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Socialization (or socialisation) is a term used by sociologists, social psychologists, anthropologists, political scientists and educationalists to refer to the lifelong process of inheriting and disseminating norms, customs and ideologies, providing an individual with the skills and habits necessary for participating within his or her own society. Socialization is thus ‘the means by which social and cultural continuity are attained’.^[1][2]

Socialization describes a process which may lead to desirable, or 'moral', outcomes. Individual views on certain issues, such as race or economics, may be socialized (and to that extent normalized) within a society. Many socio-political theories postulate that socialization provides only a partial explanation for human beliefs and behaviors, maintaining that agents are not 'blank slates' predetermined by their environment.^[3] Scientific research provides some evidence that people might be shaped by both social influences and genes.^[4][5][6][7] Genetic studies have shown that a person's environment interacts with his or her genotype to influence behavioral outcomes^[8].

Theories[link]

Socialization is the means by which human infants begin to acquire the skills necessary to perform as a functioning member of their society, and is the most influential learning process one can experience.^[9] Unlike other living species, whose behavior is biologically set, humans need social experiences to learn their culture and to survive.^[10] Although cultural variability manifests in the actions, customs, and behaviors of whole social groups (societies), the most fundamental expression of culture is found at the individual level. This expression can only occur after an individual has been socialized by his or her parents, family, extended family, and extended social networks. This reflexive process of both learning and teaching is how cultural and social characteristics attain continuity.

Klaus Hurrelmann[link]

From the late 1980s, sociological and psychological theories have been connected with the term socialization. One example for this connection is the theory of Klaus Hurrelmann. In his book "Social Structure and Personality Development" (Hurrelmann 1989/2009), he develops the "Model of Productive Processing of Reality (PPR)." The core idea is that socialization refers to an individual's personality development. It is the result of the productive processing of interior and exterior realities. Bodily and mental qualities and traits constitute a person's inner reality; the circumstances of the social and physical environment embody the external reality. Reality processing is productive because human beings actively grapple with their lives and attempt to cope with the attendant developmental tasks. The success of such a process depends on the personal and social resources available. Incorporated within all developmental tasks is the necessity to reconcile personal individuation and social integration and so secure the "I-dentity." (Hurrelmann1989/2009: 42)

Lawrence Kohlberg[link]

Lawrence Kohlberg's (1981) theory of moral development studied moral reasoning(how individuals judge situations as right from wrong) within three stages of young adulthood. The first is the pre-conventional stage, where children experience the world in terms of pain and pleasure. Second, the conventional stage appears in the teen years of maturation. Teenagers learn to define right and wrong according to the desires of their parents and begin to conform to cultural norms resulting in a decrease of selfishness. The last stage of moral development is the post-conventional level where people move beyond society's norms and consider abstract ethical principles ^[11].

Carol Gilligan[link]

Carol Gilligan compared the moral development of girls and boys in her theory of gender and moral development. She claimed (1982, 1990) that boys have a justice perspective meaning that they rely on formal rules to define right and wrong. Girls, on the other hand, have a care and responsibility perspective where personal relationships are considered when judging a situation. Gilligan also studied the effect of gender on self-esteem. She claimed that society's socialization of females is the reason why girls' self-esteem diminishes as they grow older. Girls struggle to regain their personal strength when moving through adolescence as they have fewer female teachers and most authority figures are men ^[12].

Erik H. Erikson[link]

Erik H. Erikson (1902–1994) explained the challenges throughout the life course. The first stage in the life course is infancy, where babies learn trust and mistrust. The second stage is toddlerhood where children around the age of two struggle with the challenge of autonomy versus doubt. In stage three, preschool, children struggle to understand the difference between initiative and guilt. Stage four, pre-adolescence, children learn about industriousness and inferiority. In the fifth stage called adolescence, teenagers experience the challenge of gaining identity versus confusion. The sixth stage, young adulthood, is when young people gain insight to life when dealing with the challenge of intimacy and isolation. In stage seven, or middle adulthood, people experience the challenge of trying to make a difference (versus self-absorption). In the final stage, stage eight or old age, people are still learning about the challenge of integrity and despair ^[13].

George Herbert Mead[link]

George Herbert Mead (1902–1994) developed a theory of social behaviorism to explain how social experience develops an individual's personality. Mead's central concept is the self: the part of an individual's personality composed of self-awareness and self-image. Mead claimed that the self is not there at birth, rather, it is developed with social experience. Since social experience is the exchange of symbols, people tend to find meaning in every action. Seeking meaning leads us to imagine the intention of others. Understanding intention requires imagining the situation from the others' point of view. In effect, others are a mirror in which we can see ourselves. Charles Horton Cooley (1902-1983) coined the term looking glass self, which means self-image based on how we think others see us. According to Mead the key to developing the self is learning to take the role of the other. With limited social experience, infants can only develop a sense of identity through imitation. Gradually children learn to take the roles of several others. The final stage is the generalized other, which refers to widespread cultural norms and values we use as a reference for evaluating others.^[14]

Judith R. Harris[link]

Group Socialization.

Judith R. Harris (b. 1938) graduated magna cum laude with her masters degree in psychology from Harvard University. She received the George A. Miller Award for her proposed theory of group socialization (GS theory). This theory states that a child’s adult personality is determined by childhood and adolescent peer groups outside of the home environment and that “parental behaviors have no effect on the psychological characteristics their children will have as adults.” Harris proposes this theory based on behavioral genetics, sociological views of group processes, context-specific learning, and evolutionary theory^[15]. While Harris proposed this theory, she attributes the original idea to Eleanor E. Maccoby and John A. Martin both of whom are doctors at Standford University and wrote the chapter on family socialization found in the fourth edition of the Handbook of Child Psychology. After extensively reviewing the research conducted on parent-child interactions, Maccoby and Martin (1983) state that their findings suggest that parental behavior and the home environment has either no effect on the social development of children, or the effect varies significantly between children^[16].

Behavioral genetics suggest that up to fifty percent of the variance in adult personality is due to genetic differences^[17]. The environment in which a child is raised accounts for only approximately ten percent in the variance of an adult’s personality^[18]. As much as twenty percent of the variance is due measurement error^[19]. This suggests that only a very small part of an adult’s personality is influenced by factors parents control (i.e. the home environment). Harris claims that while it’s true that siblings don’t have identical experiences in the home environment (making it difficult to associate a definite figure to the variance of personality due to home environments), the variance found by current methods is so low that researchers should look elsewhere to try to account for the remaining variance^[15].

Harris also states that developing long-term personality characteristics away from the home environment would be evolutionarily beneficial because future success is more likely to depend on interactions with peers than interactions with parents and siblings. Also, because of already existing genetic similarities with parents, developing personalities outside of childhood home environments would further diversify individuals, increasing their evolutionary success^[15].

Types[link]

Primary socialization for a child is very important because it sets the ground work for all future socialization. Primary Socialization occurs when a child learns the attitudes, values, and actions appropriate to individuals as members of a particular culture. It is mainly influenced by the immediate family and friends. For example if a child saw his/her mother expressing a discriminatory opinion about a minority group, then that child may think this behavior is acceptable and could continue to have this opinion about minority groups.

Secondary socialization Secondary socialization refers to the process of learning what is the appropriate behavior as a member of a smaller group within the larger society. Basically, it is the behavioral patterns reinforced by socializing agents of society. Secondary socialization takes place outside the home. It is where children and adults learn how to act in a way that is appropriate for the situations they are in.^[20] Schools require very different behavior from the home, and Children must act according to new rules. New teachers have to act in a way that is different from pupils and learn the new rules from people around them. ^[21] Secondary Socialization is usually associated with teenagers and adults, and involves smaller changes than those occurring in primary socialization. Such examples of Secondary Socialization are entering a new profession or relocating to a new environment or society.

Anticipatory socialization Anticipatory socialization refers to the processes of socialization in which a person "rehearses" for future positions, occupations, and social relationships. For example, a couple might move in together before getting married in order to try out, or anticipate, what living together will be like.^[22] Research by Kenneth J. Levine and Cynthia A. Hoffner suggests that parents are the main source of anticipatory socialization in regards to jobs and careers.^[23]

Re-socialization Re-socialization refers to the process of discarding former behavior patterns and reflexes, accepting new ones as part of a transition in one's life. This occurs throughout the human life cycle. ^[24] Re-socialization can be an intense experience, with the individual experiencing a sharp break with his or her past, as well as a need to learn and be exposed to radically different norms and values. One common example involves re-socialization through a total institution, or "a setting in which people are isolated from the rest of society and manipulated by an administrative staff". Re-socialization via total institutions involves a two step process: 1) the staff work to root out a new inmate's individual identity & 2) the staff attempt to create for the inmate a new identity^[25]. Other examples of this are the experience of a young man or woman leaving home to join the military, or a religious convert internalizing the beliefs and rituals of a new faith. An extreme example would be the process by which a transsexual learns to function socially in a dramatically altered gender role.

Organizational socialization

Organizational Socialization Chart

Organizational socialization is the process whereby an employee learns the knowledge and skills necessary to assume his or her organizational role.^[26] As newcomers become socialized, they learn about the organization and its history, values, jargon, culture, and procedures. This acquired knowledge about new employees' future work environment affects the way they are able to apply their skills and abilities to their jobs. How actively engaged the employees are in pursuing knowledge affects their socialization process ^[27]. They also learn about their work group, the specific people they work with on a daily basis, their own role in the organization, the skills needed to do their job, and both formal procedures and informal norms. Socialization functions as a control system in that newcomers learn to internalize and obey organizational values and practices.

