Max Weber made significant contributions to sociology, including the concepts of verstehen (empathetic understanding), ideal types, and rationalization. He defined sociology as the interpretive understanding of social behavior to explain its causes and effects. Weber analyzed the increasing rationalization and bureaucratization of Western society. He is renowned for arguing that Protestantism and the Protestant work ethic contributed to the rise of capitalism by encouraging hard work, self-discipline, and wealth accumulation. Weber developed the method of ideal types to construct analytical models for comparing social phenomena.

1. An appreciation to the contributions of
Weber to the discipline of sociology
Author: Norman Makunika, Dibrugarh University, Department of Sociology
Contact: nmakunika@gmail.com
INTRODUCTION
Weber defined sociology as "that science which aims at the interpretive understanding of social
behaviour in order to gain an explanation of its causes, its courses, and its effects. Weber made a
number of contributions to sociology. Some of these include: the notion of “verstehen” or
empathetic understanding, which led to various theories (such as symbolic interactionism) in what
might be called the perspective of interpretive sociology; refining our understanding of the basis of
social inequality; the development of the methodological concept of “ideal types” (such as
bureaucracy); the study of large scale social processes (such as the increasing important of
rationalization in the West, and the accompanying rise of bureaucratization). This paper will try to
explore these concepts by Weber in detail. The paper will make use of the works of Coser (1977),
Scaff, (1998), Bilton (1996) and many more.
WEBER’S BACKGROUND
Jones (1985:34) pointed that, Weber wrote on a great many issues concerning society and mostly
history Like Marx, Weber was born in Germany in a town called Erfurt but he spent the majority of
his life here and was therefore much more influenced by German Philosophy, Economy and Society.
Major influences in Weber’s life were his parents Max and Helene (Scaff, 1998:34). Weber’s father
was a successful businessman and he followed in his footsteps by studying law at the universities in
Heidelberg and Berlin (Scaff, 1998:34). Weber’s mother was a very devoted Calvinist, who lived a
very simple, but hard working life. Though Weber was strongly influenced by his mother and her
religion, he was not religious himself.
MAX WEBER ON THE RATIONALIZATION OF SOCIETY
"Max Weber’s (1864-1920) classical sociological theory is based on his work on social action. Action
theory describes the subjective factors that influence action and serve as the foundation for society.
In developing his theory, Weber distinguished between the concepts of behaviour and action.
Behaviour is an automatic response that occurs with little thought, whereas action is the result of a
conscious process in which people give meaning to their actions and the world around them. Weber
was concerned only with the study of action and believed that the sociologist could understand the
meaningful basis of peoples’ actions through the method of “understanding,” or verstehen. He
distinguished between four ideal-types of action: affectual action, traditional action, value-rational
action, and means-end rational action.

2. Max Weber’s classical theory also includes his formulation of four types of rationality: practical,
theoretical, substantive, and formal. It is often argued that Weber’s focus was on formal rationality
and the ways in which it contributed to a historical process that transformed the Western world.
Weber’s intellectual interest in rationalization led him to study the historical forces that both
enabled rationalization in the West and constrained it elsewhere. Foremost among these forces was
religion. Weber argued that the Protestant ethic contributed profoundly to the rationalization of the
Western world, in fact, that it spurred the development of modern capitalism. Weber also studied
other religions such as Confucianism and Hinduism and concluded that the ethics of these religions
constrained rationalization and the development of capitalism.
Weber was also interested in different types of authority, or forms of legitimate domination. He
developed a typology of authority structures, which consisted of traditional, charismatic, and
rational-legal types of authority. These types of authority are ideal types, or models that scholars can
use to compare various specific examples of a phenomenon either across cases or over time. Weber
was most interested in the rational-legal type of authority (and its organizational manifestation, the
bureaucracy) and how empirical approximations to it contributed to rationalization. While Weber
viewed the routinisation of charisma as a revolutionary force, he thought that it was no match for
the process of rationalization."
On Verstehen, Weber argued that our knowledge of nature must always be, as it were, from the
outside. One can only observe external courses of events and record their uniformities. But in
regard to human action, one can do more than write protocols of recurrent sequences of events; can
attempt to impute motives by interpreting men's actions and words ( Morison 2006). With this
method, he opposes the positivists as well arguing that, social facts are in the last resort intelligible
facts. One can understand (verstehen) human action by penetrating to the subjective meanings that
actors attach to their own behaviour and to the behaviour of others. For Weber, a sociology of
human groups has the inestimable advantage of access to the subjective aspects of action, to the
realm of meaning and motivation.
IDEAL TYPES
In his effort to escape from the individualizing and particularizing approach of German
Geisteswissenschaft and historicism, Weber developed a key conceptual tool, the notion of the ideal
type (Taylor 1997:88). It will be recalled that Weber argued that no scientific system is ever capable
of reproducing all concrete reality, nor can any conceptual apparatus ever do full justice to the
infinite diversity of particular phenomena. All science involves selection as well as abstraction. Yet
the social scientist can easily be caught in a dilemma when he chooses his conceptual apparatus. For
example when his concepts are very general, he is likely to leave out what is most distinctive to
them, and when, on the other hand, he uses the traditional conceptualizations of the historian and
particularizes the phenomenon under discussion, he allows no room for comparison with related
phenomena. Therefore the notion of the ideal type was meant to provide escape from this dilemma.
According to Weber, an ideal type is an analytical construct that serves the investigator as a
measuring rod to ascertain similarities as well as deviations in concrete cases. It provides the basic
method for comparative study (Wright 1994). "An ideal type is formed by the one-sided
accentuation of one or more points of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete,
more or less present and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged

