Economy and Society Max Weber

Summary

This is the first complete English edition of Economy and Society. All hitherto unavailable chapters and sections have been translated and the annotation has been considerably expanded. The Appendix contains a brief terminological supplement and one of Weber’s major political essays. All previously translated parts used here have been thoroughly revised and many passages have been rewritten.

The original translators of these chapters are absolved from all responsibility for the present version of their work. We would like to thank Ephraim Fischoff for going over our revision of his translation of the “Sociology of Religion” (Part Two, ch. VI) and for making further suggestions and offering other help. However, he too should not be held responsible For the final version. (from Preface by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, 1968)

As one of the foundational texts of modern social science, this comprehensive edition offers an indispensable framework for analyzing social action, economic structures, political authority, and the historical development of Western rationalism. Through its extensive apparatus of scholarly notes and revised terminology, it remains a definitive reference for researchers and readers seeking a rigorous engagement with Weber’s conceptual system and comparative sociology.

The publication of Max Weber’s Economy and Society (Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft) is a story of editorial rescue following his sudden death from the Spanish Flu in June 1920, which left his magnum opus unfinished and scattered across unorganized manuscripts. The preservation of the original German text is almost entirely owed to his wife, Marianne Weber, who undertook the painstaking task of deciphering his handwriting, structuring the disparate conceptual sections, and collaborating with economist Melchior Palyi to publish the first official German edition in 1922.

While partial English translations by scholars like Talcott Parsons reached the academic world in subsequent decades, the work remained fragmented until 1968. Sociologists Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich spearheaded the monumental effort to unify the entire text, translating hitherto unavailable chapters, thoroughly revising existing versions, and expanding the critical apparatus. Their landmark edition established Economy and Society as a complete, definitive reference for global social science.

Contents

Volume I

• Part One. Conceptual Exposition
1. I. Basic Sociological Terms
2. II. Sociological Categories of Economic Action
3. Ill. The Types of Legitimate Domination
4. IV. Status Groups and Classes
• Part Two: The Economy and the Arena of Normative and De Facto Powers
1. The Economy and Social Norms
2. The Economic Relationships of Organized Groups
3. Household, Neighborhood and Kin Group
4. Household, Enterprise and Oikos
5. Ethnic Groups
6. Religious Groups (The Sociology of Religion)
7. The Market: Its Impersonality and Ethic (Fragment)

Volume 2

8. Economy and Law (The Sociology of Law)
9. Political Communities
10. Domination and Legitimacy
11. Bureaucracy
12. Patriarchalism and Patrimonialism
13. Feudalism, Standestaat and Patrimonialism
14. Charisma and Its Transformation
15. Political and Hierocratic Domination
16. The City (Non-Legitimate Domination)
• Appendices
1. Types of Social Action and Groups
2. Parliament and Government in a Reconstructed Germany

Extract

"Sociology (in the sense in which this highly ambiguous word is used here) is a science concerning itself with the interpretive understanding of social action and thereby with a causal explanation of its course and consequences. We shall speak of 'action' insofar as the acting individual attaches a subjective meaning to his behavior-be it overt or covert, omission or acquiescence. Action is 'social' insofar as its subjective meaning takes account of the behavior of others and is thereby oriented in its course."

1. "Meaning" may be of two kinds. The term may refer first to the actual existing meaning in the given concrete case of a particular actor, or to the average or approximate meaning attributable to a given plurality of actors; or secondly to the theoretically conceived pure type of subjective meaning attributed to the hypothetical actor or actors in a given type of action. In no case does it refer to an objectively "correct" meaning or one which is "true" in some metaphysical sense. It is this which distinguishes the empirical sciences of action, such as sociology and history, from the dogmatic disciplines in that area, such as jurisprudence, logic, ethics, and esthetics, which seek to ascertain the "true" and "valid" meanings associated with the objects of their investigation.
2. The line between meaningful action and merely reactive behavior to which no subjective meaning is attached, cannot be sharply drawn empirically. A very considerable part of all sociologically relevant behavior, especially purely traditional behavior, is marginal between the two. In the case of some psychophysical processes, meaningful, i.e., subjectively understandable, action is not to be found at all; in others it is discernible only by the psychologist. Many mystical experiences which cannot be adequately communicated in words are, for a person who is not susceptible to such experiences, not fully understandable. At the same time the ability to perform a similar action is not a necessary prerequisite to understanding; "one need not have been Caesar in order to understand Caesar." "Recapturing an experience" is important for accurate understanding, hut not an absolute precondition for its interpretation. Understandable and non-understandable components of a process are often intermingled and hound up together.