Max Weber

Max Weber

1. The early career

   • The agrarian problem in Germany

2. Weber and modern capitalism

   • The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism
     • The role of ideas in history
     • Ascetic Protestantism and social change
   • The Weber thesis: critiques and continuities

3. The organisation of society

   • Action
   • Social inequality: power, class and status
     • The formation of the class and status order
     • Power and forms of domination
     • Religion, bureaucracy and the Chinese literati

4. Capitalism, rationality and social change

   • The inexorability of rationality in the West
     • The iron cage of bureaucracy

5. The methodological Weber

   • The nature of social sciences
     • The Kantian strain in Weber's thought
     • Knowledge and the interests of inquiry
   • Values and value freedom
     • Value freedom and politics
   • The nature of sociology
     • The ideal type
   • Weber's individualism
     • Verstehen
     • The antipathy to one-sided explanation

6. The legacy

   • Conflict theory
   • The rise of the West
   • Interpretative sociology
   • A sociologist of our time?