This book identifies what is living and what is dead in Max Weber's analyses of China, India and Ancient Israel.

Max Weber is one of the world’s most important social scientists, and one of the most notoriously difficult to understand. This dictionary will aid the reader in understanding Weber’s work. Every entry contains a basic definition, examples of and references to the word in Weber’s writing, and references to important secondary literature. More than an elementary dictionary, however, this work makes a contribution to the general culture and legacy of Weber’s work. The dictionary also contains extended entries for broader concepts and topics throughout Weber’s work, including law, politics, and religion. Every entry in the dictionary delves into Weber scholarship and acts as a point of departure in discussion and research. As such, this book will be an invaluable resource to general readers, students, and scholars alike.

While most people are familiar with The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, few know that during the last decade of his life Max Weber (1864-1920) also tried to develop a new way of analyzing economic phenomena, which he termed "economic sociology." Indeed, this effort occupies the central place in Weber's thought during the years just before his death. Richard Swedberg here offers a critical presentation and the first major study of this fascinating part of Weber's work. This book shows how Weber laid a solid theoretical foundation for economic sociology and developed a series of new and highly evocative concepts. He not only investigated economic phenomena but also linked them clearly with political, legal, and religious phenomena. Swedberg also demonstrates that Weber's approach to economic sociology addresses a major problem that has haunted economic analysis since the nineteenth century: how to effectively unite an interest-driven type of analysis (popular with economists) with a social one (of course preferred by sociologists). Exploring Weber's views of the economy and how he viewed its relationship to politics, law, and religion, Swedberg furthermore discusses similarities and differences between Weber's economic sociology and present-day thinking on the same topic. In addition, the author shows how economic sociology has recently gained greater credibility as economists and sociologists have begun to collaborate in studying problems of organizations, political structures, social problems, and economic culture more generally. Swedberg's book will be sure to further this new cooperation.

This book provides an indispensable introduction to Weber's Economy and Society, and should be mandatory reading for social scientists who are interested in Weber. The various contributions to this volume, all written by important Weberian scholars, present the culmination of decades of debates about Weber's various concepts and theories. They are sure guides in the maze of conflicting interpretations, and draw out the implications of Weber's sociology for understanding social change in the 21st century. Gil Eyal, Columbia University Many will value this as the best collection of essays on Max Weber in the English language. It surpasses prior studies in using Weber and the world of his endeavors as entry points into the central issues of social science today. Richard Biernacki, University of California, San Diego"

Offers a new analysis of the ideas of the 3 authors who have contributed most to the establishment of the basic framework of contemporary sociology.

Max Weber and The Protestant Ethic: Twin Histories presents an entirely new portrait of Max Weber, one of the most prestigious social theorists in recent history, using his most famous work, The Protestant Ethic and the "Spirit" of Capitalism, as its central point of reference. It offers an intellectual biography of Weber framed along historical lines - something which has never been done before. It re-evaluates The Protestant Ethic — a text surprisingly neglected by scholars — supplying a missing intellectual and chronological centre to Weber's life and work. Peter Ghosh suggests that The Protestant Ethic is the link which unites the earlier (pre-1900) and later (post-1910) phases of his career. He offers a series of fresh perspectives on Weber's thought in various areas — charisma, capitalism, law, politics, rationality, bourgeois life, and (not least) Weber's unusual religious thinking, which was 'remote from god' yet based on close dialogue with Christian theology. This approach produces a convincing view of Max Weber as a whole; while previously the sheer breadth of his intellectual interests has caused him to be read in a fragmentary way according to a series of specialized viewpoints, this volume seeks to put him back together again as a real individual.

This book explores the latest thinking about Max Weber and his continuing influence on theoretical and empirical interests today. Bringing together the work of leading scholars from a variety of disciplines, it illuminates Weber’s thought in a number of key areas, including the methodology and philosophy of social science, comparative religion, the rationalization process, political sociology, the sociology of law, and the Protestant ethic and the development of capitalism. An international collection that demonstrates the enduring importance of Weber’s thought to contemporary sociology and the discipline’s major concerns, The Routledge International Handbook on Max Weber will appeal to scholars in a range of disciplines, including sociology, social theory, politics, philosophy, law, and international relations.

Max Weber (1864-1920) was one of the most prolific and influential sociologists of the twentieth century. This classic collection draws together his key papers. This edition contains a new preface by Professor Bryan S. Turner.

This book brings together for the first time in English internationally-recognized specialists who seek to identify what is 'living' and what is 'dead' in the great German social scientist Max Weber's analyses of China, India and Ancient Israel found in his massive, unfinished Economic Ethic of the World Religions. In so doing, the volume offers a powerful new perspective on the current debate concerning the timing of and deeper roots of the 'Great Divergence' - and more recent convergence - in the economic and political development of the West on the one hand, and the great civilizations of Asia on the other. At the same time, this volume also rebalances our understanding of Weber's entire intellectual output by returning The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism to its proper place within Economic Ethic of the World Religions and establishing that work as the equal of the similarly unfinished Economy and Society.

The question of religion, its contemporary and future significance and its role in society and state is currently perceived as an urgent one by many and is widely discussed within the public sphere. But it has also long been one of the core topics of the historically oriented social sciences. The immense stock of knowledge furnished by the history of religion and religious studies, theology, sociology and history has to be introduced into the public conscience today. This can promote greater awareness of the contemporary global religious situation and its links with politics and economics and counter rash syntheses such as the “clash of civilizations”. This volume is concerned with the connections between religions and the social world and with the extent, limits, and future of secularization. The first part deals with major religious traditions and their explicit or implicit ideas about the individual, social and political order. The second part gives an overview of the religious situation in important geographical areas. Additional contributions analyze the legal organization of the relationship between state and religion in a global perspective and the role of the natural sciences in the process of secularization. The contributors are internationally renowned scholars like Winfried Brugger, José Casanova, Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, Hans Joas, Hans G. Kippenberg, Gudrun Krämer, David Martin, Eckart Otto and Rudolf Wagner.