ABSTRACT
The modest fashion in which Weber employs the Economy and Society theoretical framework must be emphasized. As heuristic tools, the societal domains and domain-specific ideal types of E&S assist the identification of causally-significant patterns of action. In this manner, these constructs provide a helpful frame of reference for research. However, this analytical tool must always be recognized as incomplete in respect to all cases under investigation: it never “encompasses” complex empirical reality. Rather, these constructs serve to “uproot” researchers from an exclusive focus upon empirical reality by engaging them in a continuous back and forth movement between the particular case and an heuristic framework. Thus, although reference to the societal domains and domain-specific ideal types of this construct clearly assists identification of many significant causal action-orientations, others will always fall outside the E&S orientational analytic (see Kalberg 1994: 50-78). In sum, the causal analyses
reconstructed in Chapters 7, 8, and 9 from Weber’s texts proceed by reference to a) the three central stages of Weber’s causal methodology; b) the theoretical framework provided by the E&S societal domains and domain-specific ideal types; and c) empirical patterned action unique to the case under investigation.
