Lawrence A Scaff
Biographic Data
| ID | 163924 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lawrence A Scaff |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lawrence A |
| FAMILY NAME | Scaff |
| SIGNATURE | SCAFF L A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Wayne State University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 85 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 138 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 84 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1973 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
“Until the Last Ton of Fossil Fuel Is Burned Up”: Whither Capitalism?
Max Weber is not usually considered an ecological theorist, and he is rarely read for his environmental awareness or ecological insights. Yet his thinking about the central problem of capitalism—especially modern “rational” capitalism and its fateful consequences for humanity—contains some intriguing suggestions for such an ecological reading. Departing from the young Weber’s musings about the “Götterdämmerung of capitalism” brought about by tech…
Weber Redivivus
The completed publication in the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe of all of Max Weber’s known texts, letters, and lectures encourages us to ask the question again: How well do we know Max Weber? This chapter explores the possibilities for recasting our understanding of his life and work, drawing upon examples from the correspondence, the main published texts, and the recently published lecture notes. The biography of the work, and its main theme of capita…
Max Weber Past, Present, and Future
Max Weber is one of the most important social theorists of the past century. His legacy includes a distinctive approach to inquiry and engagement with political and cultural issues. The Weberian perspective can be understood as both a “paradigm” for analyzing social phenomena and a specification of categories defining the field of inquiry, such as economy, power, stratification, religion, law, culture, and science. The handbook presents chapters …
Rationalization
Rationalization is a concept introduced by Max Weber. It refers to the process by which social action becomes more instrumental, goal‐oriented, or logically coherent. It can also refer to increasing systematic coherence in a system of ideas or beliefs. Today rationalization is widely accepted as an important concept in social theory, especially in the analysis of organizations, economic and political development, and globalization.
Key Sociological Thinkers
Briefe 1903â 1905 by Max Weber (review)
Book Reviews 309© Max Weber Studies 2017. motivates the book. It was not enough for him to write an ‘intellectual history’, rather, he wanted it to become a ‘historically informed normative social theory’ (11). In a critique of Ulrich Beck, whose idea of ‘cosmopolitan Europe’ appears too abstract to him, Harrington prepares a third point: The ‘reflexive modernity’, in which industrial societies self-critically examine their way of living, did not…
Political Leadership and Political Education in a Subverted World
In these pages I offer a reflection on political leadership and political education today, pursuing an important theme in Weber's writings. Political judgement is essential to the theme. I suggest that changes in the external conditions of modern politics as understood by Weber, and the culture of capitalism as perceived by Simmel, pose a severe challenge for informed citizenship and the exercise of political judgement. I conclude with an appeal …
Weberian Social Thought, History of
Bureaucracy
The concept of bureaucracy typically refers to a particular way of organizing the administration of human affairs. It can refer either to a structure of offices or to a process of formulating and implementing policy. As an organization and form of social action, bureaucracy always embodies power and is charged with making binding decisions. It thus conveys some of the original French meaning of the word bureaucratie , combining the idea of office…
Jenseits des heiligen Textes: Max Webers Fragestellung und die Perspektiven für ein weberianisches Denken
Weber and the Weberians
1. Weber and His Legacy.- 2. Historical and Cultural Analysis.- 3. The Theory of Social Action.- 4. Orders, Structures, Institutions.- 5. Paths to the Modern World.- 6. Weberian Social Theory and the Future.
