MAX WEBER Sociological Imagination • Attended University of Heidelberg and studies law, history and economics • Served in the military • Died of pneumonia June 14, 1920 Social World • Lived in an environment with unprecedented economic growth and state expansion • Weber was concerned with the continued growth of German nationalism • German economics provided framework for Webers distinction between traditional and rational capitalism • Traditional Capitalism: motivated by immediate material concerns • Rational Capitalism: motivated by the acquisition of money (capital) in order to make more money • Industrialized rational capitalism brought raid economic growth • Weber developed theory of the state and global relations that still forms the basis sociological analysis of national and international politics • Weber created theory theory of modern bureaucracy • Weber saw that great society-wide tasks required an “appeal to the collective sentiments of the whole nation” • Weber saw particularized interests working against class consciousness (Marx) or collective consciousness (Durkheim) • Central point of Webers theory of charismatic, traditional, and rational legal authority is that the major task after any significant social change is routinization: society must make the changes routine so that they can be carried out differently • Weber was politically active during WWI • Weber argued that there are structural barriers with participatory democracy • Also argued that modern government is different from others that came before it • Modern state is defined by the “monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a territory” • key to his theory of the the state is legitimacy • Legitimacy: our belief in the right of others to rule; explains when and why people obey • Three kinds of legitimacy… 1. Charismatic 2. Traditional “Personal devotion and personal confidence in … qualities if individual leaders”
