ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Max Weber's concepts of formal and substantive rationality in order to address the process of rationalization in agriculture. It deals with a discussion of the irrationality inherent in the process of rationalization. Developing a suitable ideal type should, in addition to typologizing petty bourgeois agricultural production, reflect some broader class base in society. One of the persistent themes in Weber's work is that the modem Weston world is engulfed in a process of rationalization. Weber's concept of capitalist rationality – a rationality based upon calculability of economic factors in monetary terms, or formal rationality – is more well-developed than his notion of substantive rationality. The chapter analyzes substantive and formal rationality as embedded in the social and economic environment In the context of the figure in the preface. It focuses on the impact of markets and the state on the process of rationalization and the subsequent implications for the relations of production.
