The First Modern Sociological Thinkers

The First Modern Sociological Thinkers

  • Submitted By: emwhit
  • Date Submitted: 10/13/2009 6:14 PM
  • Category: Psychology
  • Words: 3967
  • Page: 16
  • Views: 917

Elizabeth White
Max Weber was known as one of the first of modern sociological thinkers. Max Weber was not only a social historian but also an economist. He was mostly known for his organized way of approaching world history and how he helped to develop the Western Civilization. Weber sees social action as the thing that drives all humans in life and towards values. He looks at relationships and cultural importance of events and tried to figure out from there what was going on historically. He believed that the culture of a society is based upon many points of view. Weber does not predict outcomes he only explains events that have happened based on the direction that a culture has been moving. We as a culture learn and move on day by day and it is by these things that we learn and process daily that go on to construct the culture that we live in. If we have not progressed to a certain point, the certain occurrences cannot happen due to the fact that we do not have an understanding as of yet for these events. We must have a way or value to study something in order to fully understand what we are studying. In order to study people and their culture, Max Weber uses two ideal types that do not necessarily exist but are types to base around study. The first ideal type is historical which deals with looking at past examples of what is being studied and choosing characteristics that stands out to explain the topic. Classificatory ideal types are based on logical assumptions about the case at hand.
Weber’s use of the word rationalization is abundant. First he uses the word to explain how a rationally active person acts in ways that rely on the most efficient way to meet the goal that they would like to achieve. He then goes on to use rationalization in parallel with bureaucracy. A bureaucracy is a structure and set of rules that controls the activities of a culture by government and organizations. It also includes a defined division of labor as well as...

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