specialists and the evolution of the religious field in the West. In closing, I compare Bourdieu's advice to the Weberian sociologist of religion with that offered by Mary Douglas and Jon Elster.

scholarly journals Persepsi tokoh p0litik terhadap model pemilukada gubernur

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-127
Author(s):  
Fajar Nugraha
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Public Participation ◽  
Ideal Type ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
General Election ◽  
The Third ◽  
Direct Election ◽  
The Ideal

the conduction of election was aimed at electing people and local representatives as well as forming democratic, strong, and legitimate  government in order to pursuit national goals based on Indonesian Constitution (UUDNRI 1945). Related to general election, there was a discourse on the model of governor election. The first, governor should elected by local (provincial) council. Second model will be direct election. The third, the governor should be assigned by President. It was a case study with qualitative approach. Based on the field result, it was perceived that the ideal type of choosing governor was direct election model. It was believed that it would trigger or stimulate a democratic local government and people-oriented development, throw away political partai oligarki. It was also in accordance to public participation on decision making.

Melancholy

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julius Rubin
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Ideal Type ◽  
Religious Ethics ◽  
Lived Religion ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
Experience Emotion ◽  
The Ideal

Max Weber's concept of religious ethos proves important to the study of religion and emotion. Through the concept of religious ethos, Weber developed a structural phenomenology of religious experience, emotion, personality, and life-order. In the spirit of Max Weber, this article investigates a variety of religious ethics and their affinity with melancholy. These ethics include inner-worldly asceticism (Protestant evangelical pietism), other-worldly asceticism (Christian monasticism), and inner-worldly mysticism (apophaticism and quietism among Christian mystics, in Hasidism, and in Sufism). The discussion proceeds using Weber's concept of the ideal type, where each religious ethos is articulated with clarity and precision, in a logically consistent form that accentuates or exaggerates certain aspects of religious experience and expression. In this manner, ideal types create “logical utopias” that are not intended realistically to describe or to depict, photographically, the lived religion of peoples in concrete settings.

scholarly journals O modelowaniu deformacyjnym. Maxa Webera koncepcja typów idealnych

1970 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 33-52
Author(s):  
Lidia Godek
Keyword(s):  
Max Weber ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
Ideal Type ◽  
Empirical Content ◽  
Basic Form ◽  
Empirical Reality ◽  
Life Phenomenon ◽  
The Ideal

The article aims to reconstruct the idealization procedure understood as a deformational means of concept modelling in the theory proposed by Max Weber. The ideal type represents the basic form of the deformational transformation. Deformational modelling refers to a strategy of conscious and deliberate distortion of an object of empirical reality in varied and consequently counterfactual ways. The method essentially seeks to account for a concept by highlighting significant characteristics of the empirical content of investigated socioeconomic phenomena at the expense of their actual exemplification. The ideal type is a deformed means of representing a selected real-life phenomenon or object, oriented towards the fulfilment of specific cognitive goals while taking into account all methodological conditions involved in the process of its construction. By reference to Leszek Nowak’s concept of “cross of spiritual powers”, it is possible to determine the type of deformational modelling presented by the concept under discussion. Based on the analysis presented in the article, it was concluded that the ideal type represents quantitative deformation (positive potentialization).

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