7. Max Weber Flashcards
The foundation stone of Weber’s sociology is the concept of ____ ____.
social action
Max Weber was born in the town of Erfurt in Thuringia on April 21, ____.
1864
____ ____, according to Weber, exists insofar as the acting individual confers a subjective meaning on their behaviour.
Human Action
The key feature of human action is that it is ____, intentional and subjectively meaningful conduct. It involves understanding the meanings which the individual’s actions have for them.
voluntary
____ ____ is a special case of human action. Social action like all specifically meaningful human action involves the acting individual attaching subjective meaning to their behaviour.
Social action
What renders human action social is the ‘____ to ____’, for Weber human action can only be deemed ‘social’ when it takes others into account.
orientation to others
Of particular importance also is Weber’s argument that action in the sense of subjectively understandable behaviour exists only as the behaviour of one or more individual human beings. Weber is of the view that the primary agent of action is always the ____.
individual
Social action always takes place against the backdrop of already well-established social arrangements that we may refer to as ____ or ____.
organisations or structures
For Weber, sociology is an ____ science of social action.
empirical
The concept of ____ or interpretative understanding is at the core of Weber’s sociology of action. For Weber, sociology is a science concentrating on the interpretative understanding of social action.
Verstehen
Sociology is concerned with gaining access to the ____ of actions for individuals.
meaning
Social action is unintelligible unless we can apprehend its ____ meaning.
subjective
The ____ ____ understanding of a given action means that it is immediately understandable.
direct observational
Placing the immediate understood action into a motivational context provides an ____ for it.
explanation
But he is also adamant that the teasing out of subjective meanings must be undertaken in _____ with the analysis of pre-established social relations and historical conditions that provide the context in which these meanings must be realised.
conjunction
Weber’s sociology of action is concerned with apprehending both the subjective creation of meaning on the part of individuals and the all-embracing wider ____ of society.
structures
It is important to bear in mind that ____ is a socio-historical process, whereas we are reflecting in an explicit way on the product of rationalisation when we use terms like rationality and rationalism.
rationalisation
The rationalisation of modern society in the West can, according to Weber, be understood as the triumph of ____ rationality over ____ rationality.
instrumental, substantive
_____ Rationality Matter-of-value, Incalculable, Unpredictable, Personal, Non-systematic, Concrete, Particular.
Substantive
____ Rationality Matter-of-fact, calculable, Predictable, Impersonal, Systematic, Abstract, General.
Instrumental
Substantive rationality is a matter of ____. It refers principally to the worth of ends or results from some evaluative standpoint, that is, from some belief (eg, a religious belief) or value-commitment. The individual’s conduct is guided by principles, beliefs, values, ideals.
value
Instrumental rationality as a mode of thinking and a principle upon which society is organised, implies the dismissal of everything which is incalculable, unpredictable, arbitrary, personal and so on. It refers primarily to the ____ of means and procedures for the achievement of well-defined goals.
calculability
Instrumental rationality is often described as formal, since calculation can be applied to all substantive ends. This form of rationality is matter of ____.
fact
For Weber, the ____ of calculability is the driving force behind the rationalisation of modern, Western society.
maximisation
Instrumental rationality ____ facilitates the conscious, calculated pursuit of any goal, whatever its significance, worth or value.
indiscriminately
It is this ____ built into instrumental rationality that gives modern, Western society its distinctive character Instrumental rationality treats all substantive beliefs and values with olympian indifference.
value-neutrality
It is Weber’s contention that instrumental rationality permeates all areas of ____ ____ in the modern West.
social life
Modem industrial capitalism, the modern state, modem bureaucracy, modem science and so forth all represent component phenomena in the embracing process of the ____ of the West.
rationalisation
The emergence of modern science, according to Weber, attests to the progressive ____ of life in modern society.
intellectualisation
The view of the world as a causal mechanism that can be known by calculation is at the heart of _____ ____.
modern science
The development of scientific calculation attests to the ____ control of the world for human purposes.
rational
In this same connection Weber speaks of the disenchantment of the world, that is, the ____ of everything mythical, mysterious, magical, other-worldly, poetic.
suppression
The modern, rational, scientific pattern of thinking leads increasingly to a view of the world as merely an artificial product created by humankind. The modern world is _____ just like a machine.
controlled