Group socialization Group socialization is the theory that an individual's peer groups, rather than parental figures, influences his or her personality and behavior in adulthood. ^[15] Adolescents spend more time with peers than with parents. Therefore, peer groups have stronger correlations with personality development than parental figures do. ^[28] For example, twin brothers, whose genetic makeup are identical, will differ in personality because they have different groups of friends, not necessarily because their parents raised them differently.

Entering high school is a crucial moment in many adolescent's lifespan involving the branching off from the restraints of their parents. When dealing with new life challenges, adolescents take comfort in discussing these issues within their peer groups instead of their parents.^[29] Peter Grier, staff writer of the Christian Science Monitor describes this occurrence as,"Call it the benign side of peer pressure. Today's high-schoolers operate in groups that play the role of nag and nanny-in ways that are both beneficial and isolating."^[30]

Gender socialization Henslin (1999:76) contends that "an important part of socialization is the learning of culturally defined gender roles." Gender socialization refers to the learning of behavior and attitudes considered appropriate for a given sex. Boys learn to be boys and girls learn to be girls. This "learning" happens by way of many different agents of socialization. The family is certainly important in reinforcing gender roles, but so are one’s friends, school, work and the mass media. Gender roles are reinforced through "countless subtle and not so subtle ways" (1999:76).

As parents are present in a child's life from the beginning, their influence in a child's early socialization is very important, especially in regards to gender roles. Sociologists have identified four ways in which parents socialize gender roles in their children: Shaping gender related attributes through toys and activities, differing their interaction with children based on the sex of the child, serving as primary gender models, and communicating gender ideals and expectations. ^[31]

Racial socialization Racial socialization has been defined as "the developmental processes by which children acquire the behaviors, perceptions, values, and attitudes of an ethnic group, and come to see themselves and others as members of the group".^[32] The existing literature conceptualizes racial socialization as having multiple dimensions. Researchers have identified five dimensions that commonly appear in the racial socialization literature: cultural socialization, preparation for bias, promotion of mistrust, egalitarianism, and other.^[33] Cultural socialization refers to parenting practices that teach children about their racial history or heritage and is sometimes referred to as pride development. Preparation for bias refers to parenting practices focused on preparing children to be aware of, and cope with, discrimination. Promotion of mistrust refers to the parenting practices of socializing children to be wary of people from other races. Egalitarianism refers to socializing children with the belief that all people are equal and should be treated with a common humanity.^[33]

Social Institutions[link]

In the social sciences, institutions are the structures and mechanisms of social order and cooperation governing the behavior of a set of individuals within a given human collectivity. Institutions are identified with a social purpose and permanence, transcending individual human lives and intentions, and with the making and enforcing of rules governing cooperative human behavior.^[34] Types of institution include:

The Family The family is the most important agent of socialization because it is the center of the child's life, as infants are totally dependent on others. Not all socialization intentional, it depends on the surrounding. The most profound affect is gender socialization, however the family also shoulders the task of teaching children cultural values and attitudes about themselves and others. Children learn continuously from the environment that adults create. Children also become aware of class at a very early age and assign different values to each class accordingly.^[35]

Religion Agents of socialization differ in effects across religious traditions. Some believe religion is like an ethnic or cultural category, making it less likely for the individuals to break from religious affiliations and be more socialized in this setting. Parental religious participation is the most influential part of religious socialization—more so than religious peers or religious beliefs ^[36].

Peer group A peer group is a social group whose members have interests, social positions and age in common. This is where children can escape supervision and learn to form relationships on their own. The influence of the peer group typically peaks during adolescence however peer groups generally only affect short term interests unlike the family which has long term influence.^[37]

Economic systems Socialization within an economic system is the process of learning the consequences of economic decisions. Socialization impacts decisions regarding "acceptable alternatives for consumption," "social values of consumption alternatives," the "establishment of dominant values," and "the nature of involvement in consumption" ^[38].

Legal systems Children are pressured from both parents and peers to conform and obey certain laws or norms of the group/community. Parents’ attitudes toward legal systems influence children’s views as to what is legally acceptable^[39]. For example, children whose parents are continually in jail are more accepting of incarceration.

Penal systems: The penal systems act as an agent of socialization upon prisoners and the guards. Prison is a separate environment from that of normal society; prisoners and guards form their own communities and create their own social norms. Guards serve as "social control agents" who discipline and provide security^[40]. From the view of the prisoners, the communities can be oppressive and domineering, causing feelings of defiance and contempt towards the guards^[41]. Because of the change in societies, prisoners experience loneliness, a lack of emotional relationships, a decrease in identity and "lack of security and autonomy"^[42]. Both the inmates and the guards feel tense, fearful, and defensive, which creates an uneasy atmosphere within the community ^[43].

Language People learn to socialize differently depending on the specific language and culture in which they live. A specific example of this is code switching. This is where immigrant children learn to behave in accordance with the languages used in their lives: separate languages at home and in peer groups (mainly in educational settings)^[44]. Depending on the language and situation at any given time, people will socialize differently ^[15].

Media The mass media are the means for delivering impersonal communications directed to a vast audience. The term media comes from Latin meaning, "middle," suggesting that the media's function is to connect people. Since mass media has enormous effects on our attitudes and behavior, notably in regards to aggression, it is an important contributor to the socialization process.^[10]

Some sociologists and theorists of culture have recognized the power of mass communication as a socialization device. Denis McQuail recognizes the argument:

… the media can teach norms and values by way of symbolic reward and punishment for different kinds of behavior as represented in the media. An alternative view is that it is a learning process whereby we all learn how to behave in certain situations and the expectations which go with a given role or status in society.

—McQuail 2005: 494)

Other uses[link]

To "socialize" may also mean simply to associate or mingle with people socially. In American English, "socialized" has come to refer, usually in a pejorative sense, to the ownership structure of socialism or to the expansion of the welfare state.^[45] Traditionally, socialists and Marxists both used the term "socialization of industry" to refer to the reorganization of institutions so that the workers are all owners (cooperatives) and to refer to the implementation of workplace democracy.^[46]

See also[link]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Chinoy, Ely (1961) Society: An Introduction to Sociology, New York: Random House.
• Clausen, John A. (ed.) (1968) Socialization and Society, Boston: Little Brown and Company.
• Hurrelmann, Klaus (1989, reissued 2009) Social Structure and Personality Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Johnson, Harry M. (1961) Sociology: A Systematic Introduction, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
• McQuail, Dennis (2005) McQuail’s Mass Communication Theory: Fifth Edition, London: Sage.
• Parsons, Talcott and Bales, Robert (1956) Family, Socialization and Interaction Process, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
• White, Graham (1977) Socialisation, London: Longman.
• Michael Paul Rhode, Smithsonian Dep. of Anthropology
• Bogard, Kimber. "Citizenship attitudes and allegiances in diverse youth." Cultural Diversity and Ethnic minority Psychology14(4)(2008): 286-296.
• Mehan, Hugh. "Sociological Foundations Supporting the Study of Cultural Diversity." 1991. National Center for Research on Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning.
• Robert Feldman, Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Child Development Third Edition

External links[link]

• Sprachsozialisation einiger nicht-europäischer Kulturen im Vergleich.

George H. Mead
Born	(1863-02-27)February 27, 1863 South Hadley, Massachusetts
Died	April 26, 1931(1931-04-26) (aged 68) Chicago

George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) was an American philosopher, sociologist and psychologist, primarily affiliated with the University of Chicago, where he was one of several distinguished pragmatists. He is regarded as one of the founders of social psychology and the American sociological tradition in general.

Biography[link]

Mead was born February 27, 1863 in South Hadley, Massachusetts. He was raised in a Protestant, middle class family comprising his father, Hiram Mead, his mother, Elizabeth (Billings) Mead, and his sister Alice. His father was a former Congregationalist pastor from a lineage of farmers and clergymen and who later held a special chair at Oberlin College’s theological seminary. Elizabeth Storrs Billings Mead taught for two years at Oberlin College and subsequently, from 1890 to 1900, served as president of Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts.^[1] In 1879, George Mead enrolled at Oberlin College, graduating in 1883 with a BA degree. After graduation, Mead taught grade school for about four months. For the following three years, he worked as a surveyor for the Wisconsin Central Rail Road Company.

In autumn 1887, Mead enrolled at Harvard University, where his main interests were philosophy and psychology. At Harvard, Mead studied with Josiah Royce, a major influence upon his thought, and William James, whose children he tutored. In 1888, Mead left Harvard after receiving only a B.A. and moved to Leipzig, Germany to study with psychologist Wilhelm Wundt, from whom he learned the concept of "the gesture," a concept central to his later work.

In 1891 he married Helen Kingsbury Castle (1860–1929), the sister of Henry Northrup Castle (1862–1895), a friend he met at Oberlin.^[2] Despite never finishing his dissertation, Mead was able to obtain a post at the University of Michigan in 1891. At the University of Michigan, Mead met Charles H. Cooley and John Dewey, both of whom would influence him greatly.^[3] In 1894 Mead moved, along with Dewey, to the University of Chicago, where he taught until his death. Dewey's influence led Mead into educational theory, but his thinking soon diverged from that of Dewey, and developed into his famous psychological theories of mind, self and society.^{[4]:352–353}

No detached philosopher, he was active in Chicago's social and political affairs; among his many activities include his work for the City Club of Chicago. He believed that science could be used to deal with social problems and played a key role in conducting research at the settlement house in Chicago.^[4]:353[5] Mead died of heart failure on April 26, 1931.

