Sociology is the systematic study of society and social interaction. In order to carry out their studies, sociologists identify cultural patterns and social forces and determine how they affect individuals and groups. They also develop ways to apply their findings to the real world.
an element of cultural belief that leads to social change rather than the concrete
organization and class struggles of the economic structure. It might be more
accurate, however, to see Weber’s work building on Marx’s and to see his Protestant
ethic thesis as part of a broader set of themes concerning the process of
rationalization. Why did the Western world modernize and develop modern science,
industry, and democracy when, for centuries, the Orient, the Indian subcontinent,
and the Middle East were technically, scientifically, and culturally more advanced
than the West? Weber argued that the modern forms of society developed in the West
because of the process of rationalization: the general tendency of modern
institutions and most areas of life to be transformed by the application of
instrumental reason—rational bureaucratic organization, calculation, and technical
reason—and the overcoming of “magical” thinking (which we earlier referred to as
the “disenchantment of the world”). As the impediments toward rationalization were
removed, organizations and institutions were restructured on the principle of
maximum efficiency and specialization, while older, traditional (inefficient) types of
organization were gradually eliminated.
The irony of the Protestant ethic as one stage in this process was that the
rationalization of capitalist business practices and organization of labour eventually
dispensed with the religious goals of the ethic. At the end of The Protestant Ethic
and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber pessimistically describes the fate of modern
humanity as an “iron cage.” The iron cage is Weber’s metaphor for the condition of
modern humanity in a technical, rationally defined, and “efficiently” organized
society. Having forgotten its spiritual or other purposes of life, humanity succumbs
to an order “now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine
production” (Weber 1904). The modern subject in the iron cage is “only a single cog
in an ever-moving mechanism which prescribes to him an essentially fixed route of
march” (Weber 1922).
Weber also made a major contribution to the methodology of sociological research.
Along with the philosophers Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) and Heinrich Rickert
(1863–1936), Weber believed that it was difficult if not impossible to apply natural
science methods to accurately predict the behaviour of groups as positivist sociology
hoped to do. They argued that the influence of culture on human behaviour had to
be taken into account. What was distinct about human behaviour was that it is
essentially meaningful. Human behaviour could not be understood independently of
the meanings that individuals attributed to it. A Martian’s analysis of the activities
in a skateboard park would be hopelessly confused unless it understood that the
skateboarders were motivated by the excitement of risk taking and the pleasure in
developing skills. This insight into the meaningful nature of human behaviour even
applied to the sociologists themselves, who, they believed, should be aware of how
their own cultural biases could influence their research. To deal with this problem,
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