Max Weber A Biography A founder of contemporary social science Max Weber was born in Germany in 1864. At his death 56 years later he was nationally known for his scholarly and political writings but it was the international reception of his oeuvre over the last forty years that has made him world-famous. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism The Economic Ethics of the World Religions and his magnum opus Economy and Society with its treatment of the relations of economics politics law and religion belong to the great achievements of 20th-century social science. The groundwork for the posthumous Weber reception was laid by Weber's widow Marianne a well-known feminist writer who followed up her edition of his collected works with one of the greatest biographies in a generation that produced many important accounts of itself. Although unavailable in English until a decade ago the importance of Marianne Weber's 1926 work had been widely understood. Sociologist Robert A. Nisbet called it a moving and deeply felt biographical memoir. Historian Gerhard Masur cited the book as the foundation of all further inquiries into Max Weber's life and influence. Beginning with Max's ancestry and early years Marianne Weber guides us through his life as student young lawyer scholar and political writer quoting liberally from his voluminous correspondence. Her account of his nervous breakdown after 1897 which curtailed his academic career but ultimately strengthened his creative energies provides deep insight into some of the personal tensions that troubled him to the end. In addition to her perceptive personal and intellectual life before the First World War describing many scholars social reformers politicians and literary figures within and beyond the famous Heidelberg circle of the Webers. The new introduction by Guenther Roth situates Marianne Weber's own role in the contemporary setting and discusses the current state of Weber research and of the international Weber reception. | Max Weber A Biography GBP 130.00 1
The Jews and Modern Capitalism Since its first appearance in Germany in 1911 Jews and Modern Capitalism has provoked vehement criticism. As Samuel Z. Klausner emphasizes the lasting value of Sombart's work rests not in his results-most of which have long since been disproved-but in his point of departure. Openly acknowledging his debt to Max Weber Sombart set out to prove the double thesis of the Jewish foundation of capitalism and the capitalist foundation of Judaism. Klausner placing Sombart's work in its historical and societal context examines the weaknesses and strengths of Jews and Modern Capitalism. | The Jews and Modern Capitalism GBP 130.00 1
Swords Into Dow Shares Governing The Decline Of The Military- Industrial Complex Contemporary legal doctrine holds that corporate managers have obligations first and foremost to maximize profits for their shareholders. This doctrine is based on the assumption that shareholders alone bear the financial risks and contribute the equity necessary for production. But what if other groups contribute assets and also risk losing their investments? What if other groups actually shelter shareholders from financial risks? Such is the case with the nation's prime defense contractors. By examining the case of defense contracting where the federal government and indirectly the taxpayers assume most of the risks and costs of producing weaponry Rachel Weber critiques the assumptions underlying our system of corporate governance. The Department of Defense provides contracts for billions of dollars specialized components and facilities interest subsidies tax breaks and regulatory relief. These public contributions make the record shareholder returns and executive compensation packages of the early 1990s all the more problematic. This book follows the case of General Dynamics the nation's largest military shipbuilder and considered a trendsetter in the industry for its explicit shareholder orientation. The behavior of contractors like General Dynamics in the post-Cold War period raises serious concerns about the private stewardship of public funds. How can the government make contractors accountable to other public interests? In Swords into Dow Shares Rachel Weber offers some original suggestions for redirecting defense resources to foster innovation decrease the tax burden of military spending and help to retain and create high-wage jobs in a civilian-industrial economy. | Swords Into Dow Shares Governing The Decline Of The Military- Industrial Complex GBP 130.00 1
The Cognitive Foundations of Classical Sociological Theory The Cognitive Foundations of Classical Sociological Theory explores the role that understandings of mind and brain played in the development of sociological theory. It isolates five key authors in the classical tradition and comprehensively explores their oeuvres for moments where they reflect on engage with and build from topics related to cognition placing their work in contact with research today to critically determine areas of relevance refutation or revision. Showing how understandings of mind brain and body grounded the production of early sociological thought the book draws attention to the foundational role theories of cognition played in the emergence of sociology as a distinct field of study. With chapters on Comte Marx Weber Durkheim and Mead The Cognitive Foundations of Classical Sociological Theory constitutes a novel and timely engagement with canonical social theory extending its application to contemporary social life. It will therefore appeal to scholars of sociology and psychology with interests in classical social theory cognition embodiment and sociality. GBP 130.00 1
