L. Bantigny, J. Théry-Astruc, "Marcel Gauchet ou le consensus conservateur", dans "Revue du Crieur", 1, juin 2015, p. 4-19 -- downloaded via iPhone to DBOX

Reviewed: Lawrence Scaff, Weber and the Weberians, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, 199 p. -- Proving his mastery of Weber’s oeuvre, Scaff’s new book considers the imprint left by various aspects of Weber’s work on the imagination and production of three generations of authors from Europe and North America. He shows that the confrontation between contemporary scholars and Weber’s legacy is a show that will run and run… -- downloaded pdf to Note

No. 105, Political Theology (Fall, 2008), pp. 1-6 -- Articles in issue -- György Geréby, Political Theology versus Theological Politics: Erik Peterson and Carl Schmitt (pp. 7-33) *--* Christiane Frey, χλη̑σις/Beruf: Luther, Weber, Agamben (pp. 35-56) *--* Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky and Catharine Diehl, The Image of Happiness We Harbor: The Messianic Power of Weakness in Cohen, Benjamin, and Paul (pp. 57-69) *-'* Samuel Moyn, Hannah Arendt on the Secular (pp. 71-96) *--* Nitzan Lebovic, The Jerusalem School: The Theopolitical Hour (pp. 97-120) *--* Arnd Wedemeyer, Herrschaftszeiten! Theopolitical Profanities in the Face of Secularization (pp. 121-141) *--* Benjamin Lazier, On the Origins of "Political Theology": Judaism and Heresy between the World Wars (pp. 143-164) -- Introduction downloaded to Note

Editorial Note - Gene Callahan and Leslie Marsh *-* (1) The Critique of Rationalism and the Defense of Individuality: Oakeshott and Hayek - Chor-Yung Cheung *-* (2) Jane Jacobs’ Critique of Rationalism in Urban Planning - Gene Callahan and Sanford Ikeda *-* (3) Oakeshott on Modernity and the Crisis of Political Legitimacy in Contemporary Western Liberal Democracy - Noël O’sullivan. &-* (4) Oakeshott and the Complex Ecology of the Moral Life - Kevin Williams. *-* (5) Homo Ludens and Civil Association: The Sublime Nature of Michael Oakeshott’s Civil Condition - Thomas J. Cheeseman *-* (6) The Instrumental Idiom in American Politics: The ‘City on the Hill’ as a Spontaneous Order - Corey Abel *-* (7) Dogmatomachy: Ideological Warfare - David D. Corey. *-* Oakeshott on the Rule of Law: A Defense - Stephen Turner -- downloaded pdf to Note

A cri de coeur for putting legal theory and history back together with social theory and empirical social sciences,. -- In the early part of my career, legal history and the history of legal ideas were closed books to me, as I made my way in a field of criminal law scholarship dominated by doctrinal scholarship and by concept-focused philosophical analysis of the foundations of criminal law. These 2 very different paradigms have 1 big thing in common: They tend to proceed as if the main intellectual task is to unearth the deep logic of existing legal doctrines, not infrequently going so far as to read them back onto history, as if things could never have been other than they are. (..)I have increasingly found myself turning to historical resources (1) [to examine] the contingency of particular legal arrangements, and (2) ...to develop causal and other theses about the dynamics which shape them and hence about the role and quality of criminal law as a form of power in modern societies. So, in a sense, I have been using history in support of an analysis driven primarily by the social sciences. (..) it is no accident that all of the great social theorists, from Marx to Foucault via Weber, Durkheim, and Elias, ..have incorporated significant historical elements into their interpretations .... Indeed, without the diachronic perspective provided by history (or the perspective offered by comparative study) we could have no critical purchase on social theory’s characterizations of or causal hypotheses about the dynamics of social systems. Hence, (...) my boundless gratitude to the historians whose meticulous research makes this sort of interpretive social theory possible). -- Lacey is not over-dramatizing -- see the "commentary" from a "legal philosopher" who believes the normative basis of criminal responsibility can be investigated as timeless "moral truths". -- downloaded pdf to Note

