Ideal type

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

Ideal types, reality, and construction

Abstract: This chapter discusses ideal types methodologies constructed with understanding of meant meanings. Weber's ideal type was at the same time narrower and wider than the pure constructs or ideal types of earlier methodologists. He had narrowed it down from a construct designed to explain phenomena of every kind, natural and social, to one that was to serve only the explanation of social phenomena. On the other hand, it should serve in generalizing and in historical inquiries. His ideal type, moreover, was subject to the requirement of understanding meant meanings. This manifold diversity may seem confusing, but it need not be inasmuch as everything that has to do with human feeling, thinking, and acting, whether it be treated in a theoretical-abstract or a historical-concrete manner, can be understood in terms of ideal types. Some of these modifications were not fully understood by those who considered themselves heirs to Weber's methodology and proceeded to reinterpret, adapt, and apply it. In the process, most of them managed to reduce its applicability.

The Rule of the Market: Economic Constitutionalism Understood Sociologically

Abstract: Setting out from the works of Max Weber and Karl Polanyi, this chapter outlines a sociology of economic constitutionalism. The starting point is a functional definition of economic constitution as the law constituting the market order, no matter if it is public or private, national or international, official or informal law. Economic constitutionalism is understood as a system of thought, which emphasises the role of a liberal economic constitution in integrating the global economy. Adapting Weber's ideal-typical method, the economic constitution is conceived as a constitutional ideal type, next to juridical constitution, political constitution, social constitution, and security constitution. Sociologically speaking, these ideal types capture different constitutional rationalities, which are all culturally significant but not equally successful in the global age. Drawing on Polanyi's work, which exposes the self-regulating market as an artefact of economic thinking, the argument proceeds by highlighting the constitutive role of economics in constructing the law of the globalised market society. After economic law came to be embedded in national welfare states in the twentieth century, economic constitutionalism furthers the opening up of national laws and economies. In contrast to the rule of law, the rule of the market is inherently transnational in character.

Methods for the Analysis of Cultural Change

Abstract: One of the most productive methods for the analysis of cultural change is that of dichotomizing contrasting characteristics (often abstract or ideal without actual examples in the real world) and ordering data on a continuum between the polar extremes. This method measures, essentially, social situations found in human social systems against ideal types. This general method of analysis has been employed by the staff of the Cornell Peru Project for nearly a decade in studying the general process of cultural change in the Andean Indian community of Vicos, Department of Ancash, Peru, in order to furnish guidance in the order and techniques for introducing directed cultural changes. The aim of this paper is to present the basic concepts behind the particular interventions. The most general dichotomy employed in analyzing changes at Vicos is that between modern, industrial Western Civilization and medieval Western colonialism. The Cornell Peru Project has viewed the changes occurring in Vicos society and culture as part of a process which has been thought of as "modernization" or "Westernization." No ideal type of Western Civilization has been set up for analytical purposes, but a working map of Western Civilization has been derived from empirical data in order to guide change in the direction which will enable the Vicosinos to achieve functional linkage with the greater social system which is mutually rewarding to them and to the other participants in the larger system in terms of maximal well-being and euphoria and minimal anxiety and frustration. Modern Western Civilization is viewed by us as a specific culture shared by a large number of human beings residing in western Europe and North America and by at least the governing elites in South America and much of Africa, India and Asia. Like Arnold Toynbee, we view this specific civilization as having had a long historic development. We do not, however, view the contemporary process of Westernization as one which is controlled by

Psychedelic science as cosmic play, psychedelic humanities as perennial polemics? Or why we are still fighting over Max Weber’s Science as a Vocation:

Abstract: If it was indeed the fate of scientific work to become obsolete within 10–15 years, as Max Weber contended in Science as a Vocation, why does the Journal of Classical Sociology publish this article...

Professionalization Amidst Change: The Case of the Emerging Legal Profession in Kenya

Abstract: This paper is an attempt to examine the development of a profession on a western model in a developing, non-western society. It attempts to examine the relationship of the colonial social and political environment to the development of the legal profession in Kenya; and also the relationship of the post-colonial social and political environment to the changes occurring in that development. The paper proceeds on the assumption that like any occupation, the legal profession in Kenya has a history and that history, specifically the history of change from the colonial to the post-colonial social and political environment, has determined some aspects of the profession's structure (Stinchcombe, 1965: 153-54). The literature of occupational sociology is especially rich in its treatment of one prominent category-the professions. The central theme in this literature has come to be the professional model, conceived as an ideal-type that permits comparisons between the abstract model and actual professions. The model is said to consist of a series of attributes which are deemed important in distinguishing professions from non-professional occupations. The attributes are conveniently categorized into two basic types: those that are pait of the structure of the occupation and those which reflect the attitudes of the practitioners about their work