Chapter 5
Authority and Rationality—Max Weber
Chapter Objectives:
After reading and understanding this chapter, a student should be able to
 Discuss the relative importance of culture and social structure and
examine the implications of a Weberian cultural sociology approach
 Explain the evolution of religion from magic to ethnical monotheism
 Describe the effects of religious culture and structural changes on the
emergence of capitalism
 Differentiate class, status, and power and analyze their effects on the
possibility of social change
 Explain Weber’s theory of social change
 Discuss the historical shift to bureaucracy as chief organizing principle
and its effects
 Analyze an organization using the ideal type of bureaucracy
 Describe how the crosscutting influences of class, status, and power plus
the effects of bureaucratic organization, disorganized capitalism, and
capitalist media produce the rising importance of status identities over
class, symbolic gratification, and the ascendancy of life style politics over
emancipatory politics
Key Concepts (listed here and under each heading in the outline): subjective value
orientation; objective knowledge; ideal types; instrumental-rationality; value-rationality;
traditional action; affective action; verstehen; rationalization; disenchantment;
legitimation; theodicy; magic; economic stability; professionalization; symbolism;
polytheism; ethical monotheism; traditional capitalism; rational capitalism; spirit of
capitalism; Protestant calling; doctrine of predestination; legitimation; property class;
commercial class; status; party; crosscutting stratification; authority; charismatic
authority; traditional authority; rational-legal authority; ideal type bureaucracy;
bureaucratic personality; iron cage of bureaucracy; credentialing; credential inflation;
disorganized capitalism; symbolic gratification; emancipatory politics; life politics;
mediated experience; plurality of choice
Chapter Outline:
I. The Perspective: Complex Sociology
Key concepts: subjective value orientation; objective knowledge; ideal types;
instrumental-rationality; value-rationality; traditional action; affective action; verstehen;
rationalization; disenchantment; legitimation; theodicy;
A. Problems with social science
1. The subjective orientation of social actors
2. The relationship between forming questions and values
B. Creating objective knowledge
1. Ideal types: point of orientation outside (objective) the phenomenon
under consideration
a. Kinds of ideal types
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i. Historical
ii. Classificatory
2. Verstehen
a. Types of
i. Intellectual
ii. Empathetic
C. Rationalization: broad sweeping movement toward rationalization and rationallegal legitimation
1. Three kinds of rationality
a. Means-ends calculation
b. Bureaucratic method of organizing human
c. Opposite of enchantment
D. Legitimation: process by which power is given moral grounding
1. Two main elements: objective and subjective
2. Three types: charismatic, traditional, and rational-legal
II. The Evolution of Religion
Key concepts: magic; economic stability; professionalization; symbolism; polytheism;
ethical monotheism
A. Evolution verses revelation
1. Religious change is historical fact
2. Understood either through progressive revelation or evolution (linking
social factors with changes in religion)
3. Not an either or situation
B. From magic to religion (Figure 5.2)
1. Move from physical to symbolic
2. Due to economic stability and professionalization
a. Economic stability leads to less dependence on natural forces
b. Three results of professionalization
i. Full time devotion leads to increased religious
experiences (transcendence through ecstasy (principally
through orgies and drugs)
ii. Increased time to create knowledge around religious
experiences
iii. Vested interests
C. From polytheism to ethnical monotheism (Figure 5.3)
1. Continued professionalization
2. Political compounding
3. Rationalization and bureaucratization of the state
III. The Rise of Capitalism: Religion and States
Key concepts: traditional capitalism; rational capitalism; spirit of capitalism; Protestant
calling; doctrine of predestination
A. The religious culture of capitalism
1. Previous traditional capitalism
2. Spirit of capitalism needed for rational capitalism
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a. Characteristics of spirit of capitalism
i. Goal oriented life
ii. Work ethnic (duty to work; duty within work)
iii. Legitimation through quantitative calculations
3. Cultural origin of spirit of capitalism
a. Luther’s calling
b. Calvin’s predestination
c. Protestant asceticism
B. The structural influences on capitalism
1. Shift from feudalism to nation-state
2. Money economy
3. Free markets
4. Free labor
5. Bureaucratization
6. Literacy
VI. Class, Authority, and Social Change
Key concepts: legitimation; property class; commercial class; status; party; crosscutting
stratification; authority; charismatic authority; traditional authority; rational-legal
authority
A. Class
1. Compared to Marx
a. Marx: ownership of means of production
b. Weber: relative control over goods and skills that determines
inner satisfaction and life chances
2. Weber’s dimensions of class—each varies on continuum from positive
to negative (Figure 5.5)
a. Property classes
i. Examples: rentiers (positive); debtors (negative)
b. Commercial classes: ability to trade or manage a market position
i. Examples: medical doctors (positive); laborers (negative)