LA RATIONALITÉ DU RELIGIEUX SELON MAX WEBER - L'Année sociologique (1940/1948-), Troisième série, Vol. 51, No. 1 (2001), pp. 9-50 -- One of the most striking features of Weber's writings on religion is the frequency with which he uses the word rationality. This derives from the metatheory grounding in his mind the interpretative method. This metatheory asserts that the meaning to an individual of his beliefs should be seen as the main cause explaining why he endorses them. Weber's religion sociology owes its strength to this theoretical framework. His « rational » conception of religious beliefs does not imply that these beliefs derive from deliberation. They are rather transmitted to the social subject in the course of his socialisation. But they are accepted only if they are perceived by the subject as grounded. These principles inspire Weber's pages on magical beliefs, on animism, on the great religions, on the diffusion of monotheism, on theodicy or the world disenchantment. He shows that religious thinking cares on coherence, tends to verify and falsify religious dogmas by confronting them with observable facts. He develops a complex version of evolutionism, explaining the cases of irreversibility registered by the history of religions, but avoiding any fatalism. He rejects any depth psychology and any causalist psychology in his sociology of religion, the common rational psychology being the only one that can be easily made compatible with the notion of "Verstehende Soziologie", i.e. of « interpretative sociology ». Weber analyses the evolution of religious ideas supposing that they follow the same mechanisms as the evolution of ideas in other domains, as law, economics or science. -- downloaded pdf to Note

Working paper -- uses Oakeshott, Weber, Schmitt, Chsntal Mouffe as examples -- not rekativists, but de-mytholigizing ideology that supposes if you get eory right you can derive the solution. There’s no "solution" but dynamics of conflict, change etc.

The problem of the nature of values and the relation between values and rationality is one of the defining issues of twentieth-century thought and Max Weber was one of the defining figures in the debate. In this book, Turner and Factor consider the development of the dispute over Max Weber's contribution to this discourse, by showing how Weber's views have been used, revised and adapted in new contexts. The story of the dispute is itself fascinating, for it cuts across the major political and intellectual currents of the twentieth century, from positivism, pragmatism and value-free social science, through the philosophy of Jaspers and Heidegger, to Critical Theory and the revival of Natural Right and Natural Law. As Weber's ideas were imported to Britain and America, they found new formulations and new adherents and critics and became absorbed into different traditions and new issues. This book was first published in 1984 by Routledge. -- Research Interests: Ethics, Political Theory, Continental Philosophy, Max Weber (Philosophy), Social and Political Philosophy, and Max Weber

21 page article -- Explains why "rational choice" fails as explanatory theory in lots of collective action, public opinion, game theory, etc. -- domains where decisions to act aren't based exclusively on instrumental, consequentialist, cost-benefit calculative, and egoistic (directly concerned with impact on self) forms of, and context for, reasoning. Boudon finds "rational choice" superior to hand-wavy explanations that are speculative "black boxes" -- e.g. (1) sociobiology or evo-devo that we're hardwired, (2) Kahneman and Tversky heuristics and biases -- fascinating observations but aren't explanatory, (3) social/cultural explanations such as "socialization" which are tautological or a black box that provide no mechanisms that can differentiate situations or variations in outcomes. E.g. in Roman Empire peasants were more likely to remain pagan and soldiers were more likely to be attracted to the new religion. "Socialization" doesn't explain why soldiers raised in the traditional religious milieu and belief system were more likely to change their beliefs. Great examples of how rationality includes cognitive processes dealing with (1) non-instrumental contexts - e.g. identification with communitarian concerns ranging from voting to immigration policies, (2) aligning actions with one's judgment of what's more likely "true" based on core beliefs and how one has learned to evaluate "evidence" [e.g. Swedes are even more likely to reject "lump of labor" than Americans!] (3) axiological reasoning, including norms of fairness that may be fairly universal (e.g. reaction to Antigone, ultimatum game) or specific to a culture (e.g. due process in political application of "rule of law") -- see article for his tripartite classification of rationality and types of cognition that "rational choice" rejects in its definition. He thinks Weber and Adam Smith got there before, and better than, Becker.

