Lawrence A. Scaff

Max Weber and the sociology of culture

The thematic unity of Webers writings the uniqueness of the East the rise of the West the iron cage of modern rationalism the sociology of culture - Weber and beyond.

Remnants of Romanticism Max Weber in Oklahoma and Indian Territory

One of the most unusual aspects of Max Weber’s 1904 journey to the United States was his trip to Oklahoma and Indian Territory. This article reconstructs the origins, rationale, circumstances and results of this experience on the American frontier. Weber used the opportunity to investigate social and economic development, observing the work of the Dawes Commission, the conditions of native American life and the emerging patterns of settlement and their consequences. He discussed these matters with many of the Territory’s leading figures, such as Tams Bixby and Robert L. Owen. He viewed the transition from traditional society to modern capitalist economic conditions as inevitable and irreversible. But he also thought processes of sociation, modeled on the voluntaristic sects and supported by a worldly ethos, served as a counterweight and strengthened the fledgling democratic order.

Max Weber and the Social Sciences in America

Weber and his work functioned in two ways: both as a bridge to the new, to the world of capitalist modernity, as well as a road to an acceptable cosmopolitan ‘liberal’ historical past. It was Weber the cosmopolitan and outsider who could give legitimacy and weight to the intellectual orientations and problems thought to be significant for the community in exile. It was this Weber who could cushion the ‘negative shock’ of what was often perceived as America’s ‘intellectual and cultural provincialism’ and establish for the emigre scholar and intellectual the historical task of assisting in the development of American intellectual and cultural life. At the same time, the presence of a different Weber in America, already an established interest of several scholars emerging into prominence, such as Talcott Parsons and Edward Shils, created difficulties as well as opportunities for the emigre scholars. Because of such variety the field for the transmission, reception, and influence of Weber’s work must be approached as a complicated, multilayered, and contested patchwork of disparate and sometimes partially overlapping social and professional networks.

Weberian Social Thought, History of

This article is a revision of the previous edition article by C. Turner, volume 24, pp. 16407–16412,

Walter Benjamin und Georg Simmel

Perhaps it is the C. Wright Mills legacy, run through forty-some years of my teaching Introduction to Sociology, contrasting ‘‘troubles’’ with ‘‘issues,’’ biography with history, but I find myself particularly intrigued when a sociologist turns to (auto)biography. And not just any sociologist. This is Peter Berger who, along with Thomas Luckmann, changed my life and made me who I am— or at least let me understand who I am. I took my undergraduate theory class in the summer of my freshman year. And after reading Berger’s biography, I was shocked to learn that was just three years after Berger and Luckmann published The Social Construction of Reality. I still own that book; it is one of the few ‘‘theory’’ books that made the cut when I downsized my library to an apartment from a big house. That copy of The Social Construction of Reality, with its highlighting, underlining, exclamation points and scribbles all over the margins, is the document of my birth as a sociologist. So this is the most intimidating book review I have ever faced. I know just about nothing about the sociology of religion, nothing about many of the areas in which Berger has worked and published. I am, as almost anyone would be, impressed with his long list of books, the many areas in which he has worked and contributed, all around the world. A review of his work requires a group effort, just the kind of research group he himself has been so successful at convening. Berger’s tone, the engaging humor, reminds me of one of my elderly uncles. He describes his arrival at the New School to learn sociology as a kind of accident, not realizing how totally marginal it was to mainstream American sociology, offering us the old Jewish joke about the Chinese waiter speaking Yiddish. When a customer is surprised, the owner hushes him: ‘‘He thinks he’s learning English!’’ And we’re off—I am listening to one of my beloved uncles. As he recounts his extraordinarily productive life, I am sometimes in awe, but much as with my uncles, sometimes wincing with embarrassment. This is, as titled, a book of Berger’s adventures as a sociologist, not an autobiography of his life in full. A first marriage comes and goes in a sentence—his children do the same. Brigitte Berger, his wife, does show up now and again throughout the book, but his family life is dismissed with this reference to his early years at the Hartford Seminary Foundation: ‘‘The Hartford years were biographically important both personally and intellectually. I started life with Brigitte, and our two sons were born there.’’ He continues with a sentence or two on her writing, and his own leaving behind of neoorthodox theology and coming to ‘‘liberal Lutheranism’’ (p. 77). Berger spends some time explaining that his religious life is a very important part of who he is, but separate from his life as a sociologist, using as one of many Jewish references (those of us who did not follow his work in the sociology of religion can be forgiven for having thought he was Jewish): a Weberian notion of kosher cooking, keeping fleshy science separate from milky religion. I can respect and appreciate that, both the separation and the places where the separation utterly falls apart. What is most interesting is that it really does not even occur to him that other parts of his life/identity may be worth attending to in his intellectual development. He is, after all, a white man—and I gather that that identity and its privilege do not strike him as noteworthy. Berger was one of the gods of my life, but like many others, he crashes when feminism comes in. His tales of ‘‘militant feminists’’ in a chapter (wince) called ‘‘Politically Incorrect Excursions’’ all but breaks my heart. Militant? As one of my friends asked when

Interpretative Origins of Classical Sociology: Weber, Husserl, Schutz, Durkheim, SimmelInterpretative Origins of Classical Sociology: Weber, Husserl, Schutz, Durkheim, Simmel, by WandererJules J.. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2005. 237 pp.

