Ideal type

About: Ideal type is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 400 publications have been published within this topic receiving 8012 citations.

How are social-scientific concepts formed? A reconstruction of Max Weber's theory of concept formation

Abstract: L'A. montre que certains specialistes rejettent la methode de conceptualisation proposee par Weber. Il montre comment G. Oakes et T. Burger ont affirme que celle-ci repose sur l'epistemologie depassee d'H. Rickert. L'A. s'efforce de reconstruire la theorie de Weber. Il montre que ce dernier distingue les jugements, les concepts. Il montre que sa theorie propose un certain nombre de criteres d'abstraction et de synthese qui interviennent dans la construction des ideaux-types et d'evaluation de ces memes constructions. Il montre que sa theorie de la conceptualisation est coherente meme si elle demeure incomplete et qu'elle ne doit rien aux analyses de Rickert

Max Weber's Two Conceptions of Bureaucracy

Abstract: Weber operated with two conceptions of bureaucracy-the legal-rational and the charismatic-which he never fully clarified. Consequently, he failed to see that a charismatic bureaucracy could be a ruling class, as in pharaonic Egypt, Incan Peru, and Soviet Russia. An analysis of the historical evidence suggests that charismatic bureaucracies do not ultimately transform themselves, as Weber assumed, into legal-rational types but that they remain totalitarian structures, deviating significantly from the ideal type of bureaucracy. Charismatic bureaucracies are ends themselves and irresponsible; legal-rational bureaucracies, however, can be democratically controlled and are more rational.