Chair: Andreas Gestrich (German Historical Institute London) -- Discussants: David d’Avray, Peter Ghosh and Joachim Radkau -- Max Weber is one of the most prestigious social theorists in recent history. Many of his academic works are modern classics. Even 100 years after his death, his books are still read, edited, translated and interpreted. In recent years a number of biographies have shed new light on Weber’s life and work. In commemoration of Max Weber’s 150th anniversary, the German Historical Institute hosts a discussion with three Weber experts, British historians David d’Avray and Peter Ghosh and German historian Joachim Radkau, on Max Weber’s work and its relation to historical writing. **--** Peter Ghosh is Jean Duffield Fellow in Modern History at St Anne’ College, University of Oxford. His research interests focus primarily on the history of ideas, both social and political theory and also the history of historiography. His latest publication Max Weber and The Protestant Ethic: Twin Histories (Oxford University Press, 2014) offers an intellectual biography of Weber framed along historical lines. **--** David d’Avray, Professor of Medieval History at University College London, has worked on medieval marriage, on preaching, on attitudes to kingship and death, on rationalities, and on ‘longue durée’ structures of papal history. In Rationalities in History: a Weberian Analysis (Cambridge University Press 2010), he writes a new comparative history in the spirit of Max Weber. Reassessing seminal Weberian ideas, he applies value rationality to the comparative history of religion and the philosophy of law. **--** Joachim Radkau is Professor for Modern History at the University of Bielefeld. His latest research interests concentrate on environmental history, the history of nature conservation, and Max Weber’s self and social perception. In his extensive biography Max Weber: Die Leidenschaft des Denkens (Carl Hanser Verlag, 2005) (Max Weber: Passion for thinking), Radkau embeds Weber’s life and work in their historical context. -- MP3 download, 113 min, 64.2 MB -- downloaded to Note

Draft -- He has been writing a series looking at what he describes as reductionist vs holistic ontologies, focusing on different usages of Methodological Individualism. Reductionists include Malthus (later writings), Ricardo, utilitarians, early marginalists, Menger (the "grand-daddy" though he didn't use the term), Schumpeter (who introduces the term in 1908), Mises, Friedman and Lucas et al. Holistic includes Smith, Keynes and Hayek. The full-blown reductionists make the heroic (but usually inexplicit) assumption that when each individual acts in his own interests ("properly understood" adds Mises) maximizing his own utility, that since society is nothing but the sum of individuals, the aggregate *social interests* will be maximized. Those who take a holistic view can't employ this sleight of hand, so they need another mechanism at the society level operating to ensure unintended consequences will be socially beneficial (Smith's invisible_hand, Hayek's evolutionary selection) Or their Keynes, facing the fact that there's no mechanism that ensures socially beneficial outcomes from the actions of self-interested individuals. Interesting bibliography as well as textual analysis. Note that Schumpeter embraces an atomistic version of MI for "pure theory" of economics, but following Weber would assign to other social sciences the links between individual behavior and social structures.

Responding to claims that sociology isn't a "science" or that it goes off the rails when its pretensions to scientific status dominate, he discusses 4 ideal-types of sociology -- Cognitive, Expressive, Descriptive (cameral) and Critical. The first, which he claims fits a range of the most important theories in philosophy of science, is represented by Tocqueville, Weber and Durkheim. The produced explanations of puzzling phenomena that linked micro and macro - why particular actions or choices were rational for classes of actors in the sense that the meaning was consistent with their beliefs and experiences given their position in social structures and the tools they had available to understand and control their situation consistent with their values. This type of causal explanation can be used, elaborated and built on for cumulative knowledge. The more popular bestseller works tend to be expressive and/or critical - speaking to people's current experiences, felt anxieties, or ideological orientation so they are useful, but not necessarily true - he gives Foucault on prisons as an example. The descriptive, which is directed towards policy ("cameral" in Schumpeter) grows increasingly dominant as we become increasingly data sensitive and driven. Topics tend to come in waves based on issues that have become prominent and a focus of political debates, social movements, etc. Thus only the cognitive is a truly scientific contribution to cumulative knowledge. Interesting remarks on the type of methodological individualism that's central to the cognitive but both different and sometimes inappropriate in the other ideal-types.

