Chapter 5
Authority and Rationality—Max Weber
Chapter Objectives:
After reading and understanding this chapter, a student should be able to
- Discuss the relative importance of culture and social structure and examine the implications of a Weberian cultural sociology approach
- Explain the evolution of religion from magic to ethnical monotheism
- Describe the effects of religious culture and structural changes on the emergence of capitalism
- Differentiate class, status, and power and analyze their effects on the possibility of social change
- Explain Weber’s theory of social change
- Discuss the historical shift to bureaucracy as chief organizing principle and its effects
- Analyze an organization using the ideal type of bureaucracy
- Describe how the crosscutting influences of class, status, and power plus the effects of bureaucratic organization, disorganized capitalism, and capitalist media produce the rising importance of status identities over class, symbolic gratification, and the ascendancy of life style politics over emancipatory politics
Key Concepts (listed here and under each heading in the outline): subjective value orientation; objective knowledge; ideal types; instrumental-rationality; value-rationality; traditional action; affective action; verstehen; rationalization; disenchantment; legitimation; theodicy; magic; economic stability; professionalization; symbolism; polytheism; ethical monotheism; traditional capitalism; rational capitalism; spirit of capitalism; Protestant calling; doctrine of predestination; legitimation; property class; commercial class; status; party; crosscutting stratification; authority; charismatic authority; traditional authority; rational-legal authority; ideal type bureaucracy; bureaucratic personality; iron cage of bureaucracy; credentialing; credential inflation; disorganized capitalism; symbolic gratification; emancipatory politics; life politics; mediated experience; plurality of choice
Chapter Outline:
I. The Perspective: Complex Sociology
Key concepts: subjective value orientation; objective knowledge; ideal types; instrumental-rationality; value-rationality; traditional action; affective action; verstehen; rationalization; disenchantment; legitimation; theodicy;
A. Problems with social science
1. The subjective orientation of social actors
2. The relationship between forming questions and values
B. Creating objective knowledge
1. Ideal types: point of orientation outside (objective) the phenomenon under consideration
a. Kinds of ideal types
i. Historical
ii. Classificatory
2. Verstehen
a. Types of
i. Intellectual
ii. Empathetic
C. Rationalization: broad sweeping movement toward rationalization and rational-legal legitimation
1. Three kinds of rationality
a. Means-ends calculation
b. Bureaucratic method of organizing human
c. Opposite of enchantment
D. Legitimation: process by which power is given moral grounding
1. Two main elements: objective and subjective
2. Three types: charismatic, traditional, and rational-legal
II. The Evolution of Religion
Key concepts: magic; economic stability; professionalization; symbolism; polytheism; ethical monotheism
A. Evolution verses revelation
1. Religious change is historical fact
2. Understood either through progressive revelation or evolution (linking social factors with changes in religion)
3. Not an either or situation
B. From magic to religion (Figure 5.2)
1. Move from physical to symbolic
2. Due to economic stability and professionalization
a. Economic stability leads to less dependence on natural forces
b. Three results of professionalization
i. Full time devotion leads to increased religious experiences (transcendence through ecstasy (principally through orgies and drugs)
ii. Increased time to create knowledge around religious experiences
iii. Vested interests
C. From polytheism to ethnical monotheism (Figure 5.3)
1. Continued professionalization
2. Political compounding
3. Rationalization and bureaucratization of the state
III. The Rise of Capitalism: Religion and States
Key concepts: traditional capitalism; rational capitalism; spirit of capitalism; Protestant calling; doctrine of predestination
A. The religious culture of capitalism
1. Previous traditional capitalism
2. Spirit of capitalism needed for rational capitalism
a. Characteristics of spirit of capitalism
i. Goal oriented life
ii. Work ethnic (duty to work; duty within work)
iii. Legitimation through quantitative calculations
3. Cultural origin of spirit of capitalism
a. Luther’s calling
b. Calvin’s predestination
c. Protestant asceticism
B. The structural influences on capitalism
1. Shift from feudalism to nation-state
2. Money economy
3. Free markets
4. Free labor
5. Bureaucratization
6. Literacy
VI. Class, Authority, and Social Change
Key concepts: legitimation; property class; commercial class; status; party; crosscutting stratification; authority; charismatic authority; traditional authority; rational-legal authority
A. Class
1. Compared to Marx
a. Marx: ownership of means of production
b. Weber: relative control over goods and skills that determines inner satisfaction and life chances
2. Weber’s dimensions of class—each varies on continuum from positive to negative (Figure 5.5)
a. Property classes
i. Examples: rentiers (positive); debtors (negative)
b. Commercial classes: ability to trade or manage a market position
