Customer Reviews

Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (2 volume set)

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Weber's Economy and Society was the number one pick by sociologists at the World Congress of Sociology. Twenty percent chose the book as one of the top ten. No other book had as high a percentage of admirers. Many key concepts come from this encyclopedic work: Modern Capitalism, modern bureaucracy, charismatic authority, and goal-rational social action. The overall thesis of this complex magnum opus concerns the de-mystification and rationalization of our world, the famous iron cage thesis. One neglected aspect is Weber's ideal type model of patrimonial prebendal traditional authority and its oscillation with feudal authority. Feudalism promoted capitalism and capitalism has a tendency to become an iron cage of instrumental rationality. The main difficulty with the book is the casuistic writing style; it is not a book to sit down and read, but more like a reference work. Before accepting trendy PoMo discourses take a good look at this in depth examination of one key aspect of globalization. (This two volume set supplants previous partial translations of portions of the book, e.g. Parsons' translation of one part, and the editing work is in the highest scholarly tradition.) Everyone interested in social science should study this book! It is an exemplar for comparative historical analysis in sociology (CHS) that is neither naively Positivistic nor dogmatically Marxist.

This is an uncommly brilliant work in social theory and sociology. Moreover, economic sociology was founded through "Economy and Society", especially its second chapter ("Sociological Categories of Economic Action") which is the size of a small book (approx. 200 pages).
The general theoretical approach of Weber can be characterized as one of "interpretive economic sociology", that is, as a type of economic sociology in which the concept of "meaning" is at the very center of the explanatory exercise.
Social action (to follow Ch. 1) is defined as a type of behavior to which meaning is attached ("action"), and which is oriented to the behavior of others ("social"). Economic sociology consequently deals with "economic social action".
"Economy and Society" was part of a larger work entitled "Handbook of Social Economics", which included volumess on "Economy and Nature", "Economy and Technology" - and "Economy and Society". In his work Weber explores such topics as "economy and law", "economy and religion", "economy and politics", and much more.
The work "Economy and Society", finally, is a bric-a-brac. Weber himself only sent 4 chs to the printer (=Chs 1-4). The rest of the 2 volumes consists of manuscripts that his wife and economist Melchior Palyi put together, pretty much as they saw fit. Caution is consequently necessary when reading "Economy and Society"; and this work should not be treated as "a book" by Weber.

Central to the development of sociology. For readers interested in the great sociologists of the 19th century, Marx, Durkheim, and Weber, this is a key read. Start with THE PROTESTANT ETHIC by Weber, but ECONOMY AND SOCIETY is a rich and brilliant elaboration of Weber's central themes.

It's dry, but it's great thinking, and very important.

It seems that many people comment this book with the difficulty to read and the bad organization. However, I want to suggest that after read Schluchter's 'The Rise of Western Rationalism', you will know more about why Weber's writings are in this style. Simply speaking, it links to Weber's view of History, and if he want to elaborate the history in a approiate way, not a simple linear evolutionary way, he had to demonstrate the whole picture--or in Schluchter's word, 'basic configuration'--of history. History, in this case the rise of Rationalism, is not compose solely by few influential events, but also related to the others. Those 'significant historical events' are only the consequence of the competition between ideas and historical events, therefore, Weber wanted to explain why the configuration favour the rise of western rationalism, so he must concern all elements constitute the history. That is, Weber showed us the conditions and the process of competition within or among the many spheres, I think that is why Weber had to use this seems fragmented writing style.

I'm a PHD student writing my thesis, and after juggling the monstrosities that are these two books around while writing one evening, I broke down and bought the Kindle version. But only one book showed up! Most of the references I want to use are in the second volume and Amazon reps are telling me they sent me the second volume. Well it's nowhere that I can see it. So as the other guy said, buyer beware! If this gets resolved I'll update this.

I only received one book from the 2 volume set. Other buyers, beware.

The book itself, however, is fantastic. Weber is amazing.

I expect this comment is going to be useful, if at all, only to first year graduate students, so it'll be understandable if it's not rated very highly.... Anyway, just a quick note on Mr. Jack White's comment of April 11, 2000. One thing that Max Weber's Economy and Society is NOT, is a foundational text for structural-functionalism. That honor would probably go to Emile Durkheim's The Division of Labor in Society-- to be followed oh-so many years later by seminal works of Americans Talcott Parsons and Robert K. Merton. I'm not sure what Mr. White was thinking, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't about classical sociological theory.

