Weber II
(2/12)
Weber’s Protestant Ethic argument
His religious sociology as a whole
Weber’s universal history
The connection of Conflict and
Functional Theory
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One of the main reasons Weber has been
important is that many sociologists felt
that he provided ways of integrating
functional and conflict theory.
Today we shall
Look at his religious analysis of
Protestantism, which has often been
interpreted functionally.
Look at the relation between that and his
model of the role of Christianity in the
development of modernity as a whole.
Look at a feedback representation of
The Protestant Ethic and the
Spirit of Capitalism
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Became the focus of the functionalist
interpretation of Weber.
Parsons interpreted it as “outflanking Marx”
by showing the essential role of religious
values in generating capitalism.
Thus, it implied that the interpretation of
basic norms and values is the basis of any
adequate analysis of social structures.
Protestant ethic values
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What makes entrepreneurs tick?
Why would someone with $ 1 million
work a 60 hour week, pinching every
penny, and spending nothing on
themselves or those they care about?
Why would someone work for the sake
of working?
Weber argued that part of the answer
lay in the psychology of the doctrine of
predestination.
The popular (vulgar) Protestant
Ethic thesis:
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Protestantism arose prior to capitalism.
It motivated people to accumulate capital
more effectively than Catholicism
Salvation anxiety resulted from the idea
that “Some are damned and some are
elect, and there is nothing whatever
you can do about it.”
Led to search for signs of salvation,
Based on the view that the elect would
prosper.
Other Weber arguments:
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Though those arguments appear in
Weber they are combined with others.
One set is in his book-length essay on
“The Protestant Sects”
Sect structures exert more controls.
Predestination can justify poverty.
Class membership in the sects was
bourgeois, and helped break up the
aristocratic establishment.
Protestantism accentuated the innerworldly asceticism of all of Christianity.
1: sect structures
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When someone is born into a
religion, anyone can get in.
When sects are in competition with
each other, they can kick people out
more easily,
and they can serve as credit societies
The competing sects tended to drive
individual business success rather
than “good works.”
2. The elect and the damned
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The view that God has
predetermined the elect and the
damned gave a justification for doing
nothing for the poor.
They are predestined to misery and
of no concern to the elect.
Spencer and Social Darwinism
appealed to this sentiment.
3. The aristocratic establishment
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The medieval church had merged
with aristocracy and monarchy.
Therefore the Reformation loosened
the hold of that social, political, and
ideological establishment.
E.g. Merton: the role of Protestants
in English science 1600-1800.
4. Inner-worldly Asceticism in
Weber’s Religious sociology
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But Weber’s 5,000 pp., multi-volume study
of world religions mainly stressed the role
of “inner-worldly asceticism” on the
general process rationalization.
Extension of corporate, bureaucratic
structures into law, the economy, etc.
always runs into powerful resistance of
kinship and tradition.
Religious structures can play a powerful
role in breaking down that resistance.
But only if they close off two main ways
that religion can fail to change the world:
Two aspects of all religious
ethics
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Mysticism v. asceticism: A mystic tries to be the
container of a sacred feeling; the ascetic tries to
systematically carry out God’s instructions.
Mysticism can accommodate to the world.
Inner-worldly v. otherworldly ethics: A worldly (or
inner-worldly) religion is concerned with action in
worldly structures (family, jobs, politics). An
other-worldly ethic calls people to abandon those
structures for God.
Inner-worldly asceticism is most effective at
breaking down premodern elements of kinship
and magic.
Weber’s typology of World Religions
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The different world religions had different
amounts of inner-worldly asceticism.
Christianity had more; Protestantism had
most.
Innerworldly
Otherworldly
Ascetic
Christianity
India
Mystic
China
Limitations of Weber’s Interpretive
sociology
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Culture always reinforces and is
reinforced by social structure in
many ways.
Measurement of such meaning
structures is difficult.
The amount of causal impact is hard
to judge,
and it may be more useful to
integrate functional and conflict
theory in terms of feedbacks.
Measures of religious ethics in the
General Social Survey
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Greeley has included a number of
batteries of questions on respondent’s
basic view of God and of the world.
i.e. is God more like a father or a mother;
a lover or a king;…
How strongly they correlate with other
actions behaviors and beliefs is an
empirical question.
Why the associations that exist are there
is under theoretical dispute.
