A Specification of the Weber Thesis

In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber formulated his well-known theory that capitalists were motivated by a new ethical spirit which gave their enterprise the dignity of a service to God and a fulfillment of His wishes for man, that these new capitalists used rational methods and displayed impatience with established restraints on innovation and markets, and that this new ethical spirit was most conspicuously exemplified by Protestants, especially Calvinists. Although Weber's essay remains a fragment, it gave rise to one of the great intellectual controversies of the twentieth century.' Most of the debate has consisted of attempts to support or demolish Weber's thesis,2 rather than an elaboration of the relationship between the Protestant ethic and capitalism in the light of additional factors. This type of elaboration, called specification by many sociologists, often proceeds by examining apparent exceptions to social patterns. By focusing attention on the apparent exception and by finding an explanation for it, knowledge of the observed pattern is extended. Specification is thus essentially a clarification of the relationship between two variables in the light of one or more additional factors.3

Epistemology · Sociology · History · Philosophy · Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory

• Weberian Theory Today

  Alan Sica•Handbook of Sociological Theory…•2006

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