Weber, Rationalization, History and Education

Defining Weber’s approach is complicated, if only because it is much broader than that of Durkheim. As discussed in the methodology section, Weber’s approach to comparative history followed the idiographic, contrast of contexts rubric, whereby he analyzed and set historical events in relation to one another in an attempt to pinpoint the source of a given structural phenomenon. Such was the case in his most cited book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, whereby he was convincing in arguing that the wellspring of capitalism could be traced to specific cultural phenomena which were enriched and empowered by Calvinist doctrine, which in turn had its roots in the Reformation (Weber 1976: 104-106). While Durkheim sought a universal law which could explain the development of social system from within, Weber’s research program involved attempting to explain the social system via comparison with other cultural systems. In fact, Weber’s (1976) approach was even broader when one considers that The Protestant Ethic was but the beginning of a long project, a project which would never come to complete fruition. In the

“Author’s Introduction”, which Weber published fifteen years after the initial publication of his work, he points out the shortcomings of his own approach, namely that “only one side of the causal chain” is treated (27). Before moving on with this point, it should be noted that, seen through the perspective of contemporary political correctness, Weber was an unavowed racist and jingoist. In the same “Author’s Introduction”, he acknowledges the importance of

“biological heredity” for understanding differences between East and West (30) and expresses hope for the explanatory power of the then-burgeoning field of “racial neurology” (31). To

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admire a work for its intellectual acumen and intensity is not coterminous with endorsing every clause in that work. This point holds true for all thinkers cited in this dissertation.

To bring the discussion back to Weber’s notion of causality, it appears causality was at least somewhat peripheral to his hermeneutic process of understanding. He overtly mentions establishing causal relationships as the goal of his work, and the conclusion he draws regarding the spirit of capitalism is indeed causal in line with Mill’s method of difference.

The causal relationship is not all-explaining but is instead rife with what can be referred to as independent variables. In a sense, then, what Weber was attempting to do was to understand his objects of analysis from cultural, historical, social, religious and economic points of view, with an emphasis on interpretation and meaning, without precluding the existence of causal relationships (Giddens 1976: 2). Although it could be argued that Weber was never able to completely synthesize his approaches, his goal was, like Durkheim, the establishment of universal laws. Like Durkheim and Marx, Weber was looking for laws which shape the way history unfolds (Rehbein 2015: 92). His pluralistic approach to history, culture and society unfolded against the backdrop of a strong Eurocentrism, something for which he cannot be blamed, but nonetheless something which should give the contemporary researcher pause in her or his endeavors to operationalize Weber’s ideas in order to understand the world.

Weber’s ideas regarding education, calling, bureaucracy and reproduction are certainly worth considering, at least insofar as, like Durkheim, he exerted a great influence on the field. In “The ‘Rationalization’ of Education and Training”, for example, he writes:

“Educational institutions on the European continent…are dominated by the need for the kind of ‘education’ that produces a system of special examinations and the trained expertness that is increasingly indispensable for modern bureaucracy” (Weber 1946: 240). This point of tension between a “new” educational approach which could supply bureaucratic organs with appropriately trained specialists and an “old” humanistic approach to education was of central importance for cultural questions, as well: “This fight is determined by the irresistibly expanding bureaucratization of all public and private relations of authority and by the ever-increasing importance of expert and specialized knowledge” (242). The connection between rationalism, education, bureaucracy and domination is fairly explicit in Weber’s writing, but this connection does bear some clarification. Bureaucratic structures are “everywhere a late product of development”, and education geared toward bureaucratic efficiency – the “new”

approach – is part of a larger program of rationalism, which in the end has overthrown or will

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overthrow the “old” approach (“the cultivated man”) which “was stamped by the structure of domination” (242). In summation, Weber argues: “The march of bureaucracy has destroyed structures of domination, which had no rational character, in the special sense of the term”

(243). It is altogether likely that Weber was justifiably uncomfortable with such a strong statement, so he augmented it by concluding: “Hence, we may ask: What were these structures?” (243). Weber had an inordinate amount of faith in bureaucratic rationalization.

Although Marx’s approach to history, its totality and its logic, will be discussed in the next subsection, it is illuminating here to consider Weber’s approach to causality and history in contrast to the field of historical materialism. While historical materialists argue that the logic behind history and the way it unfolds is ultimately shaped by economic events and changes, an idea which persists in the field and which leads to tidy connections between cause and effect and independent and dependent variables, Weber sought to frame the question in a much different way, combining the materialist approach with cultural considerations. Weber (1976) frames his project thusly: “…we must free ourselves from the idea that it is possible to deduce the Reformation, as a historically necessary result, from certain economic changes” (90-91). The social world, at least for Weber, was an amalgamation of different flows of ideas, structures and symbols, which together gave birth to a certain imagination of the world.

