Conclusion

Abstract

The previous chapter used Weber to draw into question the second modern thinking of two prominent contemporary theorists — Ulrich Beck and Zygmunt Bauman — and ended with a question that could not be immediately resolved: whether or not concepts of the modern and modernity remain useful devices for pursuing an interpretive and analytical sociology of contemporary capitalism. There are many possible ways of addressing this question. One route would be to question why ideas and concepts of the modern emerged with such force across the social sciences throughout the late-1980s, and why Weber’s work played such a pivotal role in this development. This question lies largely beyond the scope of the present book, but an answer might be that Weber’s work offered an alternative to Marxism that explained the emergence and trajectory of Western capitalism — or effectively modernity — in more cultural terms, while still addressing, however, its historical, political and structural dimensions. Many also found in Weber not just an account of the rise of Western rationalism or capitalism, as presented by thinkers such as Schluchter (1981), but an invigorating historical methodology that opened up new ways of thinking about the present by paying close and careful attention to the past. In this spirit, David Owen, in his book Maturity and Modernity, places Weber in a trajectory that runs from Nietzsche to Foucault on the grounds that his work can be read as a form of genealogical understanding and critique.