Max Weber linked religious satisfaction with economic pride in his most popular book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Then he tried to expand the sociology of developmental history by writing about religion in China, India, and ancient Judaism. The end of Max Weber's life as a professor of economics in 1920 was around the time in which a Woody Wilson wet dream was falling apart without having all the Presbyterians die laughing from an overdose of World War Wit. Instead of trying to find crimes against humor in the work of Max Weber, it is more fruitful to remind ourselves of the Freudian aspects of our failure to maintain all the old ego boundaries as modern societies ride a cosmic pogo stick down the stairs to end up in the basement of as nuclear submarine.

Society is a strange combination of factors which is vulnerable to purely person relationships, which are aptly described by Max Weber in connection with vocational ethics in Economy and Society (1968, 1978) as power relationships:

subordination . . .
dominated by caprice and grace,
indignation and love,
and most of all by the mutual piety
and devotion of masters and subalterns,
after the fashion of the family. (p. 600).

Moses and God. Nixon and Kissinger, Obama and no witnesses

Moses confronted God face to face. Nixon had Kissinger to share his views on the importance of superpower activities. Since the death of Max Weber in 1920, World War Wit has expanded to make any form of social science merely an intellectual comfort zone for thinkers who find the existing dominate tricks oppressive. Max Weber pictured bureaucracy rationalizing activities, but current practice is to hide the nature of particular times by shifting money to meet capital requirements. Paper money dominated the financial problems in the times of Max Weber (who wrote that the United States had little interest in the foreign exchange value of American money, Economy and Society, p. 183) and Keynes, who wrote a Tract on Monetary Reform in 1923.

Big time societies maintain a marketing system which makes the marginal thinking of millionaires and billionaires possible. Financial extremes are schismatic. The current system of political finance just became a factor in a governor of Illinois being sentenced to 14 years in prison for corruption after being tried in federal court. The irony of justice in a cosmic pogo stick society, with everything hopping back and forth like a gambling addiction trying to play faster than the triumph of therapeutic messages coming from the highly educated spear chucker lip in the White House, is a product of worldwide acceptance of the deep unreal.

Intellect should get the Martin Luther Stonehood award when it has a sharper definition of how the importance of an isolated instant in time can equal the danger of training trashy people for high stakes World War Wit inside jobs wiping out unauthorized financial transactions when political power determines whose money has been derived from illegitimate activities:

As far as sociology is concerned,
power of command does not exist
unless the authority which is claimed
by somebody is actually heeded to a
socially relevant degree. (p. 948).

Also where war is a constant
state of affairs, the prestige of
the older men is likely to sink
below that of the warriors and
there often develops a democratic
bias of the younger groups against
the prestige of old age (sexagenarios de ponte). (pp. 950-951).

The conditions of administration
of mass structures are radically different
from those obtaining in small associations
resting upon neighborly or personal relationships. (p. 951).

The money economy is of very
great importance for the whole bearing
of bureaucracy, yet by itself it is by no
means decisive for the existence of bureaucracy. (pp. 963-964).

The increasingly bureaucratic organization
of all genuine mass parties offers the most
striking example of the role of sheer quantity
as a leverage for the bureaucratization of a
social structure; in Germany, above all the
Social Democratic Party, and abroad both of
the American parties are prime examples. (p. 971).

A direct road leads . . .
to the present position of the policeman
as the "representative of God on earth." (p. 972).

And as far as complicated tasks are concerned,
paid bureaucratic work is not only more precise
but, in the last analysis, it is often cheaper than
even formally unremunerated honorific service. (p.974).

As in the song "Cosmic Charlie" by the Grateful Dead, I am concerned that we find the deep unreal when:

the very last lately inquired about you.

Trying to see everything as dynamic, transition failures can crop up as dramatically as reverse warrior is a yoga position coinciding with a change of breath, or a financial crisis jumps on a cosmic pogo stick bouncing back and forth. The cracks in time of the deep unreal might parallel the significance of the primary question Kierkegaard raised in his book, Philosophical Crumbs. Then he wrote a Concluding Unscientific Postscript.

What can I say of this work that has not already been said. This is the core of Structural Functionalism. It is presented as an argument against Karl Marx's Capital and his 1844 Manuscripts. Weber argues that the economic sphere is not the only factor in determining social structure. While Marx divides society into owners and workers, Weber presents society as composed of several layers of classes and status groups.

I bought this exact edition many years ago and was disappointed when it arrived and it was NOT both volumes: Vol I and Vol II. It was only Vol II (starting at page 641) but I forgot about it. Now I find that I need some readings in Vol I and I cannot find it. This edition is the only one I can find and I KNOW it is not complete even though it is advertised as such!

Can anyone help? It is NOT the two volume set it advertises it is!

Tom