Max Weber in Theory, Culture & Society. On the 100th Anniversary of His Death

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Image: Pastel of Max Weber, by Edward Knapczyk (2012). Source: Edward Knapczyk, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Image: Pastel of Max Weber, by Edward Knapczyk (2012). Source: Edward Knapczyk, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Matthias Wieser

2020 will remain at least for some time in the collective memory of people around the world as the year of the pandemic (connected to concepts, facts, experiences and feelings as lockdown, social distancing and virus). At the beginning of the year social scientists all over the world were about to celebrate and honour one of their most prominent founding fathers who died 100 years ago. Given the reception of his work after World War II, Max Weber counts as one of the most influential social theorists who crucially shaped how we understand sociology, social theory, social research and modernity today. By coincidence, Covid-19 and Max Weber are somehow connected through the fact that Max Weber died of pneumonia on 14 June, 1920, caused by the so-called Spanish flu. This 1918 influenza pandemic infected about one-third of the world’s population and killed within two years between 27 and 50 million people.

Weber famously wrote on the significance of ascetic Protestantism on the development of modern Western capitalism and on rationalisation and secularisation as key processes of modernity. He is remembered for notable sociological notions and images, such as the spirit of capitalism, the disenchantment with the world, the bureaucratic iron cage, as well as science and politics as vocation. His claims about scientific objectivity and value judgements are still much debated, as are his thoughts on the interpretative explanations of social action and change. We do not know, but might guess, what he would have said on the current pandemic and crisis. However, we do know that he would have raised his passionate voice alongside his evocation of value free and objectified social science.

Theory, Culture & Society has published numerously on Max Weber, although one might argue that the more unconventional or outsider sociologists such as Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin have played a more prominent role for the journal. TCS seems to be more interested in ‘the other side of reason’, to adopt the subtitle of a book by long-time executive editorial board member, Roy Boyne (Foucault and Derrida, 1990, Routledge). However, TCS editors have published seminal work on Max Weber: Scott Lash (together with Sam Whimster) edited the collection Max Weber, Rationality and Modernity (1987, Routledge), which includes articles by Pierre Bourdieu, Wolfgang Schluchter, Jeffrey Alexander and Wolfgang Mommsen to name only a few of the renowned contributors. Bryan Turner published the monograph Max Weber From History to Modernity (1992, Routledge) and Mike Featherstone discussed Weber in relation to Consumer Culture and Postmodernism (1991, Sage). Nick Gane, in Max Weber and Postmodern Theory (2002, Palgrave), examines how postmodern thinkers responded to Weber's rationalization thesis, and Tom Kemple edited essays and articles by H. T. Wilson on Weber, collected as The Vocation of Reason: Studies in Critical Theory and Social Science in the Age of Max Weber (2004, Brill).

In 2005 Theory, Culture & Society published a translation of a talk given by Max Weber at the first meeting of the German Sociological Society in 1910. It is a reply to Werner Sombart’s lecture on ‘Technology and Culture’ – a very common theme in TCS, particularly through the 2000s. This translation has been published together with a lucid introduction and comment by Tom Kemple:

On the occasion of this year's anniversary the following two articles are published in the Theory, Culture & Society Annual Review 2020:

Further TCS articles that critically engage with Max Weber and his sociology are in alphabetical order:

Further, in relation to Max Weber, these two reviews are worth checking out:

Matthias Wieser is Associate Professor at the Department of Media and Communications at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria. He received his MA in Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths College, University of London and his PhD in Sociology from the University of Klagenfurt. More recently he has been Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society of the University of Western Sydney. His research focuses on cultural studies, media studies, science and technology studies. Matthias is Global Public Life Coordinator at Theory, Culture & Society.

Theory, Culture & Society https://www.theoryculturesociety.org
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