ABSTRACT
Commentaries upon Weber’s works have often departed from the assumption that the rise of modern capitalism in the West constitutes his major concern. We now see that this posture – Weber must be viewed as a theorist of capitalism – narrows the range of his scholarship. Part IV defines major aspects of his sociology of civilizations. Extremely broad in scope, this feature of his sociology is multifaceted.
Weber argues here that a careful reading of PE can assist researchers seeking to evaluate the influence of a civilization’s configuration of deeply rooted values (Chapter 10). A reexamination of this classic text can also be helpful wherever religion is viewed as essential to a civilization’s cohesion. However, our first step must discuss Weber’s analytic opus (Chapters 10 and 11). E&S lays out the complex foundation for a comparative-historical sociology of civilizations anchored in interpretive understanding presuppositions. How does it do so?
E&S offers wide-ranging, empirically grounded models. Indeed, it formulates an open-ended analytic framework of sufficient scope to assist civilizations-level research. Hypotheses are formed that facilitate the clear conceptualization of major societal domains and the ideal types specific to them. Their development “directions” (Entwicklungsformen) are also formed as hypotheses in E&S. Moreover, this treatise offers multiple hypotheses that chart out how these models may merge as a consequence of some empirical configurations and may separate off as a consequence of other empirical constellations.
In sum, E&S opposes, as diffuse, amorphous, and abstract, all theorizing that stresses history’s overarching “progress,” “evolution,” “cycles,” “differentiation,” and “inexorable advance.” Rather, E&S continuously defines patterns of social action and the groups that form from them. Furthermore, rooted explicitly in ideal types, multi-causal presuppositions, and group-based configurational dynamics, the constructs of E&S postulate both arrays of “elective affinities” (Wahlverwandtschaften) across groups and arrays of “antagonisms” (Spannungsverhaeltnissen) across groups. Multiple fusions and fissions of groups can be identified and conceptually located with the assistance of the E&S framework.
