ABSTRACT
This chapter explains three layers of hybridity in the work of Max Weber. First, individual motives are usually hybrid; individuals are neither rational nor blind norm-followers but both, and much more. Second, the "regularities in conduct" generated by social relationships need to be understood as a hybrid of sometimes contradictory logics. And third, authority, including state authority, is usually a mixture of different sources of legitimacy. Weber specifies the core-business of sociology, at least in his description of the research program of the discipline, as causal explanation of social action by understanding it in terms of the subjective meaning the actors attach to it. It is important to distinguish between this project of interpretive sociology and related projects of rational choice sociology and methodological individualism. Referring to the European societies of his time, Weber claimed that superior to bureaucracy in the knowledge of techniques and facts is only the capitalist entrepreneur, within his own sphere of interest.
