Suchergebnisse

"The Sociology of the State: The State as a Conceptual Variable" published on by Oxford University Press.

Discusses the role of the nation-state in the movement from early to high modernity, drawing on the writings of Max Weber. Weber is taken to have been a fervent champion of modernization in Germany, calling for the emergence of instrumental rationality in many areas of German society. At the same time, he registered his distaste for the excesses of instrumental rationality & promoted the value of charismatic, aesthetic, & erotic elements in society. It is suggested that, in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber attempted to reconcile these impulses by creating a role for individual conscience in the modern world. Weber's effort is compared to that of recent postmodernist thinkers who have criticized the lack of ethics in the late modern nation-state. While there are problems in this more recent work, it is concluded that Weber's insistence on a stoical realism in the face of modernization is largely unhelpful for devising solutions to the current predicament. 27 References. D. M. Ryfe