translated by Michael C. Behrent -- Reviewed: (1) Michael Löwy, La Cage d’acier. Max Weber et le marxisme wébérien [The Iron Cage: Max Weber and Weberian Marxism], Stock, coll. "Un ordre d’idées", 2013, 200 p., 18€ -- (2) Michel Lallement, Tensions majeures. Max Weber, l’économie, l’érotisme [Major Tensions: Max Weber, Economics, Eroticism], Gallimard, 2013, 288 p., 19.90€. -- interesting discussion of his use of dichotomies that don't resolve into a dialectical synthesis -- also nice re how he uses the forces pushing toward rationalization of two interacting types, formal and substantive, that allows him to deploy it in many different cultures and eras, not just modernity -- Useful references to various pieces of his oeuvre in the footnotes -- downloaded pdf to Note

Xavier Marquez , Victoria University of Wellington - September 17, 2014 --  Both popular and academic explanations of the stability, performance, and breakdown of political order make heavy use of the concept of legitimacy. But prevalent understandings of the idea of legitimacy, while perhaps useful and appropriate ways of making sense of the political world in ordinary public discourse, cannot play the more rigorous explanatory roles with which they are tasked in the social sciences. To the extent that the concept of legitimacy appears to have some explanatory value, this is only because explanations of social and political order that appeal to legitimacy in fact conceal widely different (and often inconsistent) accounts of the mechanisms involved in the production of obedience to authority and submission to norms. I suggest in this paper that explanatory social science would be better off abandoning the coarse concept of legitimacy for more precise accounts of the operation of these mechanisms in particular contexts. -- Keywords: legitimacy, Max Weber, social explanation, norms, David Beetham - Posted: March 22, 2012 ; Last revised: Sept 25, 2014 -- downloaded to Dropbox

U of Chicago, Public Law Working Paper No. 279 -- Any reader of Foucault's corpus recognizes fairly quickly that it is animated by an ethical impulse, namely, to liberate individuals from a kind of oppression from which they suffer. This oppression, however, does not involve the familiar tyranny of the Leviathan or the totalitarian state; it exploits instead values that the victim of oppression herself accepts, and which then leads the oppressed agent to be complicit in her subjugation. It also depends, crucially, on a skeptical thesis about the epistemology of the social sciences. It is this conjunction of claims - that individuals oppress themselves in virtue of certain moral and epistemic norms they accept - that marks Foucault's uniquely disturbing contribution to the literature whose diagnostic aim is, with Max Weber, to understand the oppressive character of modernity, and whose moral aim is, with the Frankfurt School, human liberation and human flourishing. I offer here both a reconstruction of Foucault's project - focusing on the role that ethical and epistemic norms play in how agents subjugate themselves - and some modestly critical reflections on his project, especially the weaknesses in his critique of the epistemic standing of the human sciences. -- Number of Pages in PDF File: 18 -- Keywords: Foucault, Nietzsche, human sciences, epistemology -- downloaded pdf to Note

Max Weber's portrayal of modern elites shows clear proximity to "classical elite theory," modern "elite perspective," and "democratic elitism." This portrayal -stressing power concentration in the state apparata, legitimacy of rule, centrality of leadership groups, and the capacity of these groups to form cohesive power actors -anticipates many central themes in the work of contemporary elite theorists, such as John Higley, whose theoretical attention focuses on patterns of elite integration and ruling consensus as the key "elite variables." Higley's seminal studies, especially those linking such elite integration and ruling consensus with political outcomes and regime types, combine the classical elite-theoretical heritage with the Weberian "supplements," the latter stressing the variable internal structure of "ruling minorities" that form in modern nation states. The Weberian elite perspective and theoretical model have been substantiated, elaborated and extended in research undertaken by John Higley and his collaborators. -- downloaded pdf to Note