3. Difference between objective class position and class as a social group
a. Conditions for forming class group
i. Immediate economic groups
ii. Large numbers in same class position
iii. Technical conditions: communication; leadership;
ideology
B. Status and party
1. Status
a. Basis of
i. Distinct lifestyle
ii. Formal education
iii. Differences in hereditary or occupational prestige
b. Preserved through
i. Marriage and eating restrictions
ii. Monopolizing specific modes of acquisition
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iii. Different traditions
2. Party: a group organized in order to attain ideal or material advantages
for its active members
C. Crosscutting stratification
1. Class, status, and power do not necessarily co-vary; thus creating higher
diversity of interests, which, in turn, hampers group organization around
any of these three factors
D. Authority and social change (Figure 5.6)
1. Three different kinds of authority: charismatic, traditional, rational-legal
a. Only charismatic can bring change
b. Changes based on charismatic leadership inevitably brings the
problem of routinization (which is solved through traditional or
rational-legal authority)
2. General social change also contingent upon
a. The degree of correlation among class, status, and power
b. Questioning the legitimacy of the distribution of class, status,
and power
c. The degree to which technical conditions of organization are met
V. Rationality In Action
Key concepts: ideal type bureaucracy; bureaucratic personality; iron cage of
bureaucracy; credentialing; credential inflation
A. Historical shift to bureaucratic organization
1. Six preconditions—increases in
a. The size and space of the population being organized
b. The complexity of the task being performed
c. The use of markets and the money economy
d. Communication and transportation technologies
e. The use of mass democracy
f. The volume of complicated and rationalized culture
B. Ideal type bureaucracies
1. General functions: rationalize and routinize tasks
2. Characteristics of ideal type (ideal type is a measurement, thus each of
these is a variable)
a. An explicit division of labor with delineated lines of authority,
b. The presence of an office hierarchy,
c. Written rules and communication,
d. Accredited training and technical competence,
e. Management by rules that is emotionally neutral
f. Ownership of both the career ladder and position by the
organization rather than the individual.
C. Effects of bureaucratic organization
1. Bureaucratic personality—four characteristics
a. Rationalized living
b. Identification with organizational goals
c. Dependence on expert systems
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d. Sequestration of experience
2. Iron cage
a. Virtually inescapable and indestructible
b. Cooptation
3. Credentialing: education system is used to credential technical expertise
rather than cultivate an informed citizenry
4. Credential inflation: because bureaucracies rely heavily upon
educational credentials for job placement, the level of required credentials
tends to inflate over time as more and more of the populace completes
higher levels of education
5. Additional effects—irrationality of rationality
a. Continued decrease in traditional and affective ties
(dehumanization of lifeworld and interactions between people and
organizations)
b. Peter Principle: promotion to level of incompetence
c. Parkinson’s Law: work expands to fill allotted time
d. Law of Oligarchy: continued existence of organization past
point of usefulness and functionality due to vested interests of
specialized bureaucratic leadership
VI. Thinking About Modernity and Postmodernity
Key concepts: disorganized capitalism; symbolic gratification; emancipatory politics; life
politics; mediated experience; plurality of choice
A. Bureaucracy and class, status, power
1. With class, status, and power inequality is complex matrix of
intersecting (crosscutting) interests
2. Bureaucracy effects: increases social emphasis on credentials and
symbols = increased importance of status identities over class coupled
with rising importance of symbolic gratification
B. Disorganized capitalism
1. Characteristics: deconcentration of
a. Means and administration of production
b. Commercial capital
c. Collective consumption
d. Residential concentration of labor power
2. Effects
a. Primary production moves from core nations to peripheral or
third world nations
b. Core nations: increased service class and economy based on
consumerism
c. Continued increased importance of status identities over class
C. Media
1. Intrinsic process of removing culture from embedded social life
2. Globalized media images
3. Influence of advertising
D. Identities and politics
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1. Effects of bureaucratic organization, disorganized capitalism, and
mediated experiences
a. Identity moves from primarily group based to consumer based
markets
b. Shift from emancipatory politics to life politics
Chapter Summary:
 To think like Weber is to take seriously the ramifications of culture. Weberians focus
on the historical, cultural, and social contexts wherein the subjective orientation of the
actor takes place. To think like Weber, then, means to use ideal types and verstehen
to explain how these contexts came to exist rather than others. And to think like
Weber means to pay attention to the process of rationalization and the need for
legitimation.
