Max Weber's Comparative-Historical Sociology

Couverture
University of Chicago Press, 17 mars 1994 - 221 pages
The revival of historical sociology in recent decades has largely neglected the contributions of Max Weber. Yet Weber's writings offer a fundamental resource for analyzing problems of comparative historical development. Stephen Kalberg rejects the view that Weber's historical writings consist of an ambiguous mixture of fragmented ideal types on the one hand and the charting of vast processes of rationalization and bureaucracy on the other. On the contrary, Weber's substantive work offers a coherent and distinctive model for comparative analysis. A reconstruction of Weber's comparative historical method, Kalberg argues, uncovers a sophisticated outlook that addresses problems of agency and structure, multiple causation, and institutional interpretation. Kalberg shows how such a representation of Weber's work casts a direct light upon issues of pressing importance in comparative historical studies today. Weber addresses in a forceful way the whole range of issues confronted by the comparative historical enterprise. Once the full analytical and empirical power of Weber's historical writings becomes clear, Weber's work can be seen to generate procedures and strategies appropriate to the study of present day as well as past social processes. Written in an accessible and engaging fashion, this book will appeal to students and professionals in the areas of sociology, anthropology, and comparative history.
 

Table des matières

Introduction
1
Dilemmas and Problems
3
World systems theory
4
The interpretive historical approach
5
The causal analytic approach
7
Dilemmas Problems and Webers Contributions
9
Multicausality
10
theory vs delineated problems
11
Ideal Types as HypothesisForming Models Economy and Society
92
Ideal Types as Dynamic Models
95
Patrimonialism
96
Idealtypical Contextual Models
98
Affinity and Antagonism Models
102
Infradomain models of antagonistic relationships
106
Interdomain models of affinities and antagonism
108
Developmental Models
117

Model building
12
the Weber Renascence
15
Foundational Strategies and Procedures
21
The AgencyStructure Linkage the Pluralism of Motives and Webers Structuralism
23
Methodological Individualism Verstehen Four Types of Action and a Pluralism of Motives
24
the Modes of Patterning Action
30
Orders and legitimate orders
32
sociological loci for action
39
The AgencyStructure Linkage
46
Webers Multicausality
50
The Principled Commitment to Multicausality
52
Social Carriers
58
the Opposition to Rational Choice Theory
62
Historical Events Technology and Geography
68
Power Conflict and Competition
71
Conflict and competition
75
The Causal Sociology Strategies and Procedures
79
The Level of Analysis the Ideal Type
81
The Ideal Type
84
the definition of empirical cases
87
The closure of social relationships and the routinization of charisma models
120
Formal and theoretical rationalization models
127
The Mode of Causal Analysis Reconstructed Causal Methodology and Theoretical Framework
143
an Overview and Comparison to Recent Schools
144
The causal methodology
145
The theoretical framework
149
Causal Methodology and Theoretical Framework
151
facilitating and necessary actionorientations
152
Synchronic and diachronic interactions of action
155
Conjunctural interaction and the context of patterned action
168
the Dominance of the Caste System in India
177
Degrees of causal centrality
179
Synchronic and diachronic interactions of action
186
Conjunctural interactions of action
189
Max Webers ComparativeHistorical Sociology and Recent Schools
193
An Overview
194
Setting the Agenda
202
References
206
Index
216
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À propos de l'auteur (1994)

Stephen Kalberg is assistant professor of sociology at Boston University.

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