He does not go so far as to argue that the link between the capitalist spirit and the protestant ethic was entirely an accident of history, but he also does not believe that such a development was predetermined. The alternative he introduces is to examine correlations – or relations – between economy, social and political organizations and religious sentiments, a much more taxing exercise than merely plugging phenomena into a predetermined theory of how the world and its history function. He argues:

…we can only proceed by investigating whether and at what points certain correlations between forms of religious beliefs and practical ethics can be worked out…we shall clarify the manner and the general direction in which, by virtue of those relationships, the religious movements have influenced the development of material culture (Weber 1976: 91-92).

Although Weber was never able to completely synthesize his ideas and find a law dictating the way in which history has unfolded and will unfold, his attempts are nonetheless laudable

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insofar as he sought to understand wide-ranging events (both geographically and otherwise) without adhering to a rigid, predetermined structure. The mere fact that he attempted to challenge the materialist orthodoxy of the burgeoning field of political economy by introducing the possibility that non-material culture could play a substantial role in shaping the world left a lasting impression on the social sciences. While his ideas unfolded against the backdrop of the notion of a totality, it can at least be said that the totality under which he sought to subsume the social world was more textured and allowed for a more complete, nuanced understanding of the way in which the world works in its totality.

From the preceding paragraphs, the following ideas can be extracted and eventually set into a relation with other explanatory mechanisms, both from Durkheim as outlined above as well as from Marx, whose ideas will be outlined below, before bringing all these ideas into a relation with their ideological successors: first, that knowledge of the social world cannot simply be deduced from a rigid theory. Even though Weber was ultimately looking to identify causal relationships, he was able to successfully put into practice a multifaceted approach to non-material, cultural developments outside of the well-defined realms of positivism and political economy, namely through an emphasis on understanding. For him, understanding must precede an explanation, not the other way around. That he was tentative in his conclusions about historical causality is admirable, because it suggests he came up against the limits of his abilities to understand the social world. Second, the idea that there are no universal, historical, social laws is a very important point, an idea which opened him up to a great deal of criticism. The third idea to be taken from Weber, an idea related to the first two points, is that understanding history is important for understanding the motivations of social actors, a point which demands a more arduous, idiographic approach to the study of the interrelated concepts of history and society.

Before moving on to Marx and his approach to society, social structure and, ultimately, reproduction, it is necessary to briefly engage with Weber’s ideas toward reproduction. In addition to his suggesting that reproduction through education, coupled with a novel pedagogical approach toward subject matter, was necessary in line with a newfound bureaucratic rationalization, he made some interesting historical observations/assertions about how social structure can be reproduced via education and vice versa. In ruminating on the ways in which school performance differed between Catholics and Protestants in Germany, he posits: “That the percentage of Catholics among the students and graduates of

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higher educational institutions in general lags behind their proportion of the total population may, to be sure, be largely explicable in terms of inherited differences of wealth” (Weber 1976: 38). Here, he highlights but one element of social inheritance and does not venture to suggest other reasons. In this case, a materialist explanation suffices, even though Weber is admittedly confused about the underperformance of Catholics in the economy at large, which ran counter to a tendency he observed amongst religious minorities. He furthers: “National or religious minorities which are in a position of subordination to a group of rulers are likely, through their voluntary or involuntary exclusion from positions of political influence, to be driven with particular force into economic activity” (39).

If these two notions were to be logically combined, something which Weber admittedly did not really try to do, it would follow that the progenies of religious minorities, because of the inclination of their parents toward economic action as a result of being excluded from the political field, would therefore outperform their non-coreligionists in education, because educational success is tied directly to inherited wealth. This notion, transposed onto the canvas of contemporary life, appears entirely absurd, and while the first argument (that student performance depends on the material resources of the parents) reflects at least a fraction of the social reality, it becomes readily apparent to even the most casual of observers that the connection between the first clause and the second is nonexistent. Even if the second argument was true, and Weber in turn provides examples of when this had been the case, this would speak merely to the material side of life and not to the entirety of the symbolic universe. That being said, even if the Catholics as a religious minority had at the time been able to accumulate proportionately more material wealth than their compatriots, it would have been likely that they would have lacked the level of educational attainment enjoyed by the Protestants precisely because of their being cut off from the workings of the state.

While Weber was correct in describing one of the mechanisms of social reproduction via education – that children of affluent parents are more likely to enjoy educational success and then study at university – it is altogether likely that he placed far too much importance on this factor, as evidenced by the contradiction identified above. The argument that the symbolic universe itself determines, and to a large extent is determined by, social structure and the reproduction thereof will be explored in greater depth in Chapter 4. As will become evident through the introduction and analysis of Bourdieu’s outlook on social structure,

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reproduction and education, the heritability of material resources is but one aspect which shapes the social world and at that may not even be the most significant. Money talks, but other things can leave bigger footprints.