Abstract
Max Weber’s contributions to the social sciences remain at the heart of how we speak about ethics, status, ethnicity, class, bureaucracy, and politics. His definition of the state as being “the legitimated monopoly over the use of coercive force in a given territory” is a staple of journalists and social scientists alike. Weber is also credited with highlighting concepts such as “iron cage,” “bureaucracy,” “bureaucratization,” “rationalization,” “charisma,” and the role of the “work ethic” in ordering modern labor markets. Indeed, such concepts are so well known that they are often even cliché.
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Notes
Much has been written about Weber’s intellectual position relative to Marx and Nietzsche, less with respect to his position relative to Ferdinand Tönnies (1957 [1887]), Economy and Society (Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft), translated by E. Loomis (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press).
An important exception is Werner J. Cahnmann (1995), Weber and Toennies: Comparative Sociology in Historical Perspective (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers);
and more indirectly J. Aldous, E. Durkheim, and F. Tönnies (1972), “An Exchange between Durkheim and Toennies on the Nature of Social Relations, with an Introduction by Joan Aldous,” American Journal of Sociology 77(6):1191–1200.
Tönnies, in turn, wrote his book Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft a least in part in response to Marx. Marx, when writing in English, used Gesellschaft (and its variations) frequently. He used Gemeinschaft less frequently, and in a different way than Tönnies. Marx used Gesellschaft in a general way that corresponds roughly to the English “society,” which is an entity greater than the sum of individuals (see Mahowald HAI [1973], “Marx’s ‘Gemeinschaft’: A not her Interpretation,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 33(4):472–488). Gemeinschaft is a more general universal community that Marx hoped would emerge out of the Gesellschaft. Thus Marx sees that as Mahowald (1973:488) put it, “Gesellschaft is for the sake of the Gemeinschaft.” This is different than what Tönnies wrote. Weber, in effect, turns this order on its head in his definition of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft!
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© 2015 Tony Waters and Dagmar Waters
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Waters, T., Waters, D. (2015). Max Weber’s Sociology in the Twenty-first Century. In: Waters, T., Waters, D. (eds) Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137365866_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137365866_1
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