This collection of selected essays by Werner J. Cahnman brings together out of scattered dispersion his writings about Max Weber, Ferdinand Toennies, and historical sociology. The great theoretical range and depth of his intellect and mastery of sociological thinking is apparent as he discusses the impact of romanticism on modern thought, and how Weber and Toennies both analyzed and reacted to modernity. Cahnman places Weber (1864-1920), the dominant figure in twentieth-century sociology, in the midst of the methodological controversies so characteristic of contemporary social science, and he fully discusses the overarching importance of Weberian ideal-type theory. Although less well-known than Weber, Toennies (1855-1936) was also a sociologist of the first rank. He is best remembered for his enormously influential twin concepts, Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, which contributed to our understanding of the historical and sociological basis for the change from premodern to modern societies. The essays in this volume establish Toennies' intellectual connections to Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and Herbert Spencer, and clarify his influence upon American sociology. Cahnman stood against strict separations between history and sociology, and his essays are all informed by a wonderful admixture of the theoretical and the concrete. They demonstrate how a genuine historical sociology, not unlike that of Weber and Toennies, can find and explain linkages between seemingly disparate events spanning time and place. This volume will be of interest to sociologists, political scientists, and intellectual historians.

The most profound and enduring social theorist of sociology's classical period, Max Weber speaks as cogently to concerns of the new century as he did to those of the past. In Max Weber and the New Century, Alan Sica demonstrated Weber's preeminent position and lasting vitality within social theory by applying his ideas to a broad range of topics of contemporary concern. Max Weber: A Comprehensive Bibliography is a companion volume that offers some 4,600 bibliographic listings of work on Weber, making it the most complete guide to the literature in English and a testament to the continued vitality of Weber's thought. Sica's work supersedes all previous bibliographical efforts covering the Weber literature, both in the quantity and accuracy of its references, and the clarity and convenience of its format. In order to demonstrate the enormous variety of Weberiana in English, Sica has adopted a liberal criterion for inclusion, rather than a critical one, choosing to mix the best with what may be more routine work. Following a preface in which previous bibliographies and bibliographic problems are discussed, the volume opens with a series of five specialized bibliographies. The first lists Weber's works in English translation. The second lists reviews of Weber's major works including those translated into English, while the third covers reviews of recent books and other work on Weber. The fourth section contains a selection of dissertations and theses relating to Weber or his ideas. The fifth includes primary and secondary sources treating Weber on rationality and rationalization processes. The last and largest section offers a comprehensive Weber bibliography of works in English. This large-scale endeavor attempts to identify with accuracy and completeness the entire universe of Weber scholarship in English. It will be an essential scholarly tool for sociologists, historians, economists, and students of cultural and intellectual history.

Weber's Rationalism and Modern Society rediscovers Max Weber for the twenty-first century. Tony and Dagmar Waters' translation of Weber's works highlights his contributions to the social sciences and politics, credited with highlighting concepts such as "iron cage," "bureaucracy," "bureaucratization," "rationalization," "charisma," and the role of the "work ethic" in ordering modern labor markets. Outlining the relationship between community (Gemeinschaft), and market society (Gesellschaft), the issues of social stratification, power, politics, and modernity resonate just as loudly today as they did for Weber during the early twentieth century.

This extraordinary prescient work by Ferdinand Toennies was written in 1887 for a small coterie of scholars, and over the next fifty years continued to grow in importance and adherents. Its translator into English, Charles P. Loomis, well described it as a volume which pointed back into the Middle Ages and ahead into the future in its attempt to answer the questions: "What are we? Where are we? Whence did we come? Where are we going?" If the questions seem portentous in the extreme, the answers Toennies provides are modest and compelling. Every major field from sociology, to psychology, to anthropology, has found this to be a praiseworthy book. The admirable translation by Professor Loomis did much to transfer praise for the Toennies text from the German to the English-speaking world. Now, outfitted with a brilliant new opening essay by John Samples, the author of a recent full-scale biographical work on Toennies, 'Community and Society' is back in print; a welcome reminder of the glorious past of German social science.

"The most profound and enduring social theorist of sociology's classical period, Max Weber speaks as cogently to concerns of the new century as he did to those of the past. Over the past seventy years, those special ideas that have become identified as ""Weberian"" have become especially pertinent to those who would analyze today's socioeconomic and cultural life. They offer the possibility of a more acute understanding of our immediate future than reliance on the ideas of any other social theorist in the pantheon. Alan Sica demonstrates Weber's preeminent position and lasting vitality within social theory by applying them to topics of contemporary concern. The result will appeal to experts and novices alike.Max Weber and the New Century documents the continuing usefulness of Weber's unrivalled social thought. Sica offers a series of linked studies that treat Weber's concept of rationalization as expressed in different cultural forms, the role of Weberian ideas in contemporary historiography, the uses of Weber's image in the popular imagination, the rhetorical structure of Economy and Society, and Weber's relationship to modern philosophical thought. Conceptually and practically, this volume is a companion piece to the author's forthcoming Max Weber: A Comprehensive Bibliography--a 3,600-item bibliography of works by and about Weber in English--which, for the first time, will allow scholars to explore the universe of Weberian analysis.Max Weber and the New Century is a valuable addition to the library of social scientists, historians, philosophers, economists, and students of intellectual history. It shows that Weber--the scholar as much as his ideas--continues to inspire fruitful social and cultural analyses."

Emphasizes critical approaches to the study of race, identity and self, as well as developments in interactionist theory, ethics and dramaturical studies.

McCarthy focuses on two key figures, Max Weber and J³rgen Habermas, reopening the vibrant and rich intellectual dispute about knowledge and truth in epistemology and concept formation, logic of analysis, and methodology in the social sciences. He uses this debate to explore the forms of objectivity in everyday experience and science, and the relations between science, ethics, and politics.

This book brings together leading figures in history, sociology, political science, feminism and critical theory to interpret, evaluate, criticize and update Weber's legacy. In a collection of specially commissioned pieces and translated articles the Weberian scholarship recognizes Max Weber as the figure central to contemporary debates on the need for societal rationality, the limits of reason and the place of culture and conduct in the supposedly post-religious age. In Part 1, Wolfgang Mommsen, Wilhelm Hennis, Guenther Roth and Wolfgang Schluchter provide a full and varied account of the theme of rationalization in the world civilizations. In Part 2 Pierre Bourdieu and Barry Hindess critically examine Weber's social action model, and Johannes Weiss and Martin Albrow address the putative 'crisis' of Western rationality. In Part 3 Jeffrey Alexander, Ralph Schroeder, Bryan Turner, Roslyn Bologh and Sam Whimster scrutinize Weber's understanding of modernity with its characteristic plurality of 'gods and demons'; they focus on its implications for individuality and personality, the body and sexuality, feminism and aesthetic modernism. Part 4 turns to politics, law and the state in the contemporary world: Colin Gordon on liberalism, Luciano Cavalli on charismatic politics, Stephen Turner and Regis Factor on decisionism and power and Scott Lash on modernism, substantice rationality and law. This book was first published in 1987.

This is a specially commissioned set of essays on the themes of Max Weber, culture, anarchy and politics. It presents the first complete publication (in both English and German) of a series of letters written by Max Weber in 1913 and 1914 during his stays at the anarchist settlement of Ascona. The letters show Weber debating with the issues of free love, eroticism, patriarchy, anarchism, terrorism, pacifism, political and personal convictions and power. These themes are taken up by the contributors in a wider discussion of the relation of culture and politics.