ABSTRACT
Of all major social science theorists, Max Weber is arguably the most famous. Certainly, in universities, he is the most assigned; there is no field, indeed hardly any course in social science, that does not reserve a place for him. Weber has done more than any other scholar to study and to systematize bureaucracy. Like Mary Douglas, Weber operates from the premise that total societies are not a useful unit of analysis. Weber and Douglas also resemble each other in refusing to separate values from social relations. Weber rejects both the Hegelian view of ideas as free-floating, unattached to social relations, and the Marxist view that ideas are mere reflections of social organization. Both bureaucracy and capitalism, in Weber's view, are instances of the historical process of "rationalization," by which he means the displacement of magical elements of thought by "the idea of calculability." Weber distinguishes between Calvinism and the sects growing out of the Baptist movement.