Writings[link]

In a career spanning more than 40 years, Mead wrote almost constantly and published numerous articles and book reviews in both philosophy and psychology. However, he did not publish any books. Following his death, several of his students put together and edited four volumes from records of Mead's social psychology course at the University of Chicago, his lecture notes, and his numerous unpublished papers. The four volumes are: Mead's 1930 Carus Lectures, The Philosophy of the Present (1932), edited by Arthur E. Murphy; Mind, Self, and Society (1934), edited by Charles W. Morris; Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century (1936), edited by Merritt H. Moore; and The Philosophy of the Act (1938), Mead's 1930 Carus Lectures, edited by Charles W. Morris.

Most notable among Mead's published papers are “Suggestions Towards a Theory of the Philosophical Disciplines” (1900);^[6] “Social Consciousness and the Consciousness of Meaning” (1910);^[7] “What Social Objects Must Psychology Presuppose” (1910);^[8] “The Mechanism of Social Consciousness” (1912);^[9] “The Social Self” (1913);^[10] “Scientific Method and the Individual Thinker”(1917);^[11] “A Behavioristic Account of the Significant Symbol” (1922);^[12] “The Genesis of Self and Social Control” [8] (1925); “The Objective Reality of Perspectives” [9] (1926);”The Nature of the Past” [10] (1929); and “The Philosophies of Royce, James, and Dewey in Their American Setting” [11] (1929).

In his lifetime, Mead published about 100 scholarly articles, reviews, and incidental pieces. Given its diversified nature, access to these writings is difficult. The first editorial efforts to change this situation date from the 1960s. In 1964, Andrew J. Reck collected twenty-five of Mead’s published articles in Selected Writings: George Herbert Mead. Bobbs-Merrill, The Liberal Arts Press. 1964. ^[13]Four years later, John W. Petras published George Herbert Mead. Essays on his Social Psychology, a collection of fifteen articles that included previously unpublished manuscripts.

More recently, Mary Jo Deegan published Essays in Social Psychology (2001), a book project originally abandoned by Mead in the early 1910s. In 2010, Filipe Carreira da Silva edited the G.H. Mead. A Reader, the most comprehensive collection to date. It includes thirty of Mead’s most important articles, ten of which previously unpublished.

The Mead Project^[14] at Brock University in Ontario intends to publish all of Mead's 80-odd remaining unpublished manuscripts.

Pragmatism and symbolic interaction[link]

Philosophers whose inspiration is more ontological, e.g. Heidegger, emphasize the uncovering of Being from the perspective of the experiencing human being, and how the world is revealed to this experiencing entity within a realm of things. Pragmatic philosophers like Mead focus on the development of the self and the objectivity of the world within the social realm: that "the individual mind can exist only in relation to other minds with shared meanings" (Mead 1982: 5).

The two most important roots of Mead's work, and of symbolic interactionism in general are the philosophy of pragmatism and social (as opposed to psychological) behaviorism (i.e.: Mead was concerned with the stimuli of gestures and social objects with rich meanings rather than bare physical objects which psychological behaviourists considered stimuli). Pragmatism is a wide ranging philosophical position from which several aspects of Mead's influences can be identified.

There are four main tenets of pragmatism: see Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy First, to pragmatists true reality does not exist "out there" in the real world, it "is actively created as we act in and toward the world. Second, people remember and base their knowledge of the world on what has been useful to them and are likely to alter what no longer "works." Third, people define the social and physical "objects" they encounter in the world according to their use for them. Lastly, if we want to understand actors, we must base that understanding on what people actually do. Three of these ideas are critical to symbolic interactionism:

1. the focus on the interaction between the actor and the world
2. a view of both the actor and the world as dynamic processes and not static structures and
3. the actor's ability to interpret the social world.

Thus, to Mead and symbolic interactionists, consciousness is not separated from action and interaction, but is an integral part of both.

Mead's theories in part, based on pragmatism and behaviorism, were transmitted to many graduate students at the University of Chicago who then went on to establish symbolic interactionism.^{[4]:347–350}

Social philosophy (behaviorism)[link]

Mead was a very important figure in 20th century social philosophy. One of his most influential ideas was the emergence of mind and self from the communication process between organisms, discussed in Mind, Self and Society, also known as social behaviorism.^[15] This concept of how the mind and self emerge from the social process of communication by signs founded the symbolic interactionist school of sociology. Rooted intellectually in Hegelian dialectics and process philosophy, Mead, like Dewey, developed a more materialist process philosophy that was based upon human action and specifically communicative action. Human activity is, in a pragmatic sense, the criterion of truth, and through human activity meaning is made. Joint activity, including communicative activity, is the means through which our sense of self is constituted. The essence of Mead's social behaviorism is that mind is not a substance located in some transcendent realm, nor is it merely a series of events that takes place within the human physiological structure. This approach opposed the traditional view of the mind as separate from the body. The emergence of mind is contingent upon interaction between the human organism and its social environment; it is through participation in the social act of communication that individuals realize their potential for significantly symbolic behavior, that is, thought. Mind, in Mead’s terms, is the individualized focus of the communicational process. It is linguistic behavior on the part of the individual. There is, then, no “mind or thought without language;” and language (the content of mind) “is only a development and product of social interaction” (Mind, Self and Society 191-192). Thus, mind is not reducible to the neurophysiology of the organic individual, but is emergent in “the dynamic, ongoing social process” that constitutes human experience (Mind, Self and Society 7).^[13]

For Mead, mind arises out of the social act of communication. Mead’s concept of the social act is relevant, not only to his theory of mind, but to all facets of his social philosophy. His theory of “mind, self, and society” is, in effect, a philosophy of the act from the standpoint of a social process involving the interaction of many individuals, just as his theory of knowledge and value is a philosophy of the act from the standpoint of the experiencing individual in interaction with an environment.^[13] Action is very important to his social theory and, according to Mead, actions also occur within a communicative process. The initial phase of an act constitutes a gesture. A gesture is a preparatory movement that enables other individuals to become aware of the intentions of the given organism. The rudimentary situation is a conversation of gestures, in which a gesture on the part of the first individual evokes a preparatory movement on the part of the second, and the gesture of the second organism in turn calls out a response in the first person. On this level no communication occurs. Neither organism is aware of the effect of its own gestures upon the other; the gestures are nonsignificant. For communication to take place, each organism must have knowledge of how the other individual will respond to his own ongoing act. Here the gestures are significant symbols.^[15] A significant symbol is a kind of gesture that only humans can make. Gestures become significant symbols when they arouse in the individual who is making them the same kind of response they are supposed to elicit from those to whom the gestures are addressed. Only when we have significant symbols can we truly have communication.^{[4]:356–357} Mead grounded human perception in an "action-nexus" (Joas 1985: 148). We perceive the world in terms of the “means of living” (Mead 1982: 120). To perceive food, is to perceive eating. To perceive a house, is to perceive shelter. That is to say, perception is in terms of action. Mead's theory of perception is similar to that of J. J. Gibson.

Mead the social psychologist argued the antipositivistic view that the individual is a product of society, or more specifically, social interaction. The self arises when the individual becomes an object to themselves. Mead argued that we are objects first to other people, and secondarily we become objects to ourselves by taking the perspective of other people. Language enables us to talk about ourselves in the same way as we talk about other people, and thus through language we become other to ourselves.^[16] In joint activity, which Mead called 'social acts', humans learn to see themselves from the standpoint of their co-actors. A central mechanism within the social act, which enables perspective taking, is position exchange. People within a social act often alternate social positions (e.g., giving/receiving, asking/helping, winning/losing, hiding/seeking, talking/listening). In children's games there is repeated position exchange, for example in hide-and-seek, and Mead argued that this is one of the main ways that perspective taking develops.

However, for Mead, unlike John Dewey and J. J. Gibson, the key is not simply human action, but rather social action. In humans the "manipulatory phase of the act" is socially mediated, that is to say, in acting towards objects humans simultaneously take the perspectives of others towards that object. This is what Mead means by "the social act" as opposed to simply "the act" (the latter being a Deweyan concept). Non-human animals also manipulate objects, but that is a non-social manipulation, they do not take the perspective of other organisms toward the object. Humans on the other hand, take the perspective of other actors towards objects, and this is what enables complex human society and subtle social coordination. In the social act of economic exchange, for example, both buyer and seller must take each other's perspectives towards the object being exchanged. The seller must recognize the value for the buyer, while the buyer must recognize the desirability of money for the seller. Only with this mutual perspective taking can the economic exchange occur (Mead was influenced on this point by Adam Smith).

Nature of the self[link]

A final piece of Mead's social theory is the mind as the individual importation of the social process. As previously discussed, Mead presented the self and the mind in terms of a social process. As gestures are taken in by the individual organism, the individual organism also takes in the collective attitudes of others, in the form of gestures, and reacts accordingly with other organized attitudes. This process is characterized by Mead as the "I" and the "Me". The "Me" is the social self and the "I" is the response to the "Me." In other words, the "I" is the response of an individual to the attitudes of others, while the "me" is the organized set of attitudes of others which an individual assumes.^[17] Mead develops William James' distinction between the "I" and the "me." The "me" is the accumulated understanding of "the generalized other" i.e. how one thinks one's group perceives oneself etc. The "I" is the individual's impulses. The "I" is self as subject; the "me" is self as object. The "I" is the knower, the "me" is the known. The mind, or stream of thought, is the self-reflective movements of the interaction between the "I" and the "me." These dynamics go beyond selfhood in a narrow sense, and form the basis of a theory of human cognition. For Mead the thinking process is the internalized dialogue between the "I" and the "me." Mead rooted the self’s “perception and meaning” deeply and sociologically in "a common praxis of subjects" (Joas 1985: 166) found specifically in social encounters. Understood as a combination of the 'I' and the 'me', Mead’s self proves to be noticeably entwined within a sociological existence. For Mead, existence in community comes before individual consciousness. First one must participate in the different social positions within society and only subsequently can one use that experience to take the perspective of others and thus become self-conscious.