Parallels and distinctions between Fin-de-Siècle pessimism, especially social theorists, re liberalism and Enlightenment as sustainable modernity and Postmodernism -- both concern re the subject and the possibilities of social knowledge -- helpful bibliography -- downloaded pdf to Note

Challenges Weberian dichotomy between predestination (individual salvation) and sacramental focus (communitarian) -- huge bibliography -- downloaded pdf to Note

Modern organizations are thought by many to exacerbate the problem of individual ethical integrity by discouraging nonconfirmity and independent judgement. Yet, studies of the effect of organizational structure on individual personality and behaviour have commonly been vague as to the precise nature of the capacities for independent ethical judgement that are endangered and about the structural and situational characteristics of organizations that threaten these capacities. This article seeks to clarify these ambiguities. Borrowing from Aristotle and more recent writers, the author develops a conception of moral autonomy that encompasses concerns about bureaucratic domination and the creation of "organization man." He then addresses the threats posed by organization: the Weberian and Decision Process models. - a lot of Kant - downloaded pdf to Note

Weber's writings on action and the explanation of action do not present a particularly coherent view. In his earlier writings, from 1903-1907, he is under the sway of a juristic conception of cause based on the probability doctrines of von Kries, and this is reflected in his writings on action, which de-emphasize problems of interpretation and stress the analytic uses of methods of causal analysis. In the Logos essay, problems of interpretation and problems of cause and probability are discussed on a par. In the "Introduction" to Economy and Society, problems of interpretation, in particular of the application of the ideal-type "rational action," become central. The terminology of the von Kriesian theory disappears, and the requirements for "causal adequacy" are minimized, as is the analytic role of causal reasoning. Weber's various arguments are intelligible solutions to standard problems in the philosophy of action with recent analogues, notably in the work of Donald Davidson. These solutions suggest an alternative account of the significance of "intelligibility" as an aim of sociological approaches to action. -- downloaded pdf to Note

Downloaded pdf to Note -- large bibliography looks especially interesting re placing Nietzsche's social constructivism in context of 19thC social sciences and emerging discipline of sociology especially in Germany. -- The aim of this article is to present that part of Friedrich Nietzsche's work that is of special interest to sociologists. To do this, I discuss the relationship between Nietzsche's work and the sociology both of today and of his own time. The most important idea is that he saw reality as a social construction. The idea of social construction is related to the beliefs and values, power and interests of the actors. Nietzsche's discussions of power and of the individual vs. the collective are also analyzed.

Fascinating on the different psychologies of thetraumatized German intelligentsia from fin de siècle through Weimar. -- didn't download

Max Weber's methodological writings offered a model of singular causal analysis that anticipated key elements of contemporary Anglo-American philosophy of the social and cultural sciences. The model accurately portrayed crucial steps and dimensions of causal reasoning in these disciplines, outlining a dynamic and probabilistic conception of historical processes, counterfactual reasoning, and comparison as a substitute for counterfactual argument. Above all, Weber recognized the interpretation of human actions as a sub-category of causal analysis, in which the agents' visions of desired outcomes, together with their beliefs about how to bring them about, cause them to act as they do. -- downloaded pdf to Note

This paper examines Charles Tilly's relationship to the schools of thought known as historicism and critical realism. Tilly was committed to a social epistemology that was inherently historicist, and he increasingly called himself a "historicist." The "search for grand laws in human affairs comparable to the laws of Newtonian mechanics," he argued, was a "waste of time" and had "utterly failed." Tilly's approach was strongly reminiscent of the arguments developed in the first half of the 20th century by Rickert, Weber, Troeltsch, and Meinecke for a synthesis of particularization and generalization and for a focus on "historical individuals" rather than abstract universals. Nonetheless, Tilly never openly engaged with this earlier wave of historicist sociology, despite its fruitfulness for and similarity to his own project. The paper explores some of the possible reasons for this missed encounter. The paper argues further that Tilly's program of "relational realism" resembled critical realism, but with main two differences: Tilly did not fully embrace critical realism's argument that social mechanisms are always co-constituted by social meaning or its normative program of explanatory critique. In order to continue developing Tilly's ideas it is crucial to connect them to the epistemological ideas that governed the first wave of historicist sociology in Weimar Germany and to a version of philosophical realism that is interpretivist and critical. -- 199 references! -- downloaded pdf to Note

