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Featured researches published by Stephen Kalberg.


Citizenship Studies | 1997

Tocqueville and Weber on the Sociological Origins of Citizenship: The Political Culture of American Democracy

Stephen Kalberg

While Alexis de Tocquevilles commentary on America is famous, Max Webers is far less so. However, in scattered writings, he addresses two of the themes at the centre of Tocquevilles analysis of the ‘manners and mores’ of the American political culture: the potential for a ‘tyranny of the majority’ in the US and the critical role of civil associations. By reference to these two themes, this study seeks to examine the divergent perspectives of these classicial theorists upon the political culture of the US, contrast Tocquevilles more structural and interest‐based mode of analysis to Webers emphasis upon the significance of values and beliefs, and comment upon, in light of the insights offered by both theorists, the sociological origins of citizenship. Unlike Tocqueville, Weber sees an odd juxtaposition—an accentuated, ‘world mastery’ individualism and an accentuated orientation to civic sphere ideals—at the centre of the American political culture.


Theory, Culture & Society | 1987

West German and American Interaction Forms: One Level of Structured Misunderstanding

Stephen Kalberg

Forms of interaction are seldom addressed in comparative perspective. This investigation based on field notes and interviews examines the manner in which a series of American and West German patterns of interpersonal relations diverge. The insider/outsider, public/private, Freundschaft/friendship dichotomies, as well as modes of speaking and group dynamics, are discussed. A series of regular and structured misunderstandings may result when Americans and West Germans come into contact.


Journal of Classical Sociology | 2001

Should the ‘Dynamic Autonomy’ of Ideas Matter to Sociologists?: Max Weber on the Origin of Other-Worldly Salvation Religions and the Constitution of Groups in American Society Today

Stephen Kalberg

Dominant schools of sociological theory today tend to downplay, or even omit entirely, a consideration of ‘dynamically autonomous’ ideas. This investigation reconstructs a case study - Max Weber’s analysis of the rise of otherworldly salvation religions - in which just these ideas are discovered as capable of placing thrusts into motion toward the constitution of groups and social change. Does Weber’s argument regarding the causal impetus of ideas remain plausible in secularized societies? Tensions in the American world-view, it is argued, give birth to dynamically autonomous ideas that, in an analogous manner, call forth new groupings. Analyses of social change in American society that refer alone to political and economic interests, social networks, rational choices, power, interaction, resource mobilization, state authority and structural differentiation are seen to omit an important, if often amorphous, background causal force.


Journal of Classical Sociology | 2004

The Past and Present Influence of World Views Max Weber on a Neglected Sociological Concept

Stephen Kalberg

Weber’s definition of world views is summarized and the several ways in which world views in his sociology influence the formation of social groupings are outlined. The manner in which a ‘sustaining’ and a ‘dynamic’ autonomy characterize world views is noted; their capacity to constitute foundational and ‘background’ forces for (a) a methodical-rational organization of life and (b) historical developments and social change is also addressed. The influence of world views is then discussed in reference to the crucial question of how their ‘autonomy’ is conveyed; salvation doctrines, social carriers and various ‘social configurations’, it is argued, are indispensable. Finally, Weber’s analysis of an epoch in which world views have lost a great deal of their original influence - namely our own - is examined. Do societies ‘require’ world views? Are the consequences significant when world views become severely weakened? World views, it is concluded, constitute a significant concept for sociological analysis, yet one heretofore widely neglected.


European Journal of Social Theory | 2007

A Cross-National Consensus on a Unified Sociological Theory? Some Inter-Cultural Obstacles

Stephen Kalberg

The universal fragmentation today of Sociology as a discipline tempts sociological theorists in every nation to question whether a standard set of theories can be formulated that would command consensus across the globe. The discipline would benefit, it would seem, from a common language shared by sociologists: communication across nations and among theorists and practitioners would be facilitated, research methods and procedures would be standardized, and confusion among students new to the discipline would be minimized. Are uniform theories at all possible in Sociology? This query is addressed here in a preliminary manner. A skeptical position is adopted, although one that diverges from familiar arguments on this question. The formulation of consensus theories is rendered improbable, many commentators contend, owing to the penetration of Sociology’s boundaries by adjacent disciplines and the challenges posed by a variety of new approaches: Literary Studies, Cultural Studies, Post-modernism, and Post-structuralism. Even attempts to define the field clearly have been hindered to a great extent by these developments, the critics hold. The radical dispersal today of Sociology’s intellectual capital, they maintain, precludes all attempts to reach consensus. Although uncritical of this argument and arriving at the same conclusion, this investigation follows a different line of reasoning. Sociology, it will be maintained, developed in the context of region-based and nation-specific knowledge communities – as well as delineated historical, political, religious, and social dynamics – and hence constitutes a project anchored to a significant extent in the singularity of the regions and nations of its birth. Modes and traditions of sociological analysis varied substantively, and the discipline’s journey was characterized in each region and nation by particular achievements, problems, tensions, dilemmas, and parameters. Moreover, certain approaches and schools in certain regions and nations more effectively withstood external homogenizing pressures. On the other hand, certain modes of analysis typically located deep in a specific