Philosophy of science[link]

Mead is a major American philosopher by virtue of being, along with John Dewey, Charles Peirce and William James, one of the founders of pragmatism. He also made significant contributions to the philosophies of nature, science, and history, to philosophical anthropology, and to process philosophy. Dewey and Alfred North Whitehead considered Mead a thinker of the first rank. He is a classic example of a social theorist whose work does not fit easily within conventional disciplinary boundaries.

As far as his work on the philosophy of science, Mead sought to find the psychological origin of science in the efforts of individuals to attain power over their environment. The notion of a physical object arises out of manipulatory experience. There is a social relation to inanimate objects, for the organism takes the role of things that it manipulates directly, or that it manipulates indirectly in perception. For example, in taking (introjecting or imitating) the resistant role of a solid object, an individual obtains cognition of what is "inside" nonliving things. Historically, the concept of the physical object arose from an animistic conception of the universe.

Contact experience includes experiences of position, balance, and support, and these are used by the organism when it creates its conceptions of the physical world. Our scientific concepts of space, time, and mass are abstracted from manipulatory experience. Such concepts as that of the electron are also derived from manipulation. In developing a science we construct hypothetical objects in order to assist ourselves in controlling nature. The conception of the present as a distinct unit of experience, rather than as a process of becoming and disappearing, is a scientific fiction devised to facilitate exact measurement. In the scientific worldview immediate experience is replaced by theoretical constructs. The ultimate in experience, however, is the manipulation and contact at the completion of an act.^[15]

Play and game and the generalized other[link]

Mead theorized that human beings begin their understanding of the social world through "play" and "game". "Play" comes first in the child's development. The child takes different roles he/she observes in "adult" society, and plays them out to gain an understanding of the different social roles. For instance, he first plays the role of policeman and then the role of thief while playing "Cops and Robbers," and plays the role of doctor and patient when playing "Doctor." As a result of such play, the child learns to become both subject and object and begins to become able to build a self. However, it is a limited self because the child can only take the role of distinct and separate others, they still lack a more general and organized sense of themselves.^[4]:360

In the next stage, the game stage, it is required that a person develop a self in the full sense of the term. Whereas in the play stage the child takes on the role of distinct others, in the game stage the child must take the role of everyone else involved in the game. Furthermore, these roles must have a definite relationship to one another. To illustrate the game stage, Mead gives his famous example of a baseball game:

But in a game where a number of individuals are involved, then the child taking one role must be ready to take the role of everyone else. If he gets in a ball nine he must have the responses of each position involved in his own position. He must know what everyone else is going to do in order to carry out his own play. He has to take all of these roles. They do not all have to be present in consciousness at the same time, but at some moments he has to have three or four individuals present in his own attitude, such as the one who is going to throw the ball, the one who is going to catch it and so on. These responses must be, in some degree, present in his own make-up. In the game, then, there is a set of responses of such others so organized that the attitude of one calls out the appropriate attitudes of the other. (Mead, 1934/1962:151)

In the game stage, organization begins and definite personalities start to emerge. Children begin to become able to function in organized groups and most importantly, to determine what they will do within a specific group.^{[4]:360–361} Mead calls this the child's first encounter with "the generalized other", which is one of the main concepts Mead proposes for understanding the emergence of the (social) self in human beings. "The generalized other" can be understood as understanding the given activity and the actors place within the activity from the perspective of all the others engaged in the activity. Through understanding "the generalized other" the individual understands what kind of behavior is expected, appropriate and so on, in different social settings. The mechanism of perspective taking within social acts is the exchange of social positions.

See also[link]

Notes[link]

Bibliography[link]

• 1932. The Philosophy of the Present. Prometheus Books.
• 1934. Mind, Self, and Society. Ed. by Charles W. Morris. University of Chicago Press.
• 1936. Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century. Ed. by C. W. Morris. University of Chicago Press.
• 1938. The Philosophy of the Act. Ed. by C.W. Morris et al. University of Chicago Press.
• 1964. Selected Writings. Ed. by A. J. Reck. University Chicago Press. This out-of-print volume collects articles Mead himself prepared for publication.
• 1982. The Individual and the Social Self: Unpublished Essays by G. H. Mead. Ed. by David L. Miller. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-608-09479-3
• 2001. Essays in Social Psychology. Ed. by M. J. Deegan. Transaction Books. (Book review [12])
• 2011. G.H. Mead. A Reader. Ed. by F.C. Silva. Routledge.

Further reading[link]

• Aboulafia, Mitchell (ed.) (1991) Philosophy, Social Theory, and the Thought of George Herbert Mead. SUNY Press.
• Aboulafia, Mitchell (2001) The Cosmopolitan Self: George Herbert Mead and Continental Philosophy. University of Illinois Press.
• Blumer, H. & Morrione, T.J. (2004) George Herbert Mead and Human Conduct. New York: Altamira Press.
• Conesa-Sevilla, J. (2005). The Realm of Continued Emergence: The Semiotics of George Herbert Mead and its Implications to Biosemiotics, Semiotics Matrix Theory, and Ecological Ethics. Sign Systems Studies, September, 2005, Tartu University, Estonia.
• Gillespie, A. (2005) "G.H. Mead: Theorist of the social act," [13] Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 35: 19-39.
• Gillespie, A. (2006). Games and the development of perspective taking [14]. Human Development, 49, 87-92.
• Joas, Hans (1985) G.H. Mead: A Contemporary Re-examination of His Thought. MIT Press.
• Habermas, Jürgen (1992) "Individuation through socialization: On George Herbert Mead’s theory of socialization," in Habermas, Postmetaphysical Thinking, translated by William Mark Hohengarten. MIT Press.
• Honneth, Axel (1996) "Recognition and socialization: Mead's naturalistic transformation of Hegel's idea," in Honneth, Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, translated by Joel Anderson. MIT Press.
• Lewis, J.D. (1979) "A social behaviorist interpretation of the Meadian 'I'," American Journal of Sociology 85: 261-287.
• Lundgren, D.C. (2004) "Social feedback and self-appraisals: Current status of the Mead-Cooley hypothesis," Symbolic Interaction 27: 267-286.
• Miller, David L. (1973) G.H. Mead: Self, Language and the World. University of Chicago Press.
• Sánchez de la Yncera, Ignacio (1994) La Mirada Reflexiva de G.H. Mead. Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas.
• Shalin, Dmitri (1988) "G. H. Mead, socialism, and the progressive agenda," American Journal of Sociology 93: 913-951.
• Silva, F. C. (2007) G.H. Mead. A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Silva, F. C. (2008) Mead and Modernity. Science, Selfhood and Democratic Politics. Lanham: Lexington Books.

External links[link]

• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "George Herbert Mead" -- by George Cronk.
• Mead Project 2.0. Mead's published and unpublished writings, many of which are available online, along with others'.
• Review materials for studying George Herbert Mead
• The Social Self - by George Herbert Mead (1913)
• George Herbert Mead by Mitchell Aboulafia - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

George Herbert
Portrait by Robert White in 1674 (National Portrait Gallery)
Born	(1593-04-03)3 April 1593 Montgomery, Wales
Died	1 March 1633(1633-03-01) (aged 39) Bemerton, Wiltshire, England
Occupation	Poet, orator, priest

George Herbert (3 April 1593 – 1 March 1633) was a Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest.

Being born into an artistic and wealthy family, he received a good education that led to his holding prominent positions at Cambridge University and Parliament. As a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, Herbert excelled in languages and music. He went to college with the intention of becoming a priest, but his scholarship attracted the attention of King James I/VI. Herbert served in Parliament for two years. After the death of King James and at the urging of a friend, Herbert's interest in ordained ministry was renewed.

In 1630, in his late thirties he gave up his secular ambitions and took holy orders in the Church of England, spending the rest of his life as a rector of the little parish of Fugglestone St Peter with Bemerton St Andrew, near Salisbury. He was noted for unfailing care for his parishioners, bringing the sacraments to them when they were ill, and providing food and clothing for those in need. Henry Vaughan said of him "a most glorious saint and seer".^[1]

Throughout his life, he wrote religious poems characterized by a precision of language, a metrical versatility, and an ingenious use of imagery or conceits that was favoured by the metaphysical school of poets.^[2] Charles Cotton described him as a "soul composed of harmonies".^[3] Herbert himself, in a letter to Nicholas Ferrar, said of his writings, "they are a picture of spiritual conflicts between God and my soul before I could subject my will to Jesus, my Master".^[4] Some of Herbert's poems have endured as hymns, including "King of Glory, King of Peace" (Praise), "Let All the World in Every Corner Sing" (Antiphon) and "Teach me, my God and King" (The Elixir).^[5] His first biographer, Izaak Walton, described Herbert on his death-bed as "composing such hymns and anthems as he and the angels now sing in heaven".^[6] A distant relative was the modern Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert.^[7]

Early life[link]

Herbert was born in Montgomery in Wales. His family was wealthy, eminent, intellectual and fond of the arts. His mother Magdalen was a patron and friend of John Donne and other poets;^[8] his older brother Edward, later Lord Herbert of Cherbury, was an important poet and philosopher, often referred to as "the father of English deism". Herbert's father Richard Herbert, Lord of Cherbury died when George was three, leaving a widow and ten children.^[9]

Herbert entered Westminster School at or around the age of 12 where he became a day student.^[9] Though sometime after he was elevated to the level of scholar. Herbert later was admitted on scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1609 where he graduated first with a Bachelors and then with a masters degree in 1613 at the age of 20.^[9] After graduating from Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge (where he achieved degrees with distinction), Herbert was elected a major fellow of his college. In 1618 he was appointed Reader in Rhetoric at Cambridge and in 1620 he was elected to the post of Cambridge University orator, whose duties would be served by poetic skill. He held this position until 1628.^[10]

In 1624 he became a Member of Parliament, representing Montgomery.^[11] While these positions were suited to a career at court, and James I had shown him favour, circumstances worked against him: the King died in 1625, and two influential patrons of Herbert died later in the decade. However George Herbert's only service to parliament may have already ended in 1624 or since, although a Mr Herbert is mentioned as a committee member, there is no record in the Commons Journal for 1625 of Mr. George Herbert (a distinction carefully made in the records of the preceding parliament).^[9]

Priesthood[link]

Scan of the poem "Anagram" from the 1633 edition of George Herbert's The Temple

He took up his duties in Bemerton, a rural parish in Wiltshire, about 75 miles southwest of London in 1630. Here he preached and wrote poetry; also helping to rebuild the church out of his own funds.^[9]

In 1633 Herbert finished a collection of poems entitled The Temple, which imitates the architectural style of churches through both the meaning of the words and their visual layout. The themes of God and love are treated by Herbert as much as psychological forces as metaphysical phenomena.