i. Examples: medical doctors (positive); laborers (negative)
3. Difference between objective class position and class as a social group
a. Conditions for forming class group
i. Immediate economic groups
ii. Large numbers in same class position
iii. Technical conditions: communication; leadership; ideology
B. Status and party
1. Status
a. Basis of
i. Distinct lifestyle
ii. Formal education
iii. Differences in hereditary or occupational prestige
b. Preserved through
i. Marriage and eating restrictions
ii. Monopolizing specific modes of acquisition
iii. Different traditions
2. Party: a group organized in order to attain ideal or material advantages for its active members
C. Crosscutting stratification
1. Class, status, and power do not necessarily co-vary; thus creating higher diversity of interests, which, in turn, hampers group organization around any of these three factors
D. Authority and social change (Figure 5.6)
1. Three different kinds of authority: charismatic, traditional, rational-legal
a. Only charismatic can bring change
b. Changes based on charismatic leadership inevitably brings the problem of routinization (which is solved through traditional or rational-legal authority)
2. General social change also contingent upon
a. The degree of correlation among class, status, and power
b. Questioning the legitimacy of the distribution of class, status, and power
c. The degree to which technical conditions of organization are met
V. Rationality In Action
Key concepts: ideal type bureaucracy; bureaucratic personality; iron cage of bureaucracy; credentialing; credential inflation
A. Historical shift to bureaucratic organization
1. Six preconditions—increases in
a. The size and space of the population being organized
b. The complexity of the task being performed
c. The use of markets and the money economy
d. Communication and transportation technologies
e. The use of mass democracy
f. The volume of complicated and rationalized culture
B. Ideal type bureaucracies
1. General functions: rationalize and routinize tasks
2. Characteristics of ideal type (ideal type is a measurement, thus each of these is a variable)
a. An explicit division of labor with delineated lines of authority,
b. The presence of an office hierarchy,
c. Written rules and communication,
d. Accredited training and technical competence,
e. Management by rules that is emotionally neutral
f. Ownership of both the career ladder and position by the organization rather than the individual.
C. Effects of bureaucratic organization
1. Bureaucratic personality—four characteristics
a. Rationalized living
b. Identification with organizational goals
c. Dependence on expert systems
d. Sequestration of experience
2. Iron cage
a. Virtually inescapable and indestructible
b. Cooptation
3. Credentialing: education system is used to credential technical expertise rather than cultivate an informed citizenry
4. Credential inflation: because bureaucracies rely heavily upon educational credentials for job placement, the level of required credentials tends to inflate over time as more and more of the populace completes higher levels of education
5. Additional effects—irrationality of rationality
a. Continued decrease in traditional and affective ties (dehumanization of lifeworld and interactions between people and organizations)
b. Peter Principle: promotion to level of incompetence
c. Parkinson’s Law: work expands to fill allotted time
d. Law of Oligarchy: continued existence of organization past point of usefulness and functionality due to vested interests of specialized bureaucratic leadership
VI. Thinking About Modernity and Postmodernity
Key concepts:disorganized capitalism; symbolic gratification; emancipatory politics; life politics; mediated experience; plurality of choice
A. Bureaucracy and class, status, power
1. With class, status, and power inequality is complex matrix of intersecting (crosscutting) interests
2. Bureaucracy effects: increases social emphasis on credentials and symbols = increased importance of status identities over class coupled with rising importance of symbolic gratification
B. Disorganized capitalism
1. Characteristics: deconcentration of
a. Means and administration of production
b. Commercial capital
c. Collective consumption
d. Residential concentration of labor power
2. Effects
a. Primary production moves from core nations to peripheral or third world nations
b. Core nations: increased service class and economy based on consumerism
c. Continued increased importance of status identities over class
C. Media
1. Intrinsic process of removing culture from embedded social life
2. Globalized media images
3. Influence of advertising
D. Identities and politics
1. Effects of bureaucratic organization, disorganized capitalism, and mediated experiences
a. Identity moves from primarily group based to consumer based markets
b. Shift from emancipatory politics to life politics
Chapter Summary:
- To think like Weber is to take seriously the ramifications of culture. Weberians focus on the historical, cultural, and social contexts wherein the subjective orientation of the actor takes place. To think like Weber, then, means to use ideal types and verstehen to explain how these contexts came to exist rather than others. And to think like Weber means to pay attention to the process of rationalization and the need for legitimation.
