weber - secondary

Question 1

algevall, definition

Answer 1

o He speaks of the ‘spirit of capitalism’ yet does not define what is meant by ‘spirit’
o Algevall argues that W is concerned with a ‘particular mode of conduct adequate for capitalism’ (160)

Question 2

algevall, natural

Answer 2

• ‘Weber’s thesis is… (that): a “capitalist spirit” did not develop because religious sentiments were weakened, but because they were exceptionally strong. The “capitalist spirit” is not natural to man’ (162)
  o A positive force is necessary for man to continue to work efficiently as their salaries increase. For W, this can be found within Protestantism

Question 3

agevall on weber thesis

Answer 3

♣ ‘Stating Weber’s thesis as ‘Protestantism caused…. Capitalism’ is wrong on all accounts… The historical individual to be explained is not capitalism; the explanans is not Protestantism’ (171)
♣ Weber focuses on the spirit of capitalism. Link between capitalism and Prot is not causal but about ‘convergence’ (171)
♣ ‘The relation Weber describes is not a relationship between two systems of ideas, but between a particular belief and a collective mode of conduct’ (172-3)

Question 4

Marshall

Answer 4

• Gordon Marshall, In Search of the Spirit of Capitalism: An Essay on Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic Thesis, London: Hutchinson, 1982. p.13
  o Weber’s argument is ‘empirically so thin that the only reasonable verdict for the moment would be one of ‘not proven’’

Question 5

Hamilton relevance

Answer 5

• W is no longer relevant. He himself states that there is no longer a link between Prot and capitalism
  o W ‘avoids a difficult problem, lack of support, by declaring a conversion, this without any indication of when or where it happened, and without any provision of supporting evidence’ (194)

Question 6

Hamilton, other reasons

Answer 6

• Hamilton gives a series of historical reasons – separate from Prot ethics – that may explain the economic success of Prot countries
  o Early 17th cent: Spain has high tax. Netherlands and England had low-cost and efficient tax arrangements.
  o ‘The greater pluralism of the Netherlands and in England, especially after 1688-89, meant more effective input from people with a knowledge of business and commerce.’ (198)
  o Netherlands/Germany had a lot of clergy – 6,000 of Cologne’s 40,000 pop. Were clerics. Hence, after Ref when these people were forced into economically productive occupations, a shift in economic growth is expected. (Spitz, Protestant Reformation, pp.50-51)

Question 7

coleman, macro/micro

Answer 7

o Weber shows the ‘effect of Protestant doctrine (macro level) on individual values (micro level) … What he fails to show is how these individual values (micro level) combine to produce the structure of economic organisation that we call capitalism (macro level)’.

but…hernes
- Hernes argues against Coleman’s criticism, claiming ‘Weber not only demonstrates the effect of doctrine on values and their impact in turn on economic behaviour. Weber constructs a model to provide the psycho-logic at the individual level’ (230)
o Cites Weber’s explanation of how inner loneliness provoked the change in ‘Calvinists’ orientation from social relations to detached, isolated yet devout, work in a calling’ (231)
- Rejects the view that Weber’s argument is unfounded and therefore must be rejected
Logic of argument is sound for Hernes. Weber offers different models of humanity in order to demonstrate his arguments

Question 8

breiner

Answer 8

• ‘Weber’s narrative… does not function as an historical explanation of the origins of capitalis that can be tested against a body of facts. Rather, it seeks to give a plausible account of how modern capitalism could have arisen… as a byproduct of that agent’s activity’ (241-2)

Question 9

etzrodt on protestant ethic

Answer 9

‘The Protestant ethic consists basically of two elements: a code of behaviour and a sanction system that compels the believer to adhere to these ethical imperatives. The code of behaviour again demanded two things of the believer: a strict work ethic and asceticism’ (53)