A Sociological Genealogy of Culture Wars This book analyzes the culture wars as those struggles for the monopoly of the legitimate representation of the world in the normative elucidation of controversial issues linked to values. Public culture in this context would consist of a set of complex classificatory systems of symbols and meanings that constitute a semantic field in permanent dynamic tension. In this work we analyze a whole series of lines of cultural conflict such as the social and semantic genesis of the different forms of “culture war” from the thesis of “modern polytheism” pointed out by Max Weber at the beginning of the 20th century to the national culture wars and the current global culture wars; the social production of truth and the clash with the epistemological tribalisms; the struggles between the new warrior gods daimons and demons that emerge in modern societies; the struggles of fusion and fission on the symbolic battlefield of “Europe”; the struggles between “pioneers” and “gatekeepers” to define the limits of human nature; the struggles between utopias and dystopias that colonize the present future. This book will be of great help to anybody looking for key interpretations on the nature and structure of modern conflicts in contemporary societies. | A Sociological Genealogy of Culture Wars GBP 130.00 1
Social Disciplining and Civilising Processes in China The Politics of Morality and the Morality of Politics This book argues that a major part of the Chinese government’s road map formulated in 2017 to modernise China comprehensively by 2049 is the process of social disciplining. It contends that the Chinese state sees that modernisation and modernity encompass not only economic and political–administrative change but are also related to the organisation of society in general and the disciplining of this society and its individuals to create people with “modernised” minds and behaviour; and that moreover the Chinese state is aspiring to a modernity with “Chinese characteristics”. The question of modernising by disciplining was extensively dealt with in the twentieth century by leading Western social scientists including Max Weber Norbert Elias and Michel Foucault who argued that disciplining extending from external coercion towards the internalisation of restraints is indispensable for achieving social order and thereby for “civilisation” –but defined from a European perspective in relation to developments in Europe. This book therefore not only discusses the Chinese experience of social disciplining but also by looking at a non-Western society identifies universal tendencies of societal change and social disciplining and separates them from particular occurrences. | Social Disciplining and Civilising Processes in China The Politics of Morality and the Morality of Politics GBP 130.00 1
Sociology of Law Georges Gurvitch occupies an interesting position in the development of the sociology of law. In the period immediately preceding its quantitative expansion he produced an explicitly conceived systematic theoretical intervention. What is particularly significant about Gurvitch's Sociology of Law at first appears as a contradiction. His work has had very little lasting impact on developments within the field of the sociology of law. At best his existence is occasionally footnoted but he engendered no great controversy or debate nor does he have any active contemporary disciples. Despite this lack of attention Gurvitch work provides a concentrated expression of the theoretical problems that beset the field. The core of Gurvitch's sociology of law is at root a continuation of the efforts apparent in the work of Max Weber to resolve or integrate the dualism which is so markedly affecting law. It is the apparent dualism between law as a positive institution resting upon a framework of social power while at the same time being a system of values or norms having some compelling internal strength and validity. Gurvitch's Sociology of Law shines as a beacon in the ongoing quest for a transformative vision of law. The new introduction by Alan Hunt discusses Gurvitch's place in the history of the sociology of law and the context in which his works should be placed. It also features a brief biography of the sociologist as well as a discussion of the central features of Gurvitch's sociology. This book will be of interest to students of sociology and law. GBP 110.00 1
The Sociology of Knowledge Toward a Deeper Understanding of the History of Ideas This volume serves as both an introduction to the field of the sociology of knowledge and an interpretation of the thought of the major figures associated with its development More than a compendium of ideas Stark seeks here to put order into what he regarded as a diffuse tradition of diverse bodies of thought in particular the seemingly irreconcilable conflict between the study of the political element in thought identified here with Karl Mannheim and the investigation of the social element in thinking associated with the work of Max Scheler. The sociology of knowledge is primarily directed toward the study of the precise ways that human experience through the mediation of knowledge takes on a conscious and communicable shape. While both schools dealt with by Stark assume that the pursuit of truth is not purposeful apart from socially and historically determined structures of meaning the tradition extending from Marx to Mannheim seeks to expose hidden factors that turn us away from the truth while that of Weber and Scheler attempts to identify social forces that impart a definite direction to our search for itIn order to reconcile opposing theoretical positions Stark seeks to lay the foundations for a theory of the social determination of thought by directing his inquiry to the philosophical problem of truth in a manner compatible with cultural sociology. Stark's theoretical legacy to the sociology of knowledge is that social influences operate everywhere through a group's ethos. From this many systems of ideas and social categories emanate revealing partial glimpses of a synthetic whole. The outcome of Stark's work is a general theory of social determination remarkably consistent with contemporary interests in the broad range of cultural studies whose focus is best described as the use of philosophical literary and historical approaches to study the social construction of meaning. The Sociology of Knowledge will be of great interest to social scientists philosophers and intellectual historians. | The Sociology of Knowledge Toward a Deeper Understanding of the History of Ideas GBP 130.00 1