Over the years the secondary literature on Max Weber's sociology has grown enormously, and it is time to raise the following question: Is the picture of his sociology the same today as it was yesterday? In this review I argue that the traditional picture of Weber's sociology has begun to change and that one important factor in this change has to do with the perception of the role that the theme of the economy plays in Weber's life and work. Special attention has recently been paid to Weber's relationship to economics, his economic sociology, and the fact that Weber came from a background of wealthy merchants that he strongly identified with. Several new topics in Weber's sociology are explored that are related to the changing picture of his work. Special attention is also paid to interpretations of Weber that draw on rational choice sociology and an interest-based type of analysis. -- see bibliography on jstor information page -- didn't download

This essay examines key features of Pierre Bourdieu's sociology of culture in light of their potential contribution to the sociology of religion. For Bourdieu, religion can be analyzed as a system of symbolic power with properties analogous to other cultural domains, such as art, philosophy, science, or consumer fashion. Bourdieu's approach to culture develops a political economy of symbolic practices that includes a theory of symbolic interests, a theory of cultural capital, and a theory of symbolic power. While Bourdieu draws upon a variety of intellectual influences, the materialism of Karl Marx and Max Weber's sociology of religion have been particularly influential. This essay will focus on how Bourdieu elaborates from Marx and Weber to develop an original analytical grid for the study of culture and religion as well. Particular attention will be given to Bourdieu's concept of "field" since it is the most relevant of Bourdieu's concepts for both cultural and religious studies and currently the least well-known in the sociology of religion. -- didn't download

Pins the problem on Weber's "realist" psychology compared with Wittgenstein, Quine more "behaviorist" -- didn't download -- Discusses political philosophers who have found Weber's concept deficient -blaming among other things his attempted fact/value neutrality

Very useful overview of White's work, and positive re Herman Paul book.

This essay is a critical historiographical overview of the ongoing debate about the role of the Protestant Reformation in the process of 'the disenchantment of the world'. It considers the development of this thesis in the work of Max Weber and subsequent scholars, its links with wider claims about the origins of modernity, and the challenges to this influential paradigm that have emerged in the last twenty-five years. Setting the literature on England within its wider European context, it explores the links between Protestantism and the transformation of assumptions about the sacred and the supernatural, and places renewed emphasis on the equivocal and ambiguous legacy left by the upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Attention is also paid to the ways in which the Reformation converged with other intellectual, cultural, political, and social developments which cumulatively brought about subtle, but decisive, transformations in individual and collective mentalities. It is suggested that thinking in terms of cycles of desacralization and resacralization may help to counteract the potential distortions of a narrative that emphasizes a linear path of development.

JSTOR: Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Mar., 2004), pp. 155-172 -- downloaded pdf to Note

JSTOR: Social Forces, Vol. 80, No. 2 (Dec., 2001), pp. 411-448 -- downloaded pdf to Note -'- Although the causal impact of war on state-making in the early modern era is now widely accepted, there is less consensus about the way in which war affects levels of taxation, and the factors that might strengthen or weaken the relationship. Two questions can be posed: Do individual wars produce immediate effects on taxes, or is the cumulative effect of long periods of warfare more important? How do variations in administrative capacity and the strength of representative institutions affect the extent to which war pushes the growth of the state? This article attempts to answer these questions with a quantitative analysis of the effects of war on taxation in early modern England and France. We find that the cumulative effect of war is strong in both cases, suggesting that war made states via a "ratchet effect," and that this effect is much stronger when the administrative capacity of states is improved by centralization and bureaucratization. Strong representative assemblies decrease the effect of war on state growth in France but increase it in England, due to the very different characteristics of these institutions in the two countries.

