Sam Whimster
Biographic Data
| ID | 198742 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sam Whimster |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sam |
| FAMILY NAME | Whimster |
| SIGNATURE | WHIMSTER S |
| AFFILIATIONS | London Metropolitan University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4900-3782 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 60 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 71 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 53 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 7 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1980 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Caesarism and Democratic Agency in Max Weber
Weber’s types of legitimate domination are used to conduct both a critique and defense of democracy. The rise of figures such as Presidents Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, Narendra Modi, and Viktor Orbán is presented in terms of a caesarist rather than a charismatic model. Caesarism attacks the legal-rational legitimacy of politics and the normalization of politics by democratic parliamentary parties and officials. Legitimacy for Weber is the belie…
Max Weber
This chapter tries to examine Max Weber’s notion of rationality. Max Weber provided the idea to build a ‘bottom-up’ sociology. He based his theory on four types of social action that are anchored in individuals’ behaviour. These are purposively rational, value rational, affectual, and traditional. This chapter outlines Max Weber’s use of three concepts: rational social action, rationalisation, and rationalism. The definition and use of these conc…
Special edition on the Neo-Weberian State
Special edition on the Neo-Weberian State Sam Whimster (bio) Experience tends universally to show that the purely bureaucratic type of administrative organization in its precision, stability, stringency of discipline and reliability ... is, from a purely technical point of view, capable of attaining the highest degree of efficiency and is in this sense formally the most rational known means of exercising authority over human beings. (Economy and …
Legitimizing Bureaucracy and the Challenge of Caesarism
Part One of the article re-examines Weber’s famous chapter (as presented in the Gerth and Mills anthology) on bureaucracy in the light of the historical-critical edition of the text in the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe . A contrast emerges between the ideal type treatment of bureaucracy and actual, country specific, cases of bureaucracy where the determinants of state, economy and culture impact the bureaucracy. Weber insisted on the legitimacy of mode…
Introduction to Max Weber's article 'The 'Threatening' of the Reich Constitution
In May 1904 Max Weber published a short article in the Frankfurter Zeitung. It has gone unnoticed in the extensive Weber literature and it appears here in English translation for the first time. It is an important statement of Weber's political views after his withdrawal from his active political engagement in the 1890s. He defends the Reich Constitution from attack and a possible coup d'état. He demands that the German Parliament (Reichstag) sta…
Introduction to 'Germany's Future Form of State
One of Weber’s most important political writings is introduced and translated into English for the first time. Weeks after the Armistice and the collapse of the German Empire Weber lays out his plans for a new form of German state based on a democratic federal republic. He reviews the advantages and disadvantages of different democratic, legislative, administrative and presidential models. His aim is to save Germany from complete collapse, and hi…
About the Editors
Copyright Page
Abbreviated Titles for Max Weber’s Texts
Chronology of Max Weber’s Life
The Oxford Handbook of Max Weber
Max Weber is one of the most important modern social theorists. Using his work as a point of departure, The Oxford Handbook of Max Weber investigates the Weberian legacy today, identifying the enduring problems and themes associated with his thought that have contemporary significance: the nature of modern capitalism, neoliberal global economic policy, nationalism, religion and secularization, threats to legality, the culture of modernity, bureau…
Does sociology need a theory of mind
COGNITIVE SCIENCE AND THE SOCIAL: A PRIMER. Stephen P. Turner New York and London: Routledge, 2018. pp. 226. “Notes on the Art of Walking” is an article that was required reading when I taught a first semester basic social science course (Ryave & Schenkein, 1974). It’s a classic in the genre of ethnomethodology and it literally opened the eyes of students to the social interaction processes at work in a seemingly mundane activity like walking dow…
Time and Mortality
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 …
Economics and Society and the Fate of Liberal Capitalism
Weber’s writings on economic history, economic policy, and schools of economics and his teaching of economics are outlined. His engagement with, and expertise in, economics are revealed to be more extensive than is generally appreciated. The full potential of his major work Economy and Society has yet to be exploited, and this requires a clearer grasp of Weber as an economist. His critique of the scientific claims of modern economics is still rel…