The interpretative or hermeneutic dimension of knowledge about society has been a subject of discussion from the beginning of sociology in the nineteenth century. Writers have commented both on the human presuppositions for accurate observation, as in Harriet Martineau’s appeal for “sympathy” in the observer, and on the context of conventions and institutions that make meaningful interpretation possible, as with Wilhelm Dilthey’s ideas about the “objective spirit” at work in society. In the present volume (number 52 in the Mellen Studies in Sociology), Professor Wanderer has chosen to address these multifaceted issues by considering three important turn-of-the-century founders of sociology— Durkheim, Weber and Simmel—as well as two philosophers, Husserl and Schutz, who contributed to the sociological discussion, the latter particularly in relation to Weber’s thought. There is much that might be said about each of these theorists individually or in relation to each other, but Wanderer’s intention is to investigate just one theme: the origins of sociology out of the problem of interpretation. To address this theme is to enter the terrain of neo-Kantian thought, as Wanderer recognizes in a first chapter that situates the issues of interpretation in relation to major alternatives, as represented, for example, by Marx, Freud, or functionalism. But for the author, the real starting point is not the disputation over “subjective” versus “objective” knowledge so widespread across the early social and behavioral sciences, but more specifically Dilthey’s attack on the notion of “general laws” governing history and human action. There is much to be said for Dilthey’s importance in framing the issues of interpretation. However, in exploring this lineage, Wanderer misses an opportunity to elaborate the problem further by considering the full range of neo-Kantian positions, including especially those of Rickert, Windelband, and Lask, significant colleagues for both Weber and Simmel. This omission contributes to a tendency to overstate Dilthey’s importance and to deemphasize other bodies of thought, such as those emerging from neo-Kantian epistemology and what we would now call social psychology, a corrective nicely traced in Klaus Köhnke’s book on Simmel, Der Junge Simmel (Suhrkamp, 1996). Notwithstanding this lost opportunity, Wanderer writes two fine chapters on Husserl and Schutz that delineate their efforts to place interpretative understanding or Verstehen and its associated problems—consciousness, intentionality, motivation, meaning, and intersubjectivity—on an epistemologically and methodologically sound basis, that is, to render interpretation “objective” and serviceable for social scientific inquiry. The student looking for a clear discussion of seemingly obscure aspects of interpretative knowledge, such as “phenomenological reduction” or the requirement of “intersubjectivity,” will find these discussions useful. One should remember, nevertheless, that whether or not the pitfalls of subjective bias can be avoided, when the sociologist embarks on interpretative understanding, it is, in the end, a question of practice and application in the actual research setting. As for Weber, Durkheim, and Simmel, my last statement is obviously closest to Weber’s skepticism about methodological discussion in the abstract. Weber is a curious figure in this regard, as the methods of a verstehende Soziologie, articulated rather late in life, played only a minor role in his most accomplished sociological investigations, especially when compared with his use of ideal types. However, Wanderer recognizes the problem for Weber of understanding human action must be addressed in any case by all the sciences of action. Durkheim might well have agreed with such an assertion, but he approached the issue at an entirely different level, insisting on finding within social life itself the transcendental presuppositions of human understanding. The author’s contribution in this respect is to work back from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life to The Rules of Sociological Method, an ingenious way of reclaiming Durkheim’s interest in symbolic forms for the interpretative tradition, which Durkheim himself with his strong

109.95 cloth. ISBN: 0773460663.

In Visions of the Sociological Tradition Donald N. Levine presents a view of the German sociological tradition that emphasizes its origins in philosophical idealism. This paper discusses the implications of this, view for understanding the formation of sociology in Germany. The author suggests that Levines account can be supplemented and strengthened by reconstructing the German tradition both as an effort to proceed without foundational philosophical systems and as an outgrowth of social economics and the historical school of political economy. Most importantly, Levine shares the call for sociology as the site of dialogue with that reconstructed German tradition.

LEVINE'S GERMAN TRADITION: Consolations for the Sociologist

The revival of historical sociology in recent decades has largely neglected the contributions of Max Weber. Yet Webers writings offer a fundamental resource for analyzing problems of comparative historical development. Stephen Kalberg rejects the view that Webers historical writings consist of an ambiguous mixture of fragmented ideal types on the one hand and the charting of vast processes of rationalization and bureaucracy on the other. On the contrary, Webers substantive work offers a coherent and distinctive model for comparative analysis. A reconstruction of Webers comparative historical method, Kalberg argues, uncovers a sophisticated outlook that addresses problems of agency and structure, multiple causation, and institutional interpretation. Kalberg shows how such a representation of Webers work casts a direct light upon issues of pressing importance in comparative historical studies today. Weber addresses in a forceful way the whole range of issues confronted by the comparative historical enterprise. Once the full analytical and empirical power of Webers historical writings becomes clear, Webers work can be seen to generate procedures and strategies appropriate to the study of present day as well as past social processes. Written in an accessible and engaging fashion, this book will appeal to students and professionals in the areas of sociology, anthropology, and comparative history.