3. according to those one-sidedly emphasized viewpoints into a unified analytical construct." An ideal
type is not meant to refer to moral ideals. There can be an ideal type of a brothel or of a chapel. Nor
did Weber mean to refer to statistical averages. Average Protestants in a given region or at a give
time may be quite different from ideal typical Protestants. The ideal type involves an accentuation of
typical courses of conduct. Many of Weber's ideal types refer to collectivities rather than to the
social actions of individuals, but social relationships within collectivities are always built upon the
probability that component actors will engage in expected social actions. For Weber, an ideal type
never corresponds to concrete reality but always moves at least one step away from it. It is
constructed out of certain elements of reality and forms a logically precise and coherent whole,
which can never be found as such in that reality. There has never been a full empirical embodiment
of the Protestant Ethic, of the "charismatic leader," or of the "exemplary prophet."
Ideal types enable one to construct hypotheses linking them with the conditions that brought the
phenomenon or event into prominence, or with consequences that follow from its emergence. If we
wish to study the religious roots of modern capitalism, it may be advisable to construct an ideal type
of Protestant, based on the distinct features of sectarians as these emerged during the Reformation.
We shall then be in a position to determine empirically whether the concrete conduct of Protestants
in, say, seventeenth-century England did in fact approximate the type and in what specific aspects it
failed to do so. This type will further allow us to distinguish between the conduct of men who
adhered to Catholic or Protestant religious bodies. We can then proceed to correlations and causal
imputations as to the connections between the emergence of Protestantism and that of modern
capitalism--both being conceived in ideal typical terms. As Julien Freund puts it, "Being unreal, the
ideal type has the merit of offering us a conceptual device with which we can measure real
development and clarify the most important elements of empirical reality."
Weber's three kinds of ideal types are distinguished by their levels of abstraction. First are the ideal
types rooted in historical particularities, such as the "western city," "the Protestant Ethic," or
"modern capitalism," which refer to phenomena that appear only in specific historical periods and in
particular cultural areas. A second kind involves abstract elements of social reality--such concepts as
"bureaucracy" or "feudalism"--that may be found in a variety of historical and cultural contexts.
Finally, there is a third kind of ideal type, which Raymond Aron calls "rationalizing reconstructions of
a particular kind of behavior." According to Weber, all propositions in economic theory, for example,
fall into this category. They all refer to the ways in which men would behave were they actuated by
purely economic motives, were they purely economic men.
PROTESTANT ETHIC AND SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM
Sociologist Max Weber was fascinated by the influence of thoughts and beliefs in history, and
particularly why religion seemed to be a significant factor in determining levels of wealth.
Weber noticed that in the Germany of his time, the business leaders and owners of capital, not to
mention the bulk of higher skilled workers and managers, were Protestant as opposed to Catholic.
Protestants also had higher levels of educational achievement. The conventional explanation was
that, in the 16th and 17th centuries, particular towns and regions in Germany had thrown off the
rule of the Catholic church, and in the sudden freedom from a repressive regime controlling every
aspect of their lives they were able to pursue their economic interests and become prosperous.