Paths to the Modern World
The Theory of Social Action
Max Weber in Amerika. Aus dem Englischen übersetzt von Axel Walter. Mit einem Geleitwort von Hans-Peter Müller: Aus Dem Englischen übersetzt Von Axel Walter. Mit Einem Geleitwort Von Hans-Peter Müller
Max Weber, einer der Begründer der Soziologie, bereiste 1904 gemeinsam mit seiner Frau Marianne die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika. Ziel der Reise war der Congress of Arts and Sciences in St. Louis, der anlässlich der dort stattfindenden Weltausstellung abgehalten wurde. Die Webers nutzten die Gelegenheit, um drei Monate lang die Neue Welt zu erkunden. Gemeinsam bereisten sie Städte wie New York und Chicago, Max Weber fuhr aber auch nach Oklahom…
Walter Benjamin und Georg Simmel
The Land of Immigrants
This chapter focuses on Max and Marianne Weber's arrival in New York on the evening of August 29, 1904. It first describes the Webers' New York itinerary, with a particular focus on their trip to the German immigrant community in North Tonawanda. It then considers Max Weber's thoughts on church and religious sects, status and class based on his observations in North Tonawanda, as well as education and the problems of the modern university. It als…
Georg Simmel
This chapter contains sections titled: Life, Work, and Orientation Young Simmel: The Early Writings Simmel’s Social Theory: The Philosophy of Money Sociology: Interaction and Experience The Forms of Interaction The Theory of Culture Woman and Female Culture Sociology of Religion and Art Problems in Simmel’s Thought Simmel’s Position in Modern Social Theory Bibliography
The Discovery of the Author
This chapter discusses the successful reception and dissemination of Max Weber's work beginning in the 1920s. It shows that interest in Weber's work led to the gradual translation and incorporation of his thought into the social science disciplines, college and university curricula, and even public discourse. The chapter examines the necessary conditions for the successful reception and propagation of Weber's writings, including the “institutiona…
Thoughts about America
This chapter examines the origins and direction of Max Weber's thinking as he set his sights on America. It first considers Weber's enthusiasm as a traveler, citing his trips to various countries as well as the impact of these journeys on his spirits and his historical imagination. It then discusses one reason why Weber's travel to the United States in 1904: it came just as Weber had turned his attention to the problems of his most famous work—th…
The Protestant Ethic
This chapter examines the significance of Max Weber's time in Pennsylvania, and particularly his experience of the Fifth Day Quaker service, to his thesis about the Protestant ethic. It first describes Max and Marianne Weber's itinerary in the District of Columbia before discussing Max Weber's two engagements: a meeting with the president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), Samuel Gompers; and an opportunity to observe the religious servic…
Different Ways of Life
This chapter examines Max Weber's journey through five states—Atlanta, Georgia; Chattanooga and Knoxville, Tennessee; Asheville and Greensboro, North Carolina; Richmond, Virginia; and Washington, D.C.—that gave him an opportunity to meet American relatives. Max and Marianne Weber's ten days in those five states included visits with descendents of Georg Friedrich Fallenstein and his first wife, Elisabeth Benecke, as well as a meeting with Max's mo…
The Invention of the Theory
This chapter examines how Max Weber's work has been recast as canonical for the social sciences and central to its current agendas. It first considers the substantial body of translations that became the basis for the postwar permeation of Weber's work into the social sciences, and especially into the subfield specializations of sociology, including Talcott Parsons' The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism , before discussing the role …
Capitalism
This chapter examines how Max Weber's time in Chicago shaped his views on capitalism. Chicago in 1904 was the world's fifth largest urban center (behind London, New York, Paris, and Berlin). The city was a new industrial and commercial magnet and transportation hub, with a rapidly increasing working class and major labor, public health, and social issues. The chapter first considers Weber's impressions of Chicago before discussing his thoughts on…
Interpretation of the Experience
This chapter examines the results of Max Weber's American journey, particularly in terms of its impact on his work. It begins with a discussion of the popular discourse about America in German-speaking Europe, focusing on two views of which Weber was aware. On the one side were the inspiring romanticism and adventurous spirit of Karl May's depictions of the American frontier, and on the other side was the cultural criticism as expressed in Ferdin…
Science and World Culture
This chapter examines Max Weber's views on science and world culture by focusing on his lecture at the Congress of Arts and Science held in September 1904 in St. Louis, Missouri. The St. Louis Congress featured hundreds of papers assessing the state of knowledge in the human, biological, and physical sciences; medicine; law; the humanities; religion; and education. Weber spoke in a social science panel concerned with rural communities. The discus…
Weber before Weberian Sociology
Max Weber and Robert Michels
This paper investigates the unique intellectual parthership of Max Weber and Robert Michels. Drawing on published work and unpublished correspondence, it shows the extent and nature of the influence exerted by Weber on Michels's inquiry into the sociology of parties and organization. Beginning as a syndicalist and renegade Marxist, Michels sharpened his critical perspective under Weber's guidance. The "structural" and sociological analysis in his…
The 'cool objectivity of sociation: Max Weber and Marianne Weber in America