On Academic Freedom
MWS 19.2 (2019) 246-259] ISSN 1470-8078 doi: 10.15543/maxweberstudies.19.2.246© Max Weber Studies 2019, Global Policy Institute, University House, Coventry University London, 109 Middlesex Street, London E1 7JF. Review Essay On Academic Freedom Max Weber, Hochschulwesen und Wissenschaftspolitik. Schriften und Reden 1895–1920, edited by M. Rainer Lepsius and Wolfgang Schluchter with the assistance of Heide-Marie Lauterer and Anne Munding (Max Webe…
Max Weber and federal democracy
This article challenges the received view of Max Weber as a supporter of unitary centralised state presided over by a plebiscitary leader. His wartime writings on Germany's political situation demand the end of Prussian hegemony and the abolition of the three-class voting system. Democracy in the mass age means that all citizens of the state have equal voting rights, political parties can freely compete for votes and parliamentary representative …
Pure Relationality as a Sociological Theory of Communication
In order to explain the success of populist politicians use of social media, we need to subtract the social from relationality and separate social relationships from network theory applications. A pure theory of relationality is suggested by Werner Heisenberg's breakthrough in quantum mechanics. It is argued that sociology, to its detriment, has failed to incorporate a theory of communication, one adequate to the explosion of social media and the…
Weber's use of the ideal type of patrimonialism for Indic rulership
Criticisms of Weber's over-emphasis on Indic civilization in terms of an unchanging Vedic caste order have to be tempered by the contingent role given to political rulerships, which Weber theorizes in term of patrimonialism and the legitimating role of religion in Indic rulerships. The article considers whether the ideal type of patrimonialism is vulnerable to Dipesh Chakrabarty's provincializing Europe critique. The article makes two points: fir…
Max Weber-Handbuch
[MWS 16.1 (2016) 113-138] ISSN 1470-8078 http://dx.doi.org/10.15543/MWS/2016/1/9© Max Weber Studies 2016, Clifton House, 17 Malvern Road, London, E8 3LP. Book Reviews Hans-Peter Müller and Steffen Sigmund, eds., Max Weber-Handbuch: Leben-Werk-Wirkung (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2014), xi + 425 pp. (hbk). ISBN 978-3-476-02432-9. €59.95. So, Max Weber, the great editor of and contributor to handbooks, now has one dedicated to him alone. Handbooks are usua…
Max Weber and the Protestant Ethic
118 Max Weber Studies© Max Weber Studies 2016. scholars—to name the most prominent language groups—will need the Handbuch in furthering the next phase of Weber reception. Sam Whimster London Peter Ghosh, Max Weber and the Protestant Ethic: Twin Histories (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), xviii + 402 pp. (hbk). ISBN 978-0-19-870252-8. £30.00. Weber’s study, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (PESC), is at its best on a first …
Issues in translating Weber's writings on economics
It is argued that only a semantic translation of Chapter 2 of Economy and Society can bring out the the train of Weber's thinking as an economist. The existing Henderson and Parsons' translation shifts Weber's economic thinking into a neoclassical mode which fails to bring out sufficiently the nature of economic power and the relation between inequality and the ‘division of labour’. A glossary of key terms is provided at the end
On the Irreversibility of Western Rationalization and Max Weber's Alleged Fatalism
Social theory not only explains the world but reflects upon it. Committed to empirical standards of truth, it is tied, as well, to the metaphysical demand for reflective equilibrium. While, more than any other modern theorist, Max Weber insisted that scientific social theory be absolved of metaphysical ambition, he was obsessed, more than any other, with the meaning of modern life. Those who have recognized the critical thrust of Weber&s;s ration…
The Secular Ethic and the Culture of Modernism
The realm of liberal thought developed differently. The combination of feeble popular support and the predominance of intellectuals made for a situation parallel to the circumstances of the members of the Frankfurt School in this century, who were forced to turn their intellectual energies from the failures of capitalism to the failure of the proletariat. Liberal thinkers made idiosyncratic accommodations in theory to the politics of power from w…
"Review Essay of Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century
[MWS 14.1 (2014) 103-112] ISSN 1470-8078 Review Essay of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century Sam Whimster Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014), viii + 685pp. Hard back ISBN 978-0-674-43000-6. £29.95. The widespread uptake of Piketty's new book not just in heterodox economics but also mainstream, and to boot in the pink press of the FT as well as review…
Understanding Weber
Understanding Weber provides an accessible and comprehensive explanation of the central issues of Weber's work. Using the most recent scholarship and editions of Weber's writings, Sam Whimster establishes the full range, depth and development of Max Weber's approach to the social and cultural sciences. This ground-breaking book: locates the central issues in Weber's writings and relates them to the golden era of social and cultural sciences argue…