JSTOR: Sociological Theory, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Mar., 1996), pp. 49-70 -- downloaded pdf to Note -- Although widely recognized as one of sociology's true classics. Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism has largely failed to influence the development of sociological theory in the United States. Because it has been read almost exclusively as a study of the "role of ideas" in economic development, its diverse and multifaceted theoretical contributions generally have been neglected. This study explicitly calls attention to The Protestant Ethic as a theoretical treatise by examining this classic in reference to four major debates in postwar sociological theory in the United States. Moreover, it demarcates an array of major parameters in American theorizing. The conclusion speculates upon the reasons for the strong opposition to The Protestant Ethic's theoretical lessons and argues that a style of theorizing unique to sociology in the United States has erected firm barriers against this classic text. ......in Kieran Healy list

JSTOR: American Sociological Review, Vol. 45, No. 6 (Dec., 1980), pp. 925-942 ...... Downloaded pdf to Note......In Kieran Healy course..... A systematic formulation is given of Weber's theory of the origins of large-scale capitalism, based upon the lectures given just before his death. This last theory is predominantly institutional, unlike the emphasis upon religious ideas and motivations in his early Protestant Ethic thesis, and unlike his analyses of the world religions. Weber's institutional theory involves a sequence of causal conditions. The outcome of the sequence is capitalism characterized by the entrepreneurial organization of capital, rationalized technology, free labor, and unrestrained markets. Intermediate conditions are a calculable legal system and an economic ethic combining universal commercialization with the moderate pursuit of repetitive gains. These conditions are fostered by the bureaucratic state and by legal citizenship, and more remotely by a complex of administrative, military, and religious factors. The overall pattern is one in which numerous elements must be balanced in continuous conflict if economic development is to take place. Weber derived much of this scheme in explicit confrontation with Marxism. His conflict theory criticizes as well as deepens and extends a number of Marxian themes, including a theory of international capitalism which both criticizes and complements Wallerstein's theory of the world system.

JSTOR: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 619 (Sep., 2008), pp. 114-129 --- Current ways of addressing culture in the sociology of markets are incomplete. One approach treats culture as constitutive of markets (markets are culture), while the other treats culture as something affecting markets (markets have culture). This division corresponds to markets that are more or less "settled." The author outlines the history and shortcomings of this duality and proposes a more dimensional approach to culture and markets that more fully integrates culture into economic sociology.

Weber's Protestant Ethic, how it's been translated and simplified, with some important issues of class and power lost in the process

By contrast, in a world of relationally embedded actors, action comes not from calculation, but from something unknown in the society of individuals: deliberation. Actors find themselves within a set of delimited though ambiguous cultural resources — resources that are never solely the possession of any one individual, unlike preferences which are individual from the get-go — and are confronted not with the question of how to best fulfill their ends, but the question of what their ends ought to be. 

So we have two fundamentally different models here: autonomous individuals — prototypical males? — with preferences making strategic calculations, and relationally embedded actors (I’m not going to push the gender point any further here, but I think that many feminists might agree with me about the relative depictions of autonomy-vs.-embeddedness in a patriarchal society) engaged in deliberation and discernment looking for the right course of action. While the former might end up conforming to one or another moral code, only the latter can actually engage in “moral action” per se, because autonomous individuals would be choosing whether or not to act morally while embedded actors would be endeavoring to suss out the moral thing to do and then doing it. One does not choose to be moral as a moral actor; one acts morally, or one fails to do so

Decision-theoretic accounts tell us a story in which value is radically subjectivized, individuals are separated from one another by firm borders, and social relations are nothing but instrumental conveniences (contra Phil, I would claim that public choice theory isn’t about what is best for the collective as a collective, but what is best for the individuals inhabiting it, since collectives don’t have preference-functions). Relational accounts tell us a far different story.

The fact that we tell decision-theoretic stories about entities that can’t be said to be actually making decisions — we have “selfish genes” and utility-maximizing ants — simply shows how our values have shifted to the point where such stories seem to make intuitive sense, and also contributes to the further promulgation (what I actually want to say here is Veralltäglichung, Weber’s word that literally means “making-everyday”) of those assumptions and value-commitments