ABSTRACT
Max Weber's work has continued to inspire sociologists and maintains a multidisciplinary relevance. This chapter provides an overview of works inspired by Weber including Zygmund Bauman and George Ritzer as well as others’ academics from a diverse range of fields. Bauman, in his work ‘Modernity and the Holocaust’, made the connection between Weber's work and the potential for the state apparatus to be used to carry out mass murder and genocide. Bauman provided a Weberian inspired analysis of the holocaust which rejected treatment of the holocaust as having relevancy only for Judaism and Jewish heritage communities. Ritzer in his work ‘The McDonaldization of Society’ published in 1993 analysed modern corporations using Weber's core theories and identified key features of efficiency, calculability, predictability and control. And Ritzer's work in particular has captured the imagination of academics and professionals when thinking about the impact of McDonaldization in their respective fields.