 Religion began with the movement from naturalistic to symbolic ways of seeing the
world. The movement toward symbolism and religion was influenced by increases in
economic technologies and professionalization. Religion was initially practiced in
kinship based groups with local deities. These local gods became hierarchically
organized into pantheons due to the political organization of kinship groups into
larger collectives, and the abstracting and rationalizing effects of the professional
priesthood. Eventually these same forces produced the idea of a monotheistic god
under which all the other gods were subsumed and finally disappeared. Monotheism
became ethical in response to the need of polity to control behavior on a large scale.
 The cultural foundations of rational capitalism were laid by Protestantism. This
religious movement (through the doctrines of calling, predestination, and abstention)
indirectly created a rationalizing, individuating culture wherein money could be made
for the purpose of making more money rather than immediate enjoyment. The
establishment of nation-states structurally paved the way for rational capitalism by
creating a free labor force, controlling large territories, standardizing money, and
protecting free global markets.
 Social stratification is a complex of three scarce resources: class, status, and party.
These three systems produce crosscutting interests that make social change difficult
and multifaceted. Large scale social changes become increasingly likely only as
class, status, and power are seen to correlate; the legitimacy of the system is
questioned; and, as the technical conditions of organization are met. Since social
change is led by charismatic authority, each change will need to be routinized through
traditional or rational-legal authority, which, in the long run, will once again set up
conditions for conflict and social change.
 Bureaucratic forms of organization became prominent as societies became larger and
more democratic, as tasks and knowledge became more complex, as communication
and transportation technologies increased, and as markets became more widespread
through the use of money. The extent of bureaucratic organization can be measured
through an ideal type consisting of six variables: explicit division of labor, office
hierarchy, written rules and communication, accreditation for position, affectless
management by rule, and the ownership of career ladders and position by the
organization. The use of bureaucracy as the chief organizing technology of a society
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
results in the bureaucratic personality, the iron cage of bureaucracy, and social
emphasis on credentials.
A Weberian understanding of postmodern society focuses on the complex
relationships among class, status, and party, with particular emphasis on the rise of
the professional or credentialed class. Weber explicitly argues against a simple
Marxian understanding of class and social change. For Marx, class in modern society
would devolve to only two classes who would face off over the means of production.
Weber argues that social change is more complex, with crosscutting influences from
multiple class levels along with diverse status groupings and political parties.
Postmodern theorists, such as Lash and Urry, argue that the class and status structures
have become even more complex than Weber imagined, due to disorganized
capitalism. Lash and Urry posit that postmodern culture takes on increasing
importance due to disorganized capitalism, particularly for middle-class youth and for
the expressive professions in the service class. This shift in class structure toward
symbolic gratification is coupled with increasing differentiation of cultural images
presented through the mass media to create an emphasis on life politics rather than
emancipatory politics. Increasing differentiation of the class and status structures
along with the proliferation of media images makes it increasingly difficult for
political groups to effectively form, and personal choice becomes more important that
political change.
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