Max Weber is noted for his diagnosis of the rationalization of life under capitalism. But in his social thought he also developed a powerful theory of the process of 'sociation' and associational life. This paper investigates the latter aspect of his thought in the context of his and Marianne Weber's American journey. Their observations about the religious sects, the African-American community, educational insti tutions, and the position of women…
Fleeing the Iron Cage: Politics and Culture in the Thought of Max Weber
The problem of politics and culture emerged in European thought from Kierkegaard to Freud the encounter with modernity. In this paper I examine a major instance of that encounter in Weber's "science of culture" and his analysis of the cultural significance of capitalism. In Weber's work the most important and politically relevant responses to modern, subjectivist culture lie in attempts from within the ethical, aesthetic, erotic, and intellectual…
Max Weber's Politics and Political Education
Max Weber's work has long been considered the property of sociologists. This paper attempts to restore an understanding of the fundamental political nature of his thought and action. Through an examination of Weber's political writings and involvements, beginning with the Freiburg Inaugural Address of 1895, it is demonstrated that Weber developed a political theory which was both critical and empirical, and attempted (unsuccessfully) to put it in…
The Creation of the Sacred Text: Talcott Parsons Translates The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
This paper investigates the social circumstances and construction of Talcott Parsons' translation of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Parsons' early reading of Weber was conditioned by his interest in the problem of capitalism. His conceptual choices as a translator often reflected this interest. However, the translation of Weber's most famous work attributed to him, a complicated three-year project, was not his original submiss…
Max Weber's Comparative-Historical Sociology
Max Weber Matters: Interweaving Past and Present
Max Weber and the Social Sciences in America
Weber and his work functioned in two ways: both as a bridge to the new, to the world of capitalist modernity, as well as a road to an acceptable cosmopolitan ‘liberal’ historical past. It was Weber the cosmopolitan and outsider who could give legitimacy and weight to the intellectual orientations and problems thought to be significant for the community in exile. It was this Weber who could cushion the ‘negative shock’ of what was often perceived …
The Mind of the Modernist: Simmel on time
Georg Simmel is known for his 'formal' sociology and discussion of interaction using spatial imagery. Responding to the standard view of Simmel, this article investigates his equally important ideas about time and temporality. In his philosophical and sociological writings Simmel explores the nature of knowledge of the past, mechanistic and organic conceptions of temporality, and the experience and social construction of time-consciousness. The m…
Simmel Redux
Two Concepts of Political Participation
rT HE LAST several years have seen a renaissance in study of political participation. Many contemporary societies have come to regard it as an important concern, partly because of a preoccupation with problems of bureaucratization, alienation, and mobilization of citizens for political and economic development. In Western societies our attention has also been attracted to it by demands and recommendations for more extensive and authentic particip…
Remnants of Romanticism: Max Weber in Oklahoma and Indian Territory
One of the most unusual aspects of Max Weber's 1904 journey to the United States was his trip to Oklahoma and Indian Territory. This article reconstructs the origins, rationale, circumstances and results of this experience on the American frontier. Weber used the opportunity to investigate social and economic development, observing the work of the Dawes Commission, the conditions of native American life and the emerging patterns of settlement and…
Weber, liberalism and revolution
Life Contra Ratio: Music and Social Theory
Aesthetic theory has often distinguished the objects of its inquiries according to their pi on the human senses. Our understanding of the work of art, the vocation of the artist, a the response of audiences to art has been shaped in part by the possible relationshi between medium and sensory experience. For example, painting, sculpture and architecti can be understood to constitute visible forms-works given meaning in space. On t other hand, musi…
Max Weber's 'Science as a Vocation
This article reviews the book "Max Weber's 'Science as a Vocation'" by Peter Lassman & Irving Velody; "Weber and Rickert. Concept Formation in the Cultural Sciences" by Guy Oakes; "Fleeing the Iron Cage. Culture, Politics, and Modernity in the Thought of Max Weber" by Lawrence A. Scaff
Politics, Policy, & Public Choice: A Critique & a Proposal
Public choice theory is hailed by some as a paradigm for the study of politics. This article examines choice theory, probing its possibilities and limits with respect to its aims and assumptions, criticisms from political and policy scientists, and responses from choice theorists. The authors argue that despite attempts to extend the application of choice theory, there remain certain essentially political subject matters that resist its rationali…
Political Leadership and Political Education in a Subverted World
In these pages I offer a reflection on political leadership and political education today, pursuing an important theme in Weber's writings. Political judgement is essential to the theme. I suggest that changes in the external conditions of modern politics as understood by Weber, and the culture of capitalism as perceived by Simmel, pose a severe challenge for informed citizenship and the exercise of political judgement. I conclude with an appeal …
Jenseits des heiligen Textes: Max Webers Fragestellung und die Perspektiven für ein weberianisches Denken
Social Theory, Rationalism and the Architecture of the City: Fin-de-Siècle Thematics
Weber after Weberian sociology
Weber, Simmel, and the Sociology of Culture
