Friday, May 31, 2019

Max Weber on the evolution of institutions

Max Weber is one of the founders of sociology. This post is about two separate and interesting things I recently learned about him.

A while ago I discussed Different phases of growth and change in human organisations, based on a classic article from Harvard Business Review. [Which had no references or data!]
My friend Charles Ringma recently brought to my attention somewhat related ideas from Max Weber.
According to Wikipedia

Weber distinguished three ideal types of political leadership (alternatively referred to as three types of domination, legitimisation or authority):[52][111]
  1. charismatic domination (familial and religious),
  2. traditional domination (patriarchspatrimonialismfeudalism) and
  3. legal domination (modern law and state, bureaucracy).[112]
In his view, every historical relation between rulers and ruled contained such elements and they can be analysed on the basis of this tripartite distinction.[113] He notes that the instability of charismatic authority forces it to "routinise" into a more structured form of authority.[79]

I also learnt that Weber had a long history of mental health problems. According to Wikipedia

In 1897 Max Weber Sr. died two months after a severe quarrel with his son that was never resolved.[7][37] After this, Weber became increasingly prone to depression, nervousness and insomnia, making it difficult for him to fulfill his duties as a professor.[17][26] His condition forced him to reduce his teaching and eventually leave his course unfinished in the autumn of 1899. After spending months in a sanatorium during the summer and autumn of 1900, Weber and his wife travelled to Italy at the end of the year and did not return to Heidelberg until April 1902. He would again withdraw from teaching in 1903 and not return to it till 1919. Weber's ordeal with mental illness was carefully described in a personal chronology that was destroyed by his wife. This chronicle was supposedly destroyed because Marianne Weber feared that Max Weber's work would be discredited by the Nazis if his experience with mental illness were widely known.[7][38]

This puts Weber in a similar class to many other distinguished scholars who had significant mental health problems: Boltzmann, John Nash, Drude, Michel Foucault, ...

1 comment:

  1. Max Weber discussed here.

    Is neoliberalism Weberian? An interview with Nicholas Gane

    https://estudiosdelaeconomia.com/2014/09/14/is-neoliberalism-weberian-an-interview-with-nicholas-gane/

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