Work breaks into:
1) Methodology
2) Empirical, historical studies
3) Studies of religion
4) Unfinished economy and society
Historical School
- work of historians, economists and other social scientists
- involves the collection of facts pertinent to events in social life that emphasizes the unique nature of each event
Historical Materialism
- dialectical laws of social life that explain and lead to a succession of modes of production
- nomothetic approach; means of or relating to the study or discovery of general scientific laws
Social Action
specific categories of human action which throughout the course of the action took into account the behaviour of others and the meaning they and the initiator of the action attached to it
Traditional Action
guided by the dictates of tradition
value-rational action
guided by a particular value or belief
goal-rational action
mentally calculated action aimed at achieving a particular goal
affective action
guided by desires or emotions
Ideal/Pure Types
generalisations that sociologists develop from observation; establish a general framework based on generalized concepts
Economics v. Ideology
- aware of importance of economic relations
- emphasizes rather the significance of meaning and meaning construction in social life
Ethical Compass
science cannot serve as an ethical compass for modern societies because of the value rational dimension of scholarly action
Asceticism
mastering natural desires and leading righteous lives leads to heaven, highly disciplined, restrained, passionless life.
Calling
Separating oneself from their natural condition, an individual receives from God a particular calling through which they can glorify the Lord
Puritanism
Value system; believed in predestination; read holy scripture to see what God expected from humankind on earth.
Methodological Pestilence
a plague of inward looking and self-referential essays that contributed little to the real advancement of sociological knowledge
Objectives of Scholarship
-Develop the most widely applicable knowledge possible
-Natural sciences: universally applicable knowledge
Social sciences: achieve knowledge that one may generalize to specific locations, circumstances, and periods of time
Iron Cage of Reason
Growing domination of goal-rational action in the modern world could have humanity trapped in an iron cage of reason
Weber vs. Marx
- corrects orthodox readings of Marx, but not refuting Marxism
- says there are no universal direction, but trends do exist
- no overall “grand narrative”
- focus on social meaning (interpretation and frames of mind) rather than production
Modernism
- subordinates history to novel
- a celebration of what is innovative and new
Modernization
- replaces modernism as a more confident concept
- science prevails
Post Modernism
- enlightenment began to seem problematic, rejecting mastery, freedom and progress because the world is continually in flux, never stable.
- post modernists believe there is no one meta narrative
