Study Questions for Weber

1. The growth of the state and bureaucracy is sometimes thought of the concrete expression of reason in social organization. How does Weber elaborate on that? What is his attitude towards its growing importance?

2. Smith and others analyzed the rise of the industrial economy. Weber suggests why that rise occurs in countries with the ‘Protestant Ethic’ more strongly than others. Why does religion play a role in capitalism?

3. Weber makes a distinction between the ‘ethic of absolute ends’ and the ‘ethic of responsibility’ and applies it to parties and political actors and groups in Germany. What does he see as the difference (and how might it apply in contemporary American politics?) Is the Marxism we talked about an ‘ethic of absolute ends’?

4. Weber makes a distinction between various types of ‘legitimacy’ (beliefs that justify a leader’s authority in the minds of the led). They were ‘traditional’, ‘charismatic’ and ‘rational-legal’. How would you apply this typology to contemporary leaders? Whom do you think Weber would call ‘charismatic’ today.

5. Weber is often considered one of the first great modern sociologists, as someone who looks as society ‘scientifically’, employing empirical observation objectively. Yet he is also known as one of the representatives of the pessimistic generation of intellectuals at the beginning of the 20^th Century, bemoaning the ‘disenchantment’ (Entzauberung) of society and politics. Is there a contradiction?

application 1.   What would you say is “legitimacy of domination” the basis of the following of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State (ISIS) (or Lee Bollinger, or Prof Chalmers) using the typology of Weber?

application 2.  What  does the incidence of terrorism (e.g. 9/11, the truck in Berlin before Xmas, the Boston Marathon bombing) say about Weber’s definition of a state (the claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a territory)?