4. In fact, Weber notes, it was the very laxness of the Church in terms of moral and societal rules that
turned the bourgeois middle classes against it. These burghers actually welcomed a tyranny of
Protestant control that would tightly regulate their attitudes and behavior. Weber’s question was,
why did the richer classes in Germany, Netherlands, Geneva and Scotland, and also the groups that
became the American Puritans, want to move in this direction? Surely freedom and prosperity
comes with less, not more, religious control?
At the outset of this famous but short book, Weber admits that discussing the ‘spirit’ of capitalism
seems pretentious. Forms of capitalism had, after all, existed in China, India, Babylon and the
classical world, and they had had no special ethos driving them aside from trade and exchange.
It was only with the emergence of modern capitalism, he suggests, that a certain ethic grew linking
moral righteousness with making money. It was not just that Protestants sought wealth more
purposefully than Catholics, but that Protestants showed “a special tendency to develop economic
rationalism”, that is, a particular approach to creating wealth that was less focused on the gain of
comfort than on the pursuit of profit itself. The particular satisfaction was not in the money
extracted to buy things (which had always driven money-making in the past), but in ‘wealth creation’
based on increased productivity and better use of resources. Long after all needs had been met, the
capitalist did not rest, forever seeking greater profit for its own sake and as the symbol of more
profound ends.
Weber had studied non-Christian religions and their relationship to economics. He observed that
Hinduism’s caste system, for instance, would always be a big obstacle to the development of
capitalism because people were not free to be professionally or socially mobile. The Hindu spiritual
ethic was to attempt to transcend the world, an outlook not dissimilar to Catholicism’s creation of
monasteries and convents to remove the holy people from the sins and temptations of the world
outside. The Protestant ethic, in contrast, involved living with your eyes on God but fully in the
world.
The expression of spiritual energies through work and business obviously gave its believers
tremendous economic advantage. Instead of being told that business was an inferior quest
compared to the holy life, one could be holy through one’s work. Capitalistic enterprise was
transformed from being simply a system of economic organization, to a domain of life infused with
God.
Weber is careful not to say that there was anything intrinsically better about the theology of
Protestantism. Rather, the general outlook on life and work that the early Protestant sects –
Calvinists, Methodists, Pietists, Baptists, Quakers - drew from their beliefs made them singularly well
adapted to modern capitalism. They brought to it:
 A spirit of progress;
 A love of hard work for its own sake;
 Orderliness, punctuality and honesty;

5.  Hatred of time-wasting through socializing, idle talk, sleep, sex or luxury (expressed in the
sentiment, “every hour lost is lost to labour for the glory of God”);
 Attention to the most productive use of resources, represented by profit. (“You may labour
to be rich for God, though not for the flesh and sin” said Calvinist Richard Baxter);
 Absolute control of self (emotions and body) and aversion to spontaneous enjoyment;
 Belief in calling, or “proving one’s faith in worldly activity”.
Many Calvinist writers had the same contempt for wealth that the Catholic ascetics did, but when
you looked more closely at their writings, Weber noted, their contempt was for the enjoyment of
wealth and the physical temptations that came with it. Constant activity could drive out such
temptations, therefore work could be made holy. If it was where your spiritual energies could be
expressed, then work could be your salvation.
Thus, the peculiar nature of the early Protestant capitalists emerged: famously focused on their
business, and as a result highly successful – yet going to great lengths not to enjoy its fruit.
Catholicism had always had a degree of guilt about business and money making, but unrestricted by
a bad conscience the Puritan sects became known as reliable, trustworthy and eager to please in
their business dealings. This combination of “intense piety with business acumen”, as Weber
describes it, became the cornerstone of many great fortunes.
Weber argues that the idea of ‘calling’ only came in with the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther
had discussed it, but it took the Puritan sects to make it central to their way of life.
Calling was related to Protestant theologian Calvin’s idea of ‘predestination’ – that you did not know
while you were alive whether you were one of God’s ‘elect’, that is, whether you would live in
eternity or be eternally damned. Therefore, you had to appear to be one of the elect, and this meant
leading a spotless, well-ordered life of extreme self-control. If you were successful in your work, it
was a sign that you were one of the chosen. This irrational, spiritual concept ironically gave rise to a
very rational brand of economic activity. Two of its notable effects were the self-limiting of
consumption and the “ascetic compulsion to save”. The outcome, Weber notes, was that capital was
freed up for systematic investment, making the rich even richer.
BUREAUCRACY
Max Weber was a historian that wrote about the emergence of bureaucracy from more traditional
organizational forms (like feudalism) and it's rising pre-eminance in modern society. Scott defines
bureaucracy it as "the existence of a specialized administrative staff". According to Weber,
beaucracy is a particular type of administrative structure developed through rational-legal authority.
Bureaucratic structures evolved from traditional structures with the following changes:
1. Jurisdictional areas are clearly specified, activities are distributed as official duties (unlike
traditional form where duties delegated by leader and changed at any time).