Legitimation and Structured Interests in Weber’s Sociology of Religion
Max Weber on Erotic Love: a Feminist Inquiry - 1
Max Weber on the Erotic and Some Comparisons With the Work of Foucault
This article establishes the centrality of the erotic sphere in Weber's 'Intermediate Reflection' essay ( Zwischenbetrachtung), which itself is central to Weber's analysis of the conflict between the world of religion and the social orders of society. An initial similarity is drawn between Foucault's analysis of the sexual, prior to its elaboration as a discourse, and Weber's treatment of the naive naturalism of the sexual. Foucault's technique o…
Understanding Modernity
Part I: Between Positivism, Idealism and Voluntarism: Max Weber and Emile Durkheim 1. The Convergence Between Weber and Durkheim: Interpretation and Explanation, the sacred and the profane 2. The divergence between Weber and Durkheim: Rational and Affectual Bases of Modern Social Order Part II: Social Order and Individual Anatomy 3. Community and Social Order 4. Socialization and Personality Development Part III: The Unique Nature, Formation, Dev…
The Protestant Ethic Turns 100
The Profession of History in the Work of Max Weber
In the current spate of rediscovely of history by sociologists and the eagerness of historians to draw upon sociological concepts those who paused to consider the degree to which the two disciplines could feasibly be combined were not unnaturally drawn to the works of Max Weber. For Weber historian, turned cultural scientist and advocate of a particular sort of sociologynot only displayed in his work the insertion of the 'sociological' within an …
The Human Sciences
Otto Gross and Else Jaffé and Max Weber
Section one of this article gives the narrative background to the love affair between Otto Gross and Else Jaffé. Otto Gross took Freud's psychoanalytic method in a libertarian direction and he became an influential figure in German anarchist circles shortly before 1914. Else Jaffé was a leading figure in Heidelberg's academic community. Section 2 provides the first complete translation of the Gross-Jaffé letters. Section 3 contrasts the positions…
For Weber
Introduction to Max Weber's article 'The 'Threatening' of the Reich Constitution
In May 1904 Max Weber published a short article in the Frankfurter Zeitung. It has gone unnoticed in the extensive Weber literature and it appears here in English translation for the first time. It is an important statement of Weber's political views after his withdrawal from his active political engagement in the 1890s. He defends the Reich Constitution from attack and a possible coup d'état. He demands that the German Parliament (Reichstag) sta…
On Academic Freedom
MWS 19.2 (2019) 246-259] ISSN 1470-8078 doi: 10.15543/maxweberstudies.19.2.246© Max Weber Studies 2019, Global Policy Institute, University House, Coventry University London, 109 Middlesex Street, London E1 7JF. Review Essay On Academic Freedom Max Weber, Hochschulwesen und Wissenschaftspolitik. Schriften und Reden 1895–1920, edited by M. Rainer Lepsius and Wolfgang Schluchter with the assistance of Heide-Marie Lauterer and Anne Munding (Max Webe…
Pure Relationality as a Sociological Theory of Communication
In order to explain the success of populist politicians use of social media, we need to subtract the social from relationality and separate social relationships from network theory applications. A pure theory of relationality is suggested by Werner Heisenberg's breakthrough in quantum mechanics. It is argued that sociology, to its detriment, has failed to incorporate a theory of communication, one adequate to the explosion of social media and the…
Weber's use of the ideal type of patrimonialism for Indic rulership
Criticisms of Weber's over-emphasis on Indic civilization in terms of an unchanging Vedic caste order have to be tempered by the contingent role given to political rulerships, which Weber theorizes in term of patrimonialism and the legitimating role of religion in Indic rulerships. The article considers whether the ideal type of patrimonialism is vulnerable to Dipesh Chakrabarty's provincializing Europe critique. The article makes two points: fir…
The Profession of History in the Work of Max Weber
In the current spate of rediscovely of history by sociologists and the eagerness of historians to draw upon sociological concepts those who paused to consider the degree to which the two disciplines could feasibly be combined were not unnaturally drawn to the works of Max Weber. For Weber historian, turned cultural scientist and advocate of a particular sort of sociologynot only displayed in his work the insertion of the 'sociological' within an …
For Weber
Heidelberg Man
Weberian Therapy for Contemporary Western Society
Understanding Modernity
Part I: Between Positivism, Idealism and Voluntarism: Max Weber and Emile Durkheim 1. The Convergence Between Weber and Durkheim: Interpretation and Explanation, the sacred and the profane 2. The divergence between Weber and Durkheim: Rational and Affectual Bases of Modern Social Order Part II: Social Order and Individual Anatomy 3. Community and Social Order 4. Socialization and Personality Development Part III: The Unique Nature, Formation, Dev…