Weber’s general universal history
4 intermediate conditions of rationalization, unique to the
West, generate the basis of rational capitalism.
The Bureaucratic state
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Only in the West did the political
structure take the form of a
formalized bureaucratic nation state.
Above all, the set of rules can be
changed; but until it is changed it is
predictable.
Thus, the rational capitalist operates
within a relatively predictable
environment.
A government of law
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The formal rationality of the law,
based on the supervision of courts by
other courts,
allows the application of legal
principles, indefinitely developed in a
way that is self-consistent,
To unique new cases.
Weber argues that formal law is
unique to the West.
Citizenship
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The complex process of the
expansion of citizenship,
over the course of 20 centuries,
Led to a wide conception of civil
rights by the 18th c.
And to expansion of the franchise in
the 19th and 20th c.
Weber’s political sociology tracks this
process.
A Non-dualistic ethic: Universalism
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From Saul’s conversion on the road
to Tarsus, to the development of
Christianity as a world religion,
Weber argues that Christianity could
take the prophetic tradition of
Judaism
and develop it in terms of universal
human dignity and brotherhood.
A Eurocentric Analysis?
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Weber believed that these four
institutional complexes or
rationalization, in the West then
transformed the world.
They created the basis of a kind of
universalism that was not possible
prior to these developments.
But they also are the basis of a
coercive and constraining iron cage.
Feedbacks: the
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st
21
c. sociology
“What goes around comes around.”
As the effects of any change
proliferate, logically, they must
have one of three consequences:
1) they ultimately reinforce the
original change: positive feedback.
2) they ultimately undermine the
original change: negative feedback.
3) they have inconsistent effects.
Meanings, power and feedbacks
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All meaning systems and organizational
systems involve both control structures
(negative feedbacks) and accumulation
dynamics (positive feedbacks.)
This is one of the reason that interpretive
sociologists and symbolic interactionists
have been skeptical of empirical research
based on a one-way effect of independent
variables on dependent variables.
Positive feedbacks (review)
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Positive feedbacks generate an amplifying,
self-reinforcing dynamic.
Because they are self-reinforcing, they
create alienated dynamics that tend to
“take on a life of their own.”
Such systems are unstable or chaotic.
Structures of inequality, such as the death
of Native Americans or the game of
Monopoly, illustrate such dynamics.
Weber’s analysis of institutional power was
the basis of non-Marxist conflict theories.
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Access to more
Resources e.g. $
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Resources e.g.
making the rules
Negative feedbacks (control
systems)
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Negative feedback results when a change
produces consequences that reduce the
original change.
Such systems are often called
“homeostatic”
For example, in the body, and increase in
temperature, blood sugar, arousal, etc.
triggers processes that tend to restore the
original level.
The classic example: a
thermostat
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A thermostat operates to cut off
the furnace when the temperature
rises.
Thus a rise in temperature triggers
a process that causes a fall in the
temperature,
and a fall in the temperature
triggers a process that causes a
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rise.
temperature
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Cut off of
furnace
Sociological examples: norms
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Durkheim argued that norms are
maintained by the response to
their violation.
Negative sanctions (punishment) of
those who violate norms,
reinforces the norms for everyone
else.
Parsons made the functional
performance or roles, subject to
normative expectations, the basis
of structural-functionalism.
A representation of Negative
feedback:
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Norm
Negative
sanctions
violation
-Any self-maintaining system involves negative
feedbacks
Eg. Crime and punishment, role expectations and rolepartner responses, vested interests.
Social systems as control
systems
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Talcott Parsons argued that all social
behavior is guided by norms and values.
Thus the social system is a selfmaintaining control system.
He called this analysis of social
structures as performing functions
guided by norms “structural
functionalism”
It was dominant in US sociology from
1945 to 1965.
Problems of the analysis of
feedback systems
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Where there are no feedbacks, it is
possible to estimate the causal
influence of one variable on another by
seeing how closely they are associated.
Feedbacks require a different and more
difficult analysis.
There are many forms of systems
theory, and many of them are not
empirical.
Parsons analysis was usually not
The promise of feedback analysis
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Nevertheless, many of the most
important dynamic processes in
sociology involve feedbacks.
In general, conflict theories are based
on positive feedback systems
Functionalists stress negative feedback
systems.
There has been a rapid growth of
complex systems dynamics in the 21st c
Empirical analysis of such systems is
one of the main tasks of 21st c
sociology.