Suffering from poor health, Herbert died of tuberculosis only three years after taking holy orders. On his deathbed, he reportedly gave the manuscript of The Temple to Nicholas Ferrar, the founder of a semi-monastic Anglican religious community at Little Gidding (a name best known today through the poem Little Gidding by T. S. Eliot), telling him to publish the poems if he thought they might "turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul", and otherwise, to burn them.

Works[link]

Herbert's "Easter Wings", a pattern poem in which the work is not only meant to be read, but its shape is meant to be appreciated: In this case, the poem was printed (original image here shown) on two pages of a book, sideways, so that the lines suggest two birds flying upward, with wings spread out.

In 1633 (see 1633 in poetry), all of Herbert's poems were published in The Temple: Sacred poems and private ejaculations, edited by Nicholas Ferrar. The book went through eight editions by 1690.^[12]

Barnabas Oley edited in 1652 Herbert's Remains, or sundry pieces of that Sweet Singer, Mr. George Herbert, containing A Priest to the Temple, or the countrey parson, Jacula Prudentum, &c. Prefixed was an unsigned preface by Oley. The second edition appeared in 1671 as A Priest to the Temple or the Country Parson, with a new preface, signed Barnabas Oley. These pieces were reprinted in later editions of Herbert's Works. The manuscript of The Country Parson was the property of Herbert's friend, Arthur Wodenoth, who gave it to Oley; the prefaces were a source for Izaak Walton's memoir of Herbert.

All of Herbert's English surviving poems are religious, and some have been used as hymns, William Cowper said of them I found in them a strain of piety which I could not but admire.^[13] They are characterised by directness of expression and some conceits which can appear quaint. Many of the poems have intricate rhyme schemes, and variations of lines within stanzas described as 'a cascade of form floats through the temple'.^[14]

An example of Herbert’s religious poetry is “The Altar.” A "pattern poem in which the words of the poem itself form a shape suggesting an altar, and this altar becomes his conceit for how one should offer himself as a sacrifice to the Lord. He also makes allusions to scripture, such as Psalm 51:17, where it states that the Lord requires the sacrifice of a broken heart and a contrite spirit.

Herbert also wrote A Priest to the Temple (or The Country Parson) offering practical advice to clergy. In it, he advises that "things of ordinary use" such as ploughs, leaven, or dances, could be made to "serve for lights even of Heavenly Truths".

His Jacula Prudentium (sometimes seen as Jacula Prudentum), a collection of pithy proverbs published in 1651, included many sayings still repeated today, for example "His bark is worse than his bite." Similarly oft quoted is his Outlandish Proverbs^[15] published in 1640.

Richard Baxter said, "Herbert speaks to God like one that really believeth a God, and whose business in the world is most with God. Heart-work and heaven-work make up his books". Dame Helen Gardner adds "head-work" because of his "intellectual vivacity".

Herbert also wrote poems in Greek and in Latin. The latter mainly concern ceremonial controversy with the Puritans, but include a response to Pope Urban VIII's treatment of the ROMA AMOR anagram. He was also a collector of "Outlandish proverbs", some of which are used in his poem The Sacrifice.^[16] and he wrote in many poetic forms, appropriate to their theme,and invented, as it were, to embody them ^[17]

Herbert influenced his fellow metaphysical poet Henry Vaughan who, in turn, influenced William Wordsworth.

Herbert's poetry has been set to music by several composers, including Ralph Vaughan Williams, Lennox Berkeley, Benjamin Britten, Judith Weir, Randall Thompson, William Walton and Patrick Larley.

Commemorations[link]

He is commemorated on 27 February throughout the Anglican Communion and on 1 March of the Calendar of Saints of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Herbert has a window honouring him in Westminster Abbey.^[18] and a statue in niche 188 on the West Front of Salisbury Cathedral.

Further reading[link]

• G. Herbert, The Works of George Herbert, ed. F. E. Hutchinson, 1945.
• G. Herbert, The English Poems of George Herbert, ed. Helen Wilcox (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
• Elizabeth Clarke, Theory and Theology in George Herbert's Poetry: Divinitie, and Poesie, Met, Clarendon Press, 1997. ISBN 978-0-19-826398-2
• Jane Falloon, Heart in Pilgrimage: A Study of George Herbert, AuthorHouse, Milton Keynes, 2007. ISBN 978-1-4259-7755-9
• Justin Lewis-Anthony, If You Meet George Herbert on the road, Kill Him: Radically re-thinking priestly ministry, an exploration of the life of George Herbert as a take-off for a re-evaluation of the ministry within the Church of England. Mowbray, August 2009. ISBN 978-1-906286-17-0
• Ceri Sullivan, The Rhetoric of the Conscience in Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan (Oxford University Press, 2008)
• Jim Scott Orrick, A Year with George Herbert: A Guide to Fifty-Two of His Best Loved Poems (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2011).

See also[link]

	Anglicanism portal
	Saints portal
	Poetry portal

References[link]

Sheldrake, Philip (2009) Heaven in Ordinary: George Herbert and his writings. Canterbury Press ISBN 978-1-85311-948-4

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: George Herbert

Wikisource has original works written by or about: George Herbert

• George Herbert at the Cambridge Authors Project
• George Herbert Bio and Poems
• The Works of George Herbert
• George Herbert and Bemerton about his priesthood and parish
• Selected Poetry of George Herbert at Representative Poetry Online
• The Life of Mr. George Herbert by Izaak Walton (1593–1683)
• Easterwings (poem by George Herbert) with commentary upon and pics of its modern and 1633 arrangements
• A Short introduction to George Herbert's verse
• George Herbert poem My Elixir as hymn 'Teach me, My God and King', ccel.org
• The remains of that sweet singer of The temple, by George Herbert, George Herbert, Izaak, Walton, Barnabas Oley
• Musarum Deliciae: or, the muses recreation, contening severall pieces of ...

Max Weber
German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist
Born	Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (1864-04-21)21 April 1864 Erfurt, Saxony, Kingdom of Prussia
Died	14 June 1920(1920-06-14) (aged 56) (pneumonia) Munich, Bavaria, Germany
Nationality	German
Fields	Economics, sociology, history, law, politics, philosophy
Institutions	University of Berlin, University of Freiburg, University of Heidelberg, University of Vienna, University of Munich
Alma mater	University of Berlin, University of Heidelberg
Doctoral advisor	Levin Goldschmidt
Known for	Bureaucracy, Disenchantment, Ideal type, Iron cage, Life chances, Methodological individualism, Monopoly on violence, Protestant work ethic, Rationalisation, Social action, Three-component theory of stratification, Tripartite classification of authority, Verstehen
Influences	Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, Wilhelm Dilthey, Heinrich Rickert, Georg Simmel, Werner Sombart
Influenced	Karl Jaspers, Talcott Parsons, Ludwig von Mises, György Lukács, Theodor W. Adorno, Jürgen Habermas, Joseph Schumpeter

Maximilian Karl Emil "Max" Weber (German pronunciation: [ˈmaks ˈveːbɐ]; 21 April 1864 – 14 June 1920) was a German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist who profoundly influenced social theory, social research, and the discipline of sociology itself.^[1]

Weber was a key proponent of methodological antipositivism, presenting sociology as a non-empiricist field which must study social action through interpretive means based upon understanding the meanings and purposes that individuals attach to their own actions. Weber is often cited, with Émile Durkheim and Karl Marx, as one of the three principal architects of modern social science.^[2][3][4]

Weber's main intellectual concern was understanding the processes of rationalisation, secularization, and "disenchantment" that he associated with the rise of capitalism and modernity.^[5] Weber argued that the most important difference among societies is not how people produce things but how people think about the world. In Weber’s view, modern society was the product of a new way of thinking.^[6] Weber is perhaps best known for his thesis combining economic sociology and the sociology of religion, elaborated in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Weber proposed that ascetic Protestantism was one of the major "elective affinities" associated with the rise of capitalism, bureaucracy and the rational-legal nation-state in the Western world. Against Marx's "historical materialism," Weber emphasised the importance of cultural influences embedded in religion as a means for understanding the genesis of capitalism.^[7] The Protestant Ethic formed the earliest part in Weber's broader investigations into world religion: he would go on to examine the religions of China, the religions of India and ancient Judaism, with particular regard to the apparent non-development of capitalism in the corresponding societies, as well as to their differing forms of social stratification.^[a]

In another major work, Politics as a Vocation, Weber defined the state as an entity which successfully claims a "monopoly on the legitimate use of violence". He was also the first to categorize social authority into distinct forms, which he labelled as charismatic, traditional, and rational-legal. His analysis of bureaucracy emphasised that modern state institutions are increasingly based on rational-legal authority. Weber also made a variety of other contributions in economic history, as well as economic theory and methodology. Weber's thought on modernity and rationalisation would come to facilitate critical theory of the Frankfurt school.