Question 10

etzrodt challenges to thesis

Answer 10

o ‘The correctness of the interpretation of the Neo-Calvinist teachings and the derivation of Weber’s so-called Protestant ethic can be questioned.’ (58)
o ‘The historical connection between the Protestant ethic and the spirit of modern capitalism can be criticized.’ (58)
o And the creation of modern capitalism (with its manifestation in the Industrial Revolution) in England by this spirit of modern capitalism and other variables such as rational book keeping can be challenged.’ (58)

Question 11

lipset and bendix

Answer 11

o Only observable difference between RCC and Prots is amongst immigrants of those faiths
♣ ‘The Protestant immigrants come from ethnic groups with high status while the Catholics are members of ethnic groups with low status…Hence the difference between Catholic and Protestant immigrants may be related to ethnic rather than to religious factors’ (22) pp.50-51 in study

Question 12

McClelland

Answer 12

o Argues that it is difficult to decide which groups of Catholics/Protestants are ‘representative’
o There are examples of Catholic Groups who are superior to Protestants in their sense of drive to achieve.

Question 13

walzer

Answer 13

o Puritans were more political than economic. Work-ethic was political.
o Views Calvin as putting forward a political, rather than religio-philosophical ideology
o ‘There is no doubt in Walzer’s mind: Calvin must be understood as developing an ideology of political absolutism.’ (417)
o No direct link between a religion of politics and the development of the spirit of capitalism. Rather, it was about the psychological terror that Calvinism procured, which ultimately forced people to worship God.
♣ ‘Puritanism was “really” a theology of repression whose central concern was the coercive imposition of a rigid, domineering conception of moral and social order’ (418)

Question 14

fischoff on Marx

Answer 14

• ‘That each generation must reinter experience has become almost axiomatic in historiography and the cultural sciences generally. Since Weber’s essay was a conscious reaction to the Marxian hypothesis, it is perhaps natural that it should overstress the consistency and efficacy of ideal factors. It was part of the revolt against the mechanisation of man and the increasing dominance of the economic factor’ (61)
• ‘As against the Marxian doctrine of the economic determinism of social change, Weber propounded a pluralistic interactional theory.’ (62)

Question 15

fischoff on W aims

Answer 15

• People overestimate W’s aim with his book
  o He did not try to produce a ‘complete treatment of the relation between religion and the rise of capitalism’
  o ‘The essay was intended as a tentative effort at understanding one of the basic and distinctive aspects of the modern ethos, its professional, specialized character and its sense of calling’ (62)
  o wanted to present religion as an important factor not sole cause for the development of capitalism.

Question 16

Carr on sociological approach to business

Answer 16

• Positive of a sociological approach to business is that business becomes connected with other parts of social life.
  o Links business with appropriability i.e. ‘how social ties established through how one lives one’s life (e.g. religious ties, ethnic ties, friendship ties etc.) can be used for other purposes e.g. business purposes’ (14)

Question 17

rachfahl criticism of w

Answer 17

Felix Rachfahl argues that Max Weber is incorrect concerning historical detail of the Dutch case. He uses the “liberal’ ideas of the rich merchants of Amsterdam to argue that Weber was wrong.
- Rachfahl argues that most Dutch merchants were not strict Calvinists
♣ Claims that the majority of the Low Countries’ wealth was accumulated before Calvinism and that much of the Dutch wealth was from Flemish immigrants
‘Rachfahl argues for a variety of alternative political reasons for capitalist development, such as the non-suppression of religious dissent and subordination of church to state in certain countries.