Max Weber and Georg Simmel began their long and important association not later than the mid-1890s. Both emerged from the upper middle class intellectual life of Berlin, but with different starting points: Protestant political and moralistic culture for Weber; the Jewish experience and the new aesthetic culture of modernism for Simmel. Despite such a contrast, Weber and Simmel were drawn together essentially because of a shared interest in proble…
Conceptualizing Alienation: Reductionism and the Problem of Meaning
The Use & Abuse of Politics
In spite of intensive efforts to make the study of politics rigorously scientific, there remains much uncertainty concerning the central concept of the discipline: politics. The authors subject definitions and formulations given by contemporary writers to a critical review and advocate restoring the language of action to the study of politics. Their concept of politics, they contend, is more useful for the analysis of public affairs than the excl…
Max Weber's Politics and Political Education
Max Weber's work has long been considered the property of sociologists. This paper attempts to restore an understanding of the fundamental political nature of his thought and action. Through an examination of Weber's political writings and involvements, beginning with the Freiburg Inaugural Address of 1895, it is demonstrated that Weber developed a political theory which was both critical and empirical, and attempted (unsuccessfully) to put it in…
Two Concepts of Political Participation
rT HE LAST several years have seen a renaissance in study of political participation. Many contemporary societies have come to regard it as an important concern, partly because of a preoccupation with problems of bureaucratization, alienation, and mobilization of citizens for political and economic development. In Western societies our attention has also been attracted to it by demands and recommendations for more extensive and authentic particip…
Max Weber and the Theory of Modern Politics. David Beetham The Age of Bureaucracy: Perspectives on the Political Sociology of Max Weber. Wolfgang J. Mommsen
The Use & Abuse of Politics
In spite of intensive efforts to make the study of politics rigorously scientific, there remains much uncertainty concerning the central concept of the discipline: politics. The authors subject definitions and formulations given by contemporary writers to a critical review and advocate restoring the language of action to the study of politics. Their concept of politics, they contend, is more useful for the analysis of public affairs than the excl…
Conceptualizing Alienation: Reductionism and the Problem of Meaning
Bringing Politics Back In
Max Weber and Robert Michels
This paper investigates the unique intellectual parthership of Max Weber and Robert Michels. Drawing on published work and unpublished correspondence, it shows the extent and nature of the influence exerted by Weber on Michels's inquiry into the sociology of parties and organization. Beginning as a syndicalist and renegade Marxist, Michels sharpened his critical perspective under Weber's guidance. The "structural" and sociological analysis in his…
Communications
Max Weber
Weber before Weberian Sociology
Politics, Policy, & Public Choice: A Critique & a Proposal
Public choice theory is hailed by some as a paradigm for the study of politics. This article examines choice theory, probing its possibilities and limits with respect to its aims and assumptions, criticisms from political and policy scientists, and responses from choice theorists. The authors argue that despite attempts to extend the application of choice theory, there remain certain essentially political subject matters that resist its rationali…
Fleeing the Iron Cage: Politics and Culture in the Thought of Max Weber
The problem of politics and culture emerged in European thought from Kierkegaard to Freud the encounter with modernity. In this paper I examine a major instance of that encounter in Weber's "science of culture" and his analysis of the cultural significance of capitalism. In Weber's work the most important and politically relevant responses to modern, subjectivist culture lie in attempts from within the ethical, aesthetic, erotic, and intellectual…
Culture, philosophy, and politics: The formation of the sociocultural sciences in Germany
Weber, Simmel, and the Sociology of Culture
Max Weber and Georg Simmel began their long and important association not later than the mid-1890s. Both emerged from the upper middle class intellectual life of Berlin, but with different starting points: Protestant political and moralistic culture for Weber; the Jewish experience and the new aesthetic culture of modernism for Simmel. Despite such a contrast, Weber and Simmel were drawn together essentially because of a shared interest in proble…
Political Theory and Modernity. By William E. Connolly. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988. 196p. $29.95.
Books in Review
Georg Simmel’s Theory of Culture
Modernity and the tasks of a sociology of culture
The Political and Social Theory of Max Weber: Collected Essays
The Aesthetic State: A Quest in Modern German Thought . Josef Chytry
The Political and Social Theory of Max Weber
Max Weber's 'Science as a Vocation
This article reviews the book "Max Weber's 'Science as a Vocation'" by Peter Lassman & Irving Velody; "Weber and Rickert. Concept Formation in the Cultural Sciences" by Guy Oakes; "Fleeing the Iron Cage. Culture, Politics, and Modernity in the Thought of Max Weber" by Lawrence A. Scaff
Europe and America in Search of Sociology: Reflections on a Partnership
Max Weber and the Jewish Question: A Study of the Social Outlook of His Sociology. Gary A. Abraham
Max Weber and the Sociology of Culture
The thematic unity of Weber's writings the uniqueness of the East the rise of the West the iron cage of modern rationalism the sociology of culture - Weber and beyond
Sociology (72 works) · Philosophy (65 works) · Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory (59 works) · Epistemology (51 works) · Political science (50 works) · Law (49 works) · Politics (39 works) · Philosophy (29 works) · Social science (28 works) · Law (15 works)