After the First World War, Max Weber was among the founders of the liberal German Democratic Party. He also ran unsuccessfully for a seat in parliament and served as advisor to the committee that drafted the ill-fated democratic Weimar Constitution of 1919. After contracting the Spanish flu, he died of pneumonia in 1920, aged 56.^[2]

Biography[link]

Early life and family background[link]

Weber was born in 1864, in Erfurt, Thuringia.^[2] He was the eldest of the seven children of Max Weber Sr., a wealthy and prominent civil servant and member of the National Liberal Party, and his wife Helene (Fallenstein), who partly descended from French Huguenot immigrants and held strong moral absolutist ideas.^[2][8] Weber Sr.'s involvement in public life immersed his home in both politics and academia, as his salon welcomed many prominent scholars and public figures.^[2] The young Weber and his brother Alfred, who also became a sociologist and economist, thrived in this intellectual atmosphere. Weber's 1876 Christmas presents to his parents, when he was thirteen years old, were two historical essays entitled "About the course of German history, with special reference to the positions of the Emperor and the Pope," and "About the Roman Imperial period from Constantine to the migration of nations."^[9] In class, bored and unimpressed with the teachers – who in turn resented what they perceived as a disrespectful attitude – he secretly read all forty volumes of Goethe.^[10][11] Before entering the university, he would read many other classical works.^[11] Over time, Weber would also be significantly affected by the marital tension between his father, "a man who enjoyed earthly pleasures," and his mother, a devout Calvinist "who sought to lead an ascetic life."^[12][13]

Max Weber and his brothers, Alfred and Karl, in 1879

Education[link]

In 1882 Weber enrolled in the University of Heidelberg as a law student.^[14] After a year of military service he transferred to University of Berlin.^[10] After his first few years as a student, during which he spent much time "drinking beer and fencing," Weber would increasingly take his mother's side in family arguments and grew estranged from his father.^[12][13][15] Simultaneously with his studies, he worked as a junior barrister.^[10] In 1886 Weber passed the examination for Referendar, comparable to the bar association examination in the British and American legal systems. Throughout the late 1880s, Weber continued his study of law and history.^[10] He earned his law doctorate in 1889 by writing a dissertation on legal history entitled The History of Medieval Business Organisations; his advisor was Levin Goldschmidt, a respected authority in commercial law.^[14][16] Two years later, Weber completed his Habilitationsschrift, The Roman Agrarian History and its Significance for Public and Private Law, working with August Meitzen.^[16][17] Having thus become a Privatdozent, Weber joined the University of Berlin's faculty, lecturing and consulting for the government.^[18]

Early work[link]

In the years between the completion of his dissertation and habilitation, Weber took an interest in contemporary social policy. In 1888 he joined the Verein für Socialpolitik,^[19] a new professional association of German economists affiliated with the historical school, who saw the role of economics primarily as finding solutions to the social problems of the age and who pioneered large scale statistical studies of economic issues. He also involved himself in politics, joining the left-leaning Evangelical Social Congress.^[20] In 1890 the Verein established a research program to examine "the Polish question" or Ostflucht: the influx of Polish farm workers into eastern Germany as local labourers migrated to Germany's rapidly industrialising cities.^[2] Weber was put in charge of the study and wrote a large part of the final report,^[2][19] which generated considerable attention and controversy and marked the beginning of Weber's renown as a social scientist.^[2] From 1893 to 1899 Weber was a member of the Alldeutscher Verband (Pan-German League), an organisation that campaigned against the influx of the Polish workers; the degree of Weber's support for the Germanisation of Poles and similar nationalist policies is still debated by modern scholars.^[21][22]

Max Weber and his wife Marianne in 1894

Also in 1893 he married his distant cousin Marianne Schnitger, later a feminist activist and author in her own right,^[2][23] who was instrumental in collecting and publishing Weber's journal articles as books after his death and her biography of him is an important source for understanding Weber's life.^[24][25] They would have no children.^[15] The marriage granted long-awaited financial independence to Weber, allowing him to finally leave his parents' household.^[13] The couple moved to Freiburg in 1894, where Weber was appointed professor of economics at the university,^[17][18] before accepting the same position at the University of Heidelberg in 1896.^[17][18] There Weber became a central figure in the so-called "Weber Circle," composed of other intellectuals such as his wife Marianne, Georg Jellinek, Ernst Troeltsch, Werner Sombart, Marc Bloch, Robert Michels and György Lukács.^[2] Weber also remained active in the Verein and the Evangelical Social Congress.^[2] His research in that period was focused on economics and legal history.^[26]

In 1897 Max Weber Sr. died, two months after a severe quarrel with his son that was never resolved.^[2][27] After this, Weber became increasingly prone to depression, nervousness and insomnia, making it difficult for him to fulfill his duties as a professor.^[10][17] His condition forced him to reduce his teaching and leave unfinished his course in the fall of 1899. After spending months in a sanatorium during the summer and fall of 1900, Weber and his wife travelled to Italy at the end of the year and did not return to Heidelberg until April 1902. He would again withdraw from teaching in 1903 and not return to it till 1919.^[2]

Later work[link]

After Weber's immense productivity in the early 1890s, he did not publish any papers between early 1898 and late 1902, finally resigning his professorship in late 1903. Freed from those obligations, in that year he accepted a position as associate editor of the Archives for Social Science and Social Welfare,^[28] where he worked with his colleagues Edgar Jaffé and Werner Sombart.^[2][29] His new interests would lie in more fundamental issues of social sciences; his works from this latter period are of primary interest to modern scholars.^[26] In 1904, Weber began to publish some of his most seminal papers in this journal, notably his essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which became his most famous work^[30] and laid the foundations for his later research on the impact of cultures and religions on the development of economic systems.^[31] This essay was the only one of his works from that period that was published as a book during his lifetime. Some other of his works written in the first one and a half decades of the 20th century – published posthumously and dedicated primarily from the fields of sociology of religion, economic and legal sociology – are also recognised as among his most important intellectual contributions.^[2]

Also in 1904, he visited the United States and participated in the Congress of Arts and Sciences held in connection with the World's Fair (Louisiana Purchase Exposition) in St. Louis. Despite his partial recovery, Weber felt that he was unable to resume regular teaching at that time and continued on as a private scholar, helped by an inheritance in 1907.^[18][28] In 1909, disappointed with the Verein, he co-founded the German Sociological Association (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie, or DGS) and served as its first treasurer.^[2] He would, however, resign from the DGS in 1912.^[2] In 1912, Weber tried to organise a left-wing political party to combine social-democrats and liberals. This attempt was unsuccessful, in part because many liberals feared social-democratic revolutionary ideals.^[32]

Political involvements[link]

Max Weber (foreground) in 1917 with Ernst Toller (facing)

At the outbreak of World War I, Weber, aged 50, volunteered for service and was appointed as a reserve officer and put in charge of organising the army hospitals in Heidelberg, a role he fulfilled until the end of 1915.^[28][33] Weber's views on the war and the expansion of the German empire changed during the course of the conflict.^[32][33][34] Early on he supported the nationalist rhetoric and the war effort, believing that the fight against the backward and despotic Russian Empire was justified and that a "liberal imperialism" along the lines of the British model would help Germany to develop a more mature political class. In time, however, Weber became one of the most prominent critics of German expansionism and of the Kaiser's war policies.^[2] He publicly attacked the Belgian annexation policy and unrestricted submarine warfare and later supported calls for constitutional reform, democratisation and universal suffrage.^[2]

Weber joined the worker and soldier council of Heidelberg in 1918. He then served in the German delegation to the Paris Peace Conference and as advisor to the Confidential Committee for Constitutional Reform, which drafted the Weimar Constitution.^[28] Motivated by his understanding of the American model, he advocated a strong, popularly elected presidency as a constitutional counter-balance to the power of the professional bureaucracy.^[2] More controversially, he also defended the provisions for emergency presidential powers that became Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. These provisions were later used by Adolf Hitler to subvert the rest of the constitution and institute rule by decree, allowing his regime to suppress opposition and gain dictatorial powers.^[35]

Weber also ran, unsuccessfully, for a parliamentary seat, as a member of the liberal German Democratic Party, which he had co-founded.^[2][36] He opposed both the leftist German Revolution of 1918–1919 and the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, a principled position that defied the political alignments in Germany at that time^[2] and which may have prevented Friedrich Ebert, the new social-democratic President of Germany, from appointing Weber as minister or ambassador.^[33] Weber commanded widespread respect but relatively little influence.^[2] Weber's role in German politics remains controversial to this day.

Last years[link]

Weber's grave in Heidelberg

Frustrated with politics, Weber resumed teaching during this time, first at the University of Vienna, then, after 1919, at the University of Munich.^[2][18][28] His lectures from that period were collected into major works, such as the General Economic History, Science as a Vocation and Politics as a Vocation.^[2] In Munich, he headed the first German university institute of sociology, but never held a professorial position in sociology. Many colleagues and students in Munich attacked his response to the German Revolution and some right-wing students held protests in front of his home.^[32] Max Weber contracted the Spanish flu and died of pneumonia in Munich on 14 June 1920.^[2] At the time of his death, Weber had not finished writing his magnum opus on sociological theory: Economy and Society. His widow Marianne helped prepare it for its publication in 1921–22.