6. 2. Organization follows hierarchial principle -- subordinates follow orders or superiors, but have right
of appeal (in contrast to more diffuse structure in traditional authority).
3. Intential, abstract rules govern decisions and actions. Rules are stable, exhaustive, and can be
learned. Decisions are recorded in permanent files (in traditional forms few explicit rules or written
records).
4. Means of production or administration belong to office. Personal property separated from office
property.
5. Officials are selected on basis of technical qualifications, appointed not elected, and compensated
by salary.
6. Employement by the organization is a career. The official is a full-time employee and looks
forward to a life-long career. After a trial period they get tenure of position and are protected from
arbitrary dismissal.
Weber said that bureaucracy resolves some of the shortcomings of the traditional system. Described
above was his ideal-type construct, a simplified model (not a preferred model) that focuses on the
most important features. Weber's view of bureaucracy was a system of power where leaders
exercise control over others -- a system based on discipline.
Weber stressed that the rational-legal form was the most stable of systems for both superiors and
subordinates -- it's more reliable and clear, yet allows the subordinate more independence and
discretion. Subordinates ideally can challenge the decisions of their leaders by referring to the stated
rules -- charisma becomes less important. As a result, bureaucratic systems can handle more
complex operations than traditional systems.
WEBER ON THE ASPECT OF CLASS/ STRATIFICATION
For Weber the main social classes were:
1. The working class as a whole - the more so, the more automated the work process becomes;
2. The petty bourgeoisie;
3. The propertyless intelligentsia and specialists (technicians, various kinds of white collar
employees, civil servants - possibly with considerable social differences depending on the cost of
their training);
4. The classes privileged through property and education.
According to Bilton (1996), ‘Weber was concerned with analytically separating "class" from status
group. For Weber class is power in the market place, while status groups, are communities of people
who are defined as belong to the same social group on the basis of their ideas about proper life-
styles and by the social esteem and honour bestowed upon them by others.’ Status groups involve
exclusiveness of membership; awareness of similar tastes, life style, and interests; and a tendency to
act and interact as a group. Prestige is associated with the style of life of a status group. Status is a
personal evaluation people make of one another. Within any given class, one may find several status
groups

7. Additionally, a member of a specific status group is bound by expectations of restrictions on social
intercourse with those not belonging to the circle, and is supposed to display social distance towards
inferiors.
Weber also discussed PARTY; which referred to the political sphere and political involvement, as an
additional basis of power and of command over resources in society. Weber conceived of POWER, as
the chance of one, or a number of individuals, "to realize their own will in communal action, even
against the resistance of others."
CONCLUSION
In sum, Weber's contributions include the following:
- He pointed to the importance of "social definitions of reality".
- He emphasized non-economic status (and associated lifestyles) as an important dimension of social
stratification.
- He developed a model of bureaucracy.
- He emphasized that there are a variety of bases for power.
- Weber’s ideas about “verstehen” have indirectly led to the development of the “social
construction” perspective.
- Some of Weber’s insights about status competition and their role in social inequality are relevant to
understanding “consumerism”.
- Weber’s insights about the nature of rationalization and bureaucracy have been applied to the
study of organizations.
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Jones, P (1985) Theory and Method in Sociology .London: University Tutorial Press
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"The Differences Between Weberian and Marxist Explanations of Social Class." 09 Oct 2013
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