Journal of Classical Sociology | 2009

Max Weber's Analysis of the Unique American Civic Sphere Its Origins, Expansion, and Oscillations

Stephen Kalberg

Max Webers analysis of the American civic sphere has been seldom investigated. Indebted to the ascetic Protestantism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, his major concepts and analytic framework are summarized here. An unusual symbiotic dualism between the civic arena and a world-mastery individualism, as well as an antagonism between this value-grounded individualism and practical-rational individualism, remain pivotal throughout his analysis. Nonetheless, although powerful, the Weberian model is seen to be foreshortened. Three complementary constructs, grounded in his rich set of concepts, extend Webers analysis. Taken in combination, all four models provide a Weberian analysis of the American civic spheres unique origins, expansion, and past and present oscillations across a demarcated spectrum. Webers emphasis upon the deep cultural contexts of social action, the influence of the past upon the present, and arrays of operationalizable hypotheses diverges distinctly from Tocquevilles approach, as well as present-day modernization, neo-functionalist, and neo-Marxist analyses of the civic sphere.


Theory, Culture & Society | 1991

The Hidden Link between Internal Political Culture and Cross-National Perceptions: Divergent Images of the Soviet Union in the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany:

Stephen Kalberg

It is remarkable that the Federal Republic of Germany (FR) and the United States, given common membership in NATO, a mutual interest in defense against the Soviet Union, and the predominantly Western orientation of the FR, disagreed so frequently in the 1970s and 1980s regarding policies toward the Soviet Union. The West Germans gave way to American pressure to boycott the Moscow Olympics as a response to the invasion of Afghanistan only at the last moment, and only after a tortuous domestic discussion. The FR opposed the US directly on the issue of the Soviet gas pipeline and then, soon after, regarding the imposition of trade sanctions against the military government in Poland. The unwillingness of the West Germans to interrupt, in response to various superpower tensions, the flow of trade to the USSR and Eastern Europe that began with Ostpolitik in 1969 constituted a repeated source of irritation to American administrations. A major uproar in the FR greeted the news in 1978 that President Carter was considering building the neutron bomb. The storm of protest within the FR over the stationing of American middle-range missiles on German soil involved not only massive and continuing demonstrations over a five-year period, but also — and perhaps even more than did the Vietnam War — a significant erosion of the immense capital of goodwill that the United States had accumulated in the FR throughout the 1950s (Kalberg, 1987a). This surplus was further depleted by opposition across the political spectrum to the Reagan administrations view of the situation in Nicaragua as presenting, in


Archive | 1998

Geschichte und Gegenwart im Werk Max Webers

Stephen Kalberg

Max Weber besteht fur jede soziologische Gegenwartsanalyse entschieden auf der Bedeutung der Geschichte. Selbst wenn er versucht, einebestimmte Gegenwart zu kennzeichnen und zu erklaren, achtet er stets auf die vielen Arten, auf die Geschichte und Gegenwart ununterbrochen ineinandergehen. So schreibt er: »Ueber- all ist das tatsachlich Hergebrachte der Vater des Geltenden gewesen.«2 Auf der anderen Seite scheinen zentrale Zuge von Webers Soziologie, jede enge Verflechtung von Geschichte und Gegenwart in seinem Werk in Frage zu stellen. Zwei bekannte Merkmale fallen hier sofort ein: seine Kennzeichnung unseres eigenen Zeitalters – des ›modernen okzidentalen Rationalismus‹ – als grundverschieden von fruheren sowie seine Hervorhebung der Fahigkeit charismatischer Fuhrer, die Gegenwart von der Vergangenheit jah abzuheben.


Social Service Review | 1975

The Commitment to Career Reform: The Settlement Movement Leaders

Stephen Kalberg

By studying the early leaders of the Settlement Movement who became career activists and reformers, this paper attempts to define the forces that led to long-term commitment to activism. The enduring commitment of the individuals studied here is analyzed in terms of the beliefs and attitudes predominant in their families and factors that continually reinforced their commitment once they had embarked upon careers of activism. A final section briefly compares and contrasts leaders in the student and civil rights movements of the 1960s with the career activists in this study.


The Environmentalist | 2012

A transatlantic approach to sustainability? The perspective of sociology

Stephen Kalberg

Differing views of the state and varying ideological postures in the United States and Europe place “invisible and clandestine” obstacles against the smooth functioning of transatlantic treaties, agreements, and cooperation in general. These differing views and postures must be rendered visible and acknowledged if efforts to perpetuate a cross-Atlantic dialog are to be viable and stable. Neither the advantages of sharing technology nor common economic and political interests will alone adequately ground cooperation. Sociologists in particular are aware of the ways in which indigenous values and beliefs frequently endure, despite the homogenizing structural change that accompanies industrialization, urbanization, and globalization, and cause misperceptions and misunderstandings.

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