Weber's thought[link]

Inspirations[link]

Weber's thinking was strongly influenced by German idealism and particularly by neo-Kantianism, to which he had been exposed through Heinrich Rickert, his professorial colleague at the University of Freiburg.^[2] Especially important to Weber's work is the neo-Kantian belief that reality is essentially chaotic and incomprehensible, with all rational order deriving from the way in which the human mind focuses its attention on certain aspects of reality and organises the resulting perceptions.^[2] Weber's opinions regarding the methodology of the social sciences show parallels with the work of contemporary neo-Kantian philosopher and pioneering sociologist Georg Simmel.^[37]

Weber was also influenced by Kantian ethics, which he nonetheless came to think of as obsolete in a modern age lacking in religious certainties. In this last respect, the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy is evident.^[2] According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the "deep tension between the Kantian moral imperatives and a Nietzschean diagnosis of the modern cultural world is apparently what gives such a darkly tragic and agnostic shade to Weber's ethical worldview."^[2] Though the influence of his mother's Calvinist religiosity is evident throughout Weber's life and work, and though he maintained a deep, life-long interest in the study of religions, Weber was open about the fact that he was personally irreligious.^[38][39]

As a political economist and economic historian, Weber belonged to the "youngest" German historical school of economics, represented by academics such as Gustav von Schmoller and his student Werner Sombart. But, even though Weber's research interests were very much in line with that school, his views on methodology and the theory of value diverged significantly from those of other German historicists and were closer, in fact, to those of Carl Menger and the Austrian School, the traditional rivals of the historical school.^[40][41] (See section on Economics.)

Methodology[link]

Unlike some other classical figures (Comte, Durkheim) Weber did not attempt, consciously, to create any specific set of rules governing social sciences in general, or sociology in particular.^[2] Compared to Durkheim and Marx, Weber was more focused on individuals and culture and this is clear in his methodology.^[10] Whereas Durkheim focused on the society, Weber concentrated on the individuals and their actions (see structure and action discussion) and whereas Marx argued for the primacy of the material world over the world of ideas, Weber valued ideas as motivating actions of individuals, at least in the big picture.^[10][42][43]

Sociology, for Max Weber, is:

...a science which attempts the interpretive understanding of social action in order thereby to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects.

—Max Weber^[44]

Weber was concerned with the question of objectivity and subjectivity.^[2] Weber distinguished social action from social behaviour, noting that social action must be understood through how individuals subjectively relate to one another.^[2][45] Study of social action through interpretive means (Verstehen) must be based upon understanding the subjective meaning and purpose that the individual attaches to their actions.^[2][26] Social actions may have easily identifiable and objective means, but much more subjective ends and the understanding of those ends by a scientist is subject to yet another layer of subjective understanding (that of the scientist).^[2] Weber noted that the importance of subjectivity in social sciences makes creation of fool-proof, universal laws much more difficult than in natural sciences and that the amount of objective knowledge that social sciences may achieve is precariously limited.^[2] Overall, Weber supported the goal of objective science, but he noted that it is an unreachable goal – although one definitely worth striving for.^[2]

There is no absolutely "objective" scientific analysis of culture... All knowledge of cultural reality... is always knowledge from particular points of view. ... an "objective" analysis of cultural events, which proceeds according to the thesis that the ideal of science is the reduction of empirical reality to "laws," is meaningless... [because]... the knowledge of social laws is not knowledge of social reality but is rather one of the various aids used by our minds for attaining this end.

—Max Weber, "Objectivity" in Social Science, 1897^[46]

The principle of "methodological individualism," which holds that social scientists should seek to understand collectivities (such as nations, cultures, governments, churches, corporations, etc.) solely as the result and the context of the actions of individual persons, can be traced to Weber, particularly to the first chapter of Economy and Society, in which he argues that only individuals "can be treated as agents in a course of subjectively understandable action."^[41][45] In other words, Weber argued that social phenomena can be understood scientifically only to the extent that they are captured by models of the behaviour of purposeful individuals, models which Weber called "ideal types," from which actual historical events will necessarily deviate due to accidental and irrational factors.^[41] The analytical constructs of an ideal type never exist in reality, but provide objective benchmarks against which real-life constructs can be measured.^[47]

We know of no scientifically ascertainable ideals. To be sure, that makes our efforts more arduous than in the past, since we are expected to create our ideals from within our breast in the very age of subjectivist culture.

—Max Weber, 1909^[48]

Weber's methodology was developed in the context of a wider debate about methodology of social sciences, the Methodenstreit.^[26] Weber's position was close to historicism, as he understood social actions as being heavily tied to particular historical contexts and its analysis required the understanding of subjective motivations of individuals (social actors).^[26] Thus Weber's methodology emphasises the use of comparative historical analysis.^[49] Therefore, Weber was more interested in explaining how a certain outcome was the result of various historical processes rather than predicting an outcome of those processes in the future.^[43]

Rationalisation[link]

Many scholars have described rationalisation and the question of individual freedom in an increasingly rational society, as the main theme of Weber's work.^{[2][50][51][52]} This theme was situated in the larger context of the relationship between psychological motivations, cultural values and beliefs (primarily, religion) and the structure of the society (usually determined by the economy).^[43]

By rationalisation, Weber understood first, the individual cost-benefit calculation, second, the wider, bureaucratic organisation of the organisations and finally, in the more general sense as the opposite of understanding the reality through mystery and magic (disenchantment).^[52]

The fate of our times is characterised by rationalisation and intellectualisation and, above all, by the "disenchantment of the world"

—Max Weber^[53]

Weber began his studies of the subject in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, in which he argued that the redefinition of the connection between work and piety in Protestantism and especially in ascetic Protestant denominations, particularly Calvinism, shifted human effort towards rational efforts aimed at achieving economic gain.^[54][55] In Protestant religion, Christian piety towards God was expressed through one's secular vocation (secularisation of calling).^[55] The rational roots of this doctrine, he argued, soon grew incompatible with and larger than the religious and so the latter were eventually discarded.^[56]

Weber continued his investigation into this matter in later works, notably in his studies on bureaucracy and on the classification of legitimate authority into three types – Rational-legal, traditional and charismatic – of which the legitimate (or rational) is the dominant one in the modern world.^[2] In these works Weber described what he saw as society's movement towards rationalisation.^[2] Similarly, rationalisation could be seen in the economy, with the development of highly rational and calculating capitalism.^[2] Weber also saw rationalisation as one of the main factors setting the European West apart from the rest of the world.^[2] Rationalisation relied on deep changes in ethics, religion, psychology and culture; changes that first took place in the Western civilisation.^[2]

What Weber depicted was not only the secularisation of Western culture, but also and especially the development of modern societies from the viewpoint of rationalisation. The new structures of society were marked by the differentiation of the two functionally intermeshing systems that had taken shape around the organisational cores of the capitalist enterprise and the bureaucratic state apparatus. Weber understood this process as the institutionalisation of purposive-rational economic and administrative action. To the degree that everyday life was affected by this cultural and societal rationalisation, traditional forms of life – which in the early modern period were differentiated primarily according to one's trade – were dissolved.

—Jürgen Habermas, Modernity's Consciousness of Time, 1985, ^[5]

Features of rationalisation include increasing knowledge, growing impersonality and enhanced control of social and material life.^[2] Weber was ambivalent towards rationalisation; while admitting it was responsible for many advances, in particular, freeing humans from traditional, restrictive and illogical social guidelines, he also criticised it for dehumanising individuals as "cogs in the machine" and curtailing their freedom, trapping them in the bureaucratic iron cage of rationality and bureaucracy.^{[2][50][57][58]} Related to rationalisation is the process of disenchantment, in which the world is becoming more explained and less mystical, moving from polytheistic religions to monotheistic ones and finally to the Godless science of modernity.^[2] Those processes affect all of society, removing "sublime values... from public life" and making art less creative.^[59]

In a dystopian critique of rationalisation, Weber notes that modern society is a product of an individualistic drive of the Reformation, yet at the same time, the society created in this process is less and less welcoming of individualism.^[2]

How is it at all possible to salvage any remnants of 'individual' freedom of movement in any sense given this all-powerful trend?