Classical liberalism and the Austrian school

Abstract: ideal types recommends itself not as an end but as a means.49 Ludwig Lachmann (who was dubious of its usefulness in economics, though not in history) comments on Max Weber’s concept: “The ideal type is essentially a measuring rod. . . . By indicating the magnitude of approximation of an historical phenomenon to one or several of our concepts we can order these phenomena” [Weber]. In other words, the ideal type serves the purpose of ordering concrete phenomena in terms of their distance from it (Lachmann 1971: 26–27).50 48 Briefs states, of his use of “ideal-typical constructions,” that they “throw into relief essential basic ideas of liberalism, without consideration of the qualifications that can be found in individual authors, are logically enhanced and thought out to the end.” 49 Cf. Sadri 1992: 16 and 11–22: “a historical ideal type is the result of one-sided accentuation and stylization of historical facts . . . [it] is warped and lopsided, for it carries more logical consistency and less factual or historical detail than the reality it represents; and also because it favors certain elements of historical reality as ‘relevant’ and ‘significant’ to the exclusion of others.” 50 See also the critique of Israel M. Kirzner 1976: 158–59, and Mises 1933: 71–88. The criticisms of Lachmann, Kirzner, and Mises are directed to what Raymond Aron 1970: 246–47 identified as the third kind of Weberian ideal-type, “rationalizing reconstructions of a particular 98 Classical Liberalism and the Austrian School The ideal type of liberalism should express a coherent concept, based on what is most characteristic and distinctive in the liberal doctrine—what Weber refers to as the “essential tendencies” (1949: 91).51 Historically, where monarchical absolutism had insisted that the state was the engine of society and the necessary overseer of the religious, cultural, and, not least, economic life of its subjects, liberalism posited a starkly contrasting view: that the most desirable regime was one in which civil society—that is, the whole of the social order based on private property and voluntary exchange—by and large runs itself.52 For at least a century and a half, the idea that society and the state are rivals, that social power is diminished as state power grows, has been typical of those recognized as—or accused of—being the most “dogmatic,” “doctrinaire,” and “intransigent” of the liberals.53 kind of behavior.” Here it is the first kind, “ideal types of historical particulars,” that is being drawn on. 51 Hekman 1983: 32 stresses Weber’s insistence on observing the “’logic’ inherent in the concepts themselves. When Weber states that the features which make up the ideal type will be combined ‘according to their compatibility,’ his point is that concepts cannot be thrown together in arbitrary fashion. Ideal types are not the product of the whim or fancy of a social scientist, but are logically constructed concepts.” 52 Cf. Karlson 1993: 77, who writes of civil society that its modern meaning “as a kind of sphere outside and distinct from the political sphere or the state, emerges slowly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. One major influence came from natural rights theorists, such as Thomas Paine, who, inspired by Locke, argued that most actual governments continuously tend to threaten the individual freedom and natural sociability in civil society. The state is in this perspective at best seen as a necessary evil, and civil society is viewed as a largely self-regulating sphere where the good life may be reached.” Hegel retained the contrast of civil society and state, while loading the former with a negative connotation. Karlson attempts to avoid what he sees as the normative slant of both of these approaches and defines civil society as: “the non-political relationships and behavioral patterns between a large number of interdependent actors within a given political territory. By ‘non-political’ is here meant social and economic arrangements, codes, and institutions that have evolved or exist without being directly created, upheld or enforced by the activities of the state, e.g. conventions, voluntary organizations, social norms and markets.” (Emphasis in original) 53 Robert Skidelsky 1995: ix, defines collectivism—presumably the opposite of liberalism—as “the belief that the state knows better than the market, and can improve on the spontaneous tendencies of civil society, if necessary by suppressing them.” He describes this as “the most egregious error of the twentieth century...this belief in the superior wisdom of the state breeds pathologies which deform, and at the limit, destroy, the political economies based on it.” Liberalism: True and False 99 One commentator who has grasped this is Ralf Dahrendorf, who writes of scholars like James Buchanan, Milton Friedman, and Robert Nozick that they were reverting to the original [liberal] project of asserting society against the state, the market against planning and regulation, the right of the individual against overpowering authorities and collectivities. Dahrendorf adds, significantly: “Liberalism is not anarchism, but anarchism is in some ways an extreme form of liberalism” (1987: 174).54 Construction of the ideal type of liberalism would draw on emblematic expressions of the liberal affirmation of “society against the state.”55 Most succinct is the Physiocratic slogan, “Laissez-faire, laissezpasser, le monde va de lui-meme” (“the world goes by itself”). Another is from Adam Smith: Little else is requisite to carry a State to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things. All governments which thwart this natural course, which force things into another channel, or which endeavor to arrest the progress of society at a particular point, are unnatural, and to support themselves are obliged to be oppressive and tyrannical. (Cited in Stewart 1996: 68) Or the statement of Thomas Paine: Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government. It has its origin in the principles of society 54 Cf. Norman Barry 1996b: 58: “Economic liberalism finds its ultimate logical conclusion in the doctrine of anarcho-capitalism.” Dahrendorf holds, however, that welfare liberalism is a valid continuation of the original liberal program. 55 As Weber wrote 1949: 95: “An ideal type of certain situations, which can be abstracted from certain characteristic social phenomena of an epoch, might—and this is indeed quite often the case—have also been present in the minds of the persons living in that epoch as an ideal to be striven for in practical life or as a maxim for the regulation of certain social relationships.” 100 Classical Liberalism and the Austrian School and the natural constitution of man. It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished. (Paine 1969: 357) Or the implications of the advice of Benjamin Constant: Remain faithful to justice, which is of all the ages; respect freedom, which prepares all good things; consent to the fact that many things will develop without you; and entrust to the past its own defense and to the future its own accomplishment. (Constant

Rationality and Passion in Private Experience: Modern Consciousness and the Social World of Old-Car Collectors

Abstract: In this paper I examine the world of old-car collectors. Showing, touring, collecting, restoring, and dealing all organize the expression of a passionate commitment closely fitting Weber's description of wertrationalitat-which typically is religiously oriented. I use the work of Berger and his associates to help point out the ways in which a collectible can serve as a kind of religious object, and to analyze how experience in specific social worlds relates to the ideal type of modern consciousness. Finally, I relate this to the work of Levi-Strauss. Any social world capable of organizing the energy and experience of large numbers of people is a potential subject for sociological analysis. When the social world is large yet little studied, and when aspects of it appear paradoxical or at least incongruous enough not to fit the categories of prevailing theory, it deserves closer investigation. These conditions are clearly met in the United States today by the rapidly growing memberships of social worlds devoted to the collecting, restoring, or otherwise attending to objects of all sorts, from pencils and beer cans to rare books and paintings. By examining one such world, the world of old cars, I consider how such objects come to be regarded as meaningful, how they serve to organize activity into a social world with its own internal logic.' I also analyze this world as an ideal type of modern consciousness, drawing both on the work of Weber and on the more recent ideas of Peter Berger and associates. At the end I suggest some ways this sort of study can be related to some of the work of Levi-Strauss. Data for the study consist of 40 intensive interviews and a total of several hundred hours of participant observation at various formal and informal gatherings of old-car enthusiasts.