Social Theory and the Decline of the Public Intellectual
Global Finance and Urban Living
Capitalism and Modernity. An Excursus on Marx and Weber
The Persistance of Modernity
Global Finance and Urban Living
This incisive inter-disciplinary text provides a major contribution to the study of finance capital and the metropolis. It is the first authoritative account of the momentous changes in the organisation of finance capital that occurred in the 1980s. But it never contents itself with a mere record of events. Changes in finance are scrupulously and consistently related to changes in urban forms, notably metropolitan lifestyles and aesthetics
Max Weber on the Erotic and Some Comparisons With the Work of Foucault
This article establishes the centrality of the erotic sphere in Weber's 'Intermediate Reflection' essay ( Zwischenbetrachtung), which itself is central to Weber's analysis of the conflict between the world of religion and the social orders of society. An initial similarity is drawn between Foucault's analysis of the sexual, prior to its elaboration as a discourse, and Weber's treatment of the naive naturalism of the sexual. Foucault's technique o…
The Nation-State, the Protestant Ethic and Modernization
Modernity has once again become a major theme in sociology. This is unsurprising in respect to the aspirations of peoples and countries across the globe. Once the package of material and ideal goods that travels under the label of modernity is spotted, it takes the heroic personality of a Tolstoy to refuse what he saw as a corruption of nature, human aspirations and community. For most of the world, however, the prospect of a future where materia…
Otto Gross and Else Jaffé and Max Weber
Section one of this article gives the narrative background to the love affair between Otto Gross and Else Jaffé. Otto Gross took Freud's psychoanalytic method in a libertarian direction and he became an influential figure in German anarchist circles shortly before 1914. Else Jaffé was a leading figure in Heidelberg's academic community. Section 2 provides the first complete translation of the Gross-Jaffé letters. Section 3 contrasts the positions…
Introduction to Weber, Ascona and Anarchism
It will be recalled that in the final pages of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism Weber speculates on what sort of future awaits humankind now that the spirit of religious asceticism has escaped from the iron cage of capitalism. Religion in the form of the Protestant sects had played its decisive role in the formation of a frame of mind that would reproduce a new form of capitalism. But having made the succession from early to high…
Max Weber and the Culture of Anarchy
List of Plates Preface Notes on the Contributors Editions and Abbreviations of Weber Texts Introduction to Weber, Ascona and Anarchism S. Whimster Letters from Ascona M. Weber Weber and Lawrence and Anarchism M.Green Max Weber, Anarchism and Libertarian Culture: Personality and Power Politics C. Levy Max Weber: a German Intellectual and the Question of War Guilt K-L. Ay Sexual Revolution and Anarchism: Erich Muhsam U.Linse Weber's Out-Law: Otto G…
Max Weber and the Culture of Anarchy
Wolfgang J. Mommsen
Marianne Weber
[MWS 5.1 (2005) 131-167] ISSN 1470-8078 Book Reviews Bärbel Meurer (ed.), Marianne Weber: Beiträge zu Werk und Person (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), pp. 272. ISBN 3-16-148162-3. €49. This book is based on a conference held at Oerlinghausen, near Bielefeld, in 1998 that was organized by Richard Grathoff and Barbara Meurer. It represents an important development in research into Marianne Weber and it is entirely fitting that the Marianne Weber-Ins…
Wolfgang J. Mommsen
[MWS 5.1 (2005) 119-122] ISSN 1470-8078 Wolfgang J. Mommsen: A British Appreciation Sam Whimster It is difficult to explain how Wolfgang J. Mommsen came to exercise such an enormous influence within the academic world of the United Kingdom. To an extent his reputation came before him. Max Weber und die deutsche Politik had been published in 1959 and almost immediately he was designated the enfant terrible of German academia. As the ageing torchbe…
R.H. Tawney, Ernst Troeltsch and Max Weber on Puritanism and Capitalism
The social reform, theological and political backgrounds of R.H. Tawney and Max Weber are compared. These background influences are traced in respect to Religion and the Rise of Capitalism and The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Troeltsch's account of Protestantism and progress is considered. Weber's view of Puritanism and capitalism is considered as particularistic in terms of validity even though modern capitalism would seem to b…
Max Weber Ration & Modern MW5
The Art of Reading and Understanding Max Weber
Lutz Kaelber, The Art of Reading and Understanding Max Weber: Reflections on Recent (And Not-so-Recent) Readers and Compilations, The Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Winter, 2006), pp. 131-141
The Protestant Ethic Turns 100
The Human Sciences
Understanding Weber
Philosophy (39 works) · Sociology (39 works) · Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory (37 works) · Political science (26 works) · Law (25 works) · Epistemology (22 works) · Politics (19 works) · Philosophy (16 works) · Critical Theory and Philosophy (14 works) · Economics (13 works)