—Max Weber^[2]

Sociology of religion[link]

Weber's work in the field of sociology of religion started with the essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and continued with the analysis of The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism, The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism and Ancient Judaism. His work on other religions was interrupted by his sudden death in 1920, which prevented him from following Ancient Judaism with studies of early Christianity and Islam.^[60] His three main themes in the essays were the effect of religious ideas on economic activities, the relation between social stratification and religious ideas and the distinguishable characteristics of Western civilization.^[61]

Weber saw religion as one of the core forces in the society.^[49] His goal was to find reasons for the different development paths of the cultures of the Occident and the Orient, although without judging or valuing them, like some of the contemporary thinkers who followed the social Darwinist paradigm; Weber wanted primarily to explain the distinctive elements of the Western civilisation.^[61] In the analysis of his findings, Weber maintained that Calvinist (and more widely, Protestant) religious ideas had had a major impact on the social innovation and development of the economic system of the West, but noted that they were not the only factors in this development. Other notable factors mentioned by Weber included the rationalism of scientific pursuit, merging observation with mathematics, science of scholarship and jurisprudence, rational systematisation and bureaucratisation of government administration and economic enterprise.^[61] In the end, the study of the sociology of religion, according to Weber, focused on one distinguishing part of the Western culture, the decline of beliefs in magic, or what he referred to as "disenchantment of the world".^[61]

Weber also proposed a socioevolutionary model of religious change, showing that in general, societies have moved from magic to polytheism, then to pantheism, monotheism and finally, ethical monotheism.^[62] According to Weber, this evolution occurred as the growing economic stability allowed professionalisation and the evolution of ever more sophisticated priesthood.^[63] As societies grew more complex and encompassed different groups, a hierarchy of gods developed and as power in the society became more centralised, the concept of a single, universal God became more popular and desirable.^[64]

[edit] The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Cover of the original German edition of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Weber's essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is his most famous work.^[30] It is argued that this work should not be viewed as a detailed study of Protestantism, but rather as an introduction into Weber's later works, especially his studies of interaction between various religious ideas and economic behaviour as part of the rationalisation of the economic system.^[65] In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber put forward the thesis that Calvinist ethic and ideas influenced the development of capitalism.^[65] He noted the post-Reformation shift of Europe's economic centre away from Catholic countries such as France, Spain and Italy, and toward Protestant countries such as the Netherlands, England, Scotland and Germany. Weber also noted that societies having more Protestants were those with a more highly developed capitalist economy.^[66] Similarly, in societies with different religions, most successful business leaders were Protestant.^[65] Weber thus argued that Roman Catholicism impeded the development of the capitalist economy in the West, as did other religions such as Confucianism and Buddhism elsewhere in the world.^[65]

The development of the concept of the calling quickly gave to the modern entrepreneur a fabulously clear conscience – and also industrious workers; he gave to his employees as the wages of their ascetic devotion to the calling and of co-operation in his ruthless exploitation of them through capitalism the prospect of eternal salvation.

—Max Weber^[55]

Christian religious devotion had historically been accompanied by rejection of mundane affairs, including economic pursuit.^[67] Weber showed that certain types of Protestantism – notably Calvinism – were supportive of rational pursuit of economic gain and worldly activities dedicated to it, seeing them as endowed with moral and spiritual significance.^[54] Weber argued that there were many reasons to look for the origins of modern capitalism in the religious ideas of the Reformation.^[68] In particular, the Protestant ethic (or more specifically, Calvinist ethic) motivated the believers to work hard, be successful in business and reinvest their profits in further development rather than frivolous pleasures.^[65] The notion of calling meant that each individual had to take action in order to be saved; just being a member of the Church was not enough.^[55] Predestination also reduced antagonising over economic inequality and further, it meant that a material wealth could be taken as a sign of salvation in the afterlife.^[65][69] The believers thus justified pursuit of profit with religion, as instead of being fuelled by morally suspect greed or ambition, their actions were motivated by a highly moral and respected philosophy.^[65] This Weber called the "spirit of capitalism": it was the Protestant religious ideology that was behind – and inevitably lead to – the capitalist economic system.^[65] This theory is often viewed as a reversal of Marx's thesis that the economic "base" of society determines all other aspects of it.^[54]

Weber abandoned research into Protestantism because his colleague Ernst Troeltsch, a professional theologian, had begun work on the book The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches and Sects. Another reason for Weber's decision was that Troeltsch's work already achieved what he desired in that area: laying the groundwork for a comparative analysis of religion and society.^[70]

The phrase "work ethic" used in modern commentary is a derivative of the "Protestant ethic" discussed by Weber. It was adopted when the idea of the Protestant ethic was generalised to apply to the Japanese people, Jews and other non-Christians and thus lost its religious connotations.^[71]

[edit] The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism

The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism was Weber's second major work on the sociology of religion. Weber focused on those aspects of Chinese society that were different from those of Western Europe, especially those aspects which contrasted with Puritanism. His work also questioned why capitalism did not develop in China.^[72] He focused on the issues of Chinese urban development, Chinese patrimonialism and officialdom and Chinese religion and philosophy (primarily, Confucianism and Taoism), as the areas in which Chinese development differed most distinctively from the European route.^[72]

According to Weber, Confucianism and Puritanism are mutually exclusive types of rational thought, each attempting to prescribe a way of life based on religious dogma.^[73] Notably, they both valued self control and restraint and did not oppose accumulation of wealth.^[73] However, to both those qualities were just means to the final goal and here they were divided by a key difference.^[69] Confucianism's goal was "a cultured status position", while Puritanism's goal was to create individuals who are "tools of God".^[73] The intensity of belief and enthusiasm for action were rare in Confucianism, but common in Protestantism.^[73] Actively working for wealth was unbecoming a proper Confucian.^[69] Therefore, Weber states that it was this difference in social attitudes and mentality, shaped by the respective, dominant religions, that contributed to the development of capitalism in the West and the absence of it in China.^[73]

[edit] The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism

The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism was Weber's third major work on the sociology of religion. In this work he deals with the structure of Indian society, with the orthodox doctrines of Hinduism and the heterodox doctrines of Buddhism, with modifications brought by the influence of popular religiosity and finally with the impact of religious beliefs on the secular ethic of Indian society.^[74] Like Confucianism in China, for Weber, Hinduism in India was a barrier for capitalism.^[69] The Indian caste system made it very difficult for individuals to advance in the society beyond their caste.^[69] Activity, including economic activity, was seen as unimportant in the context of the advancement of the soul.^[69]

Weber ended his research of society and religion in India by bringing in insights from his previous work on China to discuss similarities of the Asian belief systems.^[75] He notes that the beliefs saw the meaning of life as otherworldly mystical experience.^[75] The social world is fundamentally divided between the educated elite, following the guidance of a prophet or wise man and the uneducated masses whose beliefs are centered on magic.^[75] In Asia, there was no Messianic prophecy to give plan and meaning to the everyday life of educated and uneducated alike.^[75] Weber juxtaposed such Messianic prophecies (also called ethical prophecies), notably from the Near East region to the exemplary prophecies found on the Asiatic mainland, focused more on reaching to the educated elites and enlightening them on the proper ways to live one's life, usually with little emphasis on hard work and the material world.^[75][76] It was those differences that prevented the countries of the Occident from following the paths of the earlier Chinese and Indian civilizations. His next work, Ancient Judaism was an attempt to prove this theory.^[75]

[edit] Ancient Judaism

In Ancient Judaism, his fourth major work on the sociology of religion, Weber attempted to explain the factors which resulted in the early differences between Oriental and Occidental religiosity.^[77] He contrasted the innerworldly asceticism developed by Western Christianity with mystical contemplation of the kind developed in India.^[77] Weber noted that some aspects of Christianity sought to conquer and change the world, rather than withdraw from its imperfections.^[77] This fundamental characteristic of Christianity (when compared to Far Eastern religions) stems originally from ancient Jewish prophecy.^[78]

Weber noted that Judaism not only fathered Christianity and Islam, but was crucial to the rise of the modern Occidental state; Judaism's influence was as important as Hellenistic and Roman cultures.

Weber's premature death in 1920 prevented him from following his planned analysis of Psalms, the Book of Job, Talmudic Jewry, early Christianity and Islam.

[edit] Economy and Society

In his magnum opus, Economy and Society, Weber distinguished three ideal types of religious attitudes: world-flying mysticism, world-rejecting asceticism, and inner-worldly asceticism. He defined magic as a pre-religious activity.^[79]

Politics and government[link]

In political sociology, one of Weber's most significant contributions is his Politics as a Vocation essay. Therein, Weber unveils the definition of the state as that entity which possesses a delegatable monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force.^[80] Weber wrote that politics is the sharing of state's power between various groups, and political leaders are those who wield this power.^[80] A politician must not be a man of the "true Christian ethic", understood by Weber as being the ethic of the Sermon on the Mount, that is to say, the injunction to turn the other cheek.^[81] An adherent of such an ethic ought rather to be understood to be a saint, for it is only saints, according to Weber, that can appropriately follow it.^[81] The political realm is no realm for saints; a politician ought to marry the ethic of ultimate ends and the ethic of responsibility and must possess both a passion for his vocation and the capacity to distance himself from the subject of his exertions (the governed).^[81]

Weber distinguished three ideal types of political leadership (alternatively referred to as three types of domination, legitimisation or authority):

1. charismatic domination (familial and religious),
2. traditional domination (patriarchs, patrimonialism, feudalism) and
3. legal domination (modern law and state, bureaucracy).^[82]

In his view, every historical relation between rulers and ruled contained such elements and they can be analysed on the basis of this tripartite distinction.^[83] He notes that the instability of charismatic authority forces it to "routinise" into a more structured form of authority.^[57] In a pure type of traditional rule, sufficient resistance to a ruler can lead to a "traditional revolution". The move towards a rational-legal structure of authority, utilising a bureaucratic structure, is inevitable in the end.^[84] Thus this theory can be sometimes viewed as part of the social evolutionism theory. This ties to his broader concept of rationalisation by suggesting the inevitability of a move in this direction.^[57]

Bureaucratic administration means fundamentally domination through knowledge.

—Max Weber^[85]

Weber described many ideal types of public administration and government in his masterpiece Economy and Society (1922). His critical study of the bureaucratisation of society became one of the most enduring parts of his work.^[57][85] It was Weber who began the studies of bureaucracy and whose works led to the popularisation of this term.^[86] Many aspects of modern public administration go back to him and a classic, hierarchically organised civil service of the Continental type is called "Weberian civil service".^[87] As the most efficient and rational way of organising, bureaucratisation for Weber was the key part of the rational-legal authority and furthermore, he saw it as the key process in the ongoing rationalisation of the Western society.^[57][85]