Max Weber – Ethnography.com

Max Weber was a funny guy!

Posted on April 28, 2017April 28, 2017 by Tony Waters

That’s right, Max Weber, the dour looking social theorist on the cover of your social theory text made jokes. How do I know this? Well, my wife and I just published a new book Weber’s Rationalism: New Translations on Politics, Bureaucracy, and Social Stratification, and this post is an essay about why you should read it!

In particular, Weber’s classic essay “Politics as Vocation” has real zingers in it.

Some examples of the wit and sarcasm of Max:

Vanity is a very widely spread trait and probably nobody is entirely free of it.

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Dominance and Subordination, Max Weber Style

Posted on July 4, 2011September 4, 2014 by Tony Waters

I am teaching a sociology class in northern Thailand to a group of nine Chico State students who are here for a special summer session. As with most of my sociology classes, I have assigned Max Weber’s classic essay “Classes, Staende, Parties” at an early point in the class. Particularly what Weber writes about what in German is called “Staende” is relevant to Thailand. Staende are the groups we form in which we have loyalty to others in the same group, to whom we are loyal, and share a way of life. …

Ethnography, Tanzania, PhD degrees, and Something to Read at Bedtime

Posted on January 12, 2010 by Tony Waters

Someone told me once that a PhD is a license to write for other PhDs. As Donna Lanclos notes, this is different than making a living, and getting a full-time tenure-track job. Nevertheless, as Donna herself demonstrated with her own book about childhood in Northern Ireland, this is a license that we can actually on occasion use.

But, while a PhD may be a license to write, what is really fun is getting people to read what you wrote.…

Pete Seeger Sings Classical Social Theory

Posted on December 30, 2009October 29, 2014 by Tony Waters

Classical Sociology is typically considered to be a course about the three “classics” of sociology who are Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and W. E. B. DuBois. Marx tells us why capitalism and materialism is important for organizing society, Weber explains that the spirit of capitalism and a religious-like ethic in uniformity which he calls “rationality.” As for Durkheim, he actually explains what religion and morality are, as well as why it is important to have “deviants” who will mark out the boundaries to society of what is moral.…

The Funny Worlds of Our Meritocrats

Posted on January 1, 2009January 12, 2010 by Tony Waters

The meritocracy is a ideology that is too often known for its failures, rather than its strengths. Cindy Van Gilder noted this on this blog. And if that’s not enough, I am reading The Price of Admission by Wall Street Journal Reporter Daniel Golden which demonstrates that the most meritocratic of America’s universities—those at the top of the US News and World Report list—maintain admissions offices that are carefully structured to favor the already privilege, including well-heeled donors, the powerful, alumni, the wealthy, and celebrity.…