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Studying Religion in Culture
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Max Weber
(1864-1920)
Whereas the French sociologist Emile Durkheim has been influential
of reductionist social theorists, the German sociologist and economist,
Max Weber, has been just as influential of those scholars of religion
who are part of what we could term the Verstehen [German,
to understand, as in empathetically re-experiencing the feelings
of another person] tradition which studies religion as a system
of meanings (represented in part by the work of the U.S. anthropologist,
Clifford Geertz). Weber's work is therefore part of a tradition
intent on understanding the meaning-worlds of the people scholars
study. However, he has also been profoundly influential on scholars
who argue for the value-free, or objective, nature of science in
distinction to the subjective nature of value-judgments. Having
studied law, history, and theology early on, Weber earned his Ph.D.
from the University of Berlin in 1889 with a dissertation entitled
"The Medieval Commercial Associations"--a study of trading
companies in medieval Italy and Spain. In the early to mid-1890s,
he was a law professor at the University of Berlin and practiced
law in Berlin as well. Taking a position at Freiburg University
in 1894, Weber taught political economy and, in 1897, taught political
science at Heidelberg University. However, after an ongoing nervous
illness in the late 1890s and early 1900s, Weber left scholarship
for a time, to return, from 1904 until his death, as a private scholar
and editor, but without a university appointment (though he held
a visiting appointment at the University of Vienna in the summer
of 1917 and held an appointment in 1919 to the University of Munich).
During the last fifteen years of his life, Weber edited an encyclopedia
(Foundations of Social Economics), founded the German Sociological
Society (1909), increasingly participated in public debates and
journalism during the World War II years, participated in efforts
to reform the post-War German government (along with being a member
of the German Peace Delegation to Versailles, at the conclusion
of the war), all the while producing what are today considered some
of his most important cross-cultural and theoretical works on economics,
ethics, and religion.
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Major Works
The Methodology of the Social Sciences (1904)
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-5)
"The Vocation of Science" and "The Vocation of Politics"
(1919)
The Religion of China; Ancient Judaism; and The
Religion of India (1916-19)
Economy and Society (1922)
The Sociology of Religion (1922)
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Quotation
"To define 'religion,' to say what it is, is not possible at
the start of a presentation such as this. Definition can be attempted,
if at all, only at the conclusion of the study. The essence of religion
is not even our concern, as we make it our task to study the conditions
and effects of a particular type of social behavior. The external
courses of religious behaviors are so diverse that an understanding
of this behavior can only be achieved from the viewpoint of the
subjective experiences, ideas, and purposes of the individuals concerned--in
short, from the viewpoint of the religious behavior's 'meaning'."
- from Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion (1922)
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Select Web Resources on Weber
Max
Weber Studies
Web-based
resources by and on Max Weber
Comprehensive
edition of Max Weber's works
Encyclopedia
of Religion and Society entry on Max Weber
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Secondary Literature on Weber and Religion
Gordon Marshall, In Search of the Spirit of Capitalism: An Essay
on Max Weber's Protestant Ethic Thesis. Columbia University
Press, 1982.
Brian Morris, Anthropological Studies of Religion: An Introductory
Text, chapter 2. Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Norman Birnbaum, "Weber, Max," The Encyclopedia of
Religion, 2nd edition. vol. 14, pp. 9710-9713. Macmillan Reference
USA, 2005.
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