Question 18

Fischer on beruf

Answer 18

o Fischer argues that the significance of Luther’s use of ‘Beruf’ is overexaggerated. It is likely that he used the word not to create a religious system, but rather used the most understandable expression for people.
o Fischer questions why Puritans focused so much on the idea of calling rather than any other form of activity.
o ‘For the Puritans to think in terms of relationships of debt to God, key economic institutions must have already been in place.’ (28)
- w is too negative. following one’s calling should be linked to motives of self-fulfilment not isolation

Question 19

w response to fischer

Answer 19

o Argues that he ‘established at length how and why the idea of the ‘calling’ in its Lutheran form differed in kind from its shape in ‘ascetic’ Protestantism, where it formed an integral constituent [integrierender Bestandteil] of the capitalist ‘spirit’’- 32

Question 20

w response to rachfahl

Answer 20

o ‘Weber responds by indicating that he is not concerned with Calvinism, per se but with an Ideal Type Model of the worldly Protestant asceticism’ (120)
o ‘My chosen task – laid out as clearly as possible in my essay – was first and foremost to establish not where and how strongly but how, through what psychological structures of motivation, particular forms of Protestant belief came to exert the effects they did’ 70

Question 21

otsuka

Answer 21

ethos theory

o ‘ Otsuka’s wholehearted promotion of Weber’s ethos theory, occurring amidst the calls for democratization and modernization in postwar Japan, were instrumental in directing Weber studies toward the problem of what Otsuka called “human types” (ningen ruikei) which provided one of the principle ideological supports for the modernization drive.’ (211)

• otsuka Argued that we must get rid of ‘magic’ in order for Japanese to develop
  o Referring to Japanese folk religion
  o Religions must be liberated from magic in order to become rationalised. Otsuka viewed Prot as an example of such a religion

Question 22

Yangawa Keiichi

Answer 22

♣ ‘Religious organizations that attempted to become modern, rational, and relevant to contemporary society that responded to the expectations of religious scholars, continue to stagnate and decline. Instead, the greatest growth being seen in conservative, doctrinaire, return-to-the-origins fundamentalism; strongly authoritarian movements; secret associations; non-Christian traditions such as exotic Oriental-appearing mysticism; and occult movements. (Yanagawa 1975, p.48)

Question 23

Mahon

Answer 23

o ‘The proposition of this paper is that the rise of modern capitalism was a religiously inspired transformation of culture is equally applicable to understanding Chinese couples’ persisting quest for male offspring’ (76)

o ‘This paper offers the proposition that Weber’s analytical construct provides equally fertile application in the analysis of simultaneous cultural persistence and change in non-Western civilizations. The Chinese preference for sons originated amid the ancient reaches of Chinese folk religion’s demand that parents’ funeral rites and three years of mourning be presided over by their first-born son, lest the parents’ souls be relegated to an eternal destiny of wandering the world as hungry ghosts. The argument offered here is that the endurance of this preference for sons, as evidenced by demographers’ findings of significantly distorted sex ratios in contemporary China, can be explained, as was the rise of modern capitalism, by Weber’s conception of a cultural trans formation from substantive to formal rationality.’ (59)

• ‘Under the direction of traditional religion the stimulus to produce a male offspring had been to seek out one’s salvation, an end that Weber would have described as substantively rational’ (76)

Question 24

koch, tension

Answer 24

• ‘Weber’s work reflects a tension characteristic of modern Enlightenment epistemology. Since the beginning of the Enlightenment “reason” has been represented as the dichotomous contrast to human emotion’ (143)
  o emotion distorts objective truth of the world

Question 25

Birgit Meyer on protestantism

Answer 25

‘Protestantism played the role of midwife for the emergence of modern capitalism, but its spirit, once able to overwhelm believers and generate the pious attitude and work ethic necessary for the rise of capitalism, had died out. Modern people were stuck in what he famously called ein stahlhartes Gehäuse (imerfectly translated as an “iron cage”): a disenchanted society in which persons had become subject to the focus of capitalism, its rigid time regime, its devastating consumption of natural resources, and the nervousness of urban life.’ - they might long for a return of the God, but for Weber, as an intellectual - there was no way back His notion of this disenchantment has a stronger impact on our thinking about religion and modernity than his gloomy reflections on the modern condition - ‘it is useful at least to acknowledge the desperate, somewhat nostalgic longing for spiritual fulfilment that thrives in the shadow of disenchantment’ - this longing has has been found at the basis for modern consumerism or modern people’s quest for authenticity