- Religion began with the movement from naturalistic to symbolic ways of seeing the world. The movement toward symbolism and religion was influenced by increases in economic technologies and professionalization. Religion was initially practiced in kinship based groups with local deities. These local gods became hierarchically organized into pantheons due to the political organization of kinship groups into larger collectives, and the abstracting and rationalizing effects of the professional priesthood. Eventually these same forces produced the idea of a monotheistic god under which all the other gods were subsumed and finally disappeared. Monotheism became ethical in response to the need of polity to control behavior on a large scale.
- The cultural foundations of rational capitalism werelaid by Protestantism. This religious movement (through the doctrines of calling, predestination, and abstention) indirectly created a rationalizing, individuating culture wherein money could be made for the purpose of making more money rather than immediate enjoyment. The establishment of nation-states structurally paved the way for rational capitalism by creating a free labor force, controlling large territories, standardizing money, and protecting free global markets.
- Social stratification is a complex of three scarce resources: class, status, and party. These three systems produce crosscutting interests that make social change difficult and multifaceted. Large scale social changes become increasingly likely only as class, status, and power are seen to correlate; the legitimacy of the system is questioned; and, as the technical conditions of organization are met. Since social change is led by charismatic authority, each change will need to be routinized through traditional or rational-legal authority, which, in the long run, will once again set up conditions for conflict and social change.
- Bureaucratic forms of organization became prominent as societies became larger and more democratic, as tasks and knowledge became more complex, as communication and transportation technologies increased, and as markets became more widespread through the use of money. The extent of bureaucratic organization can be measured through an ideal type consisting of six variables: explicit division of labor, office hierarchy, written rules and communication, accreditation for position, affectless management by rule, and the ownership of career ladders and position by the organization. The use of bureaucracy as the chief organizing technology of a society results in the bureaucratic personality, the iron cage of bureaucracy, and social emphasis on credentials.
- A Weberian understanding of postmodern society focuses on the complex relationships among class, status, and party, with particular emphasis on the rise of the professional or credentialed class. Weber explicitly argues against a simple Marxian understanding of class and social change. For Marx, class in modern society would devolve to only two classes who would face off over the means of production. Weber argues that social change is more complex, with crosscutting influences from multiple class levels along with diverse status groupings and political parties. Postmodern theorists, such as Lash and Urry, argue that the class and status structures have become even more complex than Weber imagined, due to disorganized capitalism. Lash and Urry posit that postmodern culture takes on increasing importance due to disorganized capitalism, particularly for middle-class youth and for the expressive professions in the service class. This shift in class structure toward symbolic gratification is coupled with increasing differentiation of cultural images presented through the mass media to create an emphasis on life politics rather than emancipatory politics. Increasing differentiation of the class and status structures along with the proliferation of media images makes it increasingly difficult for political groups to effectively form, and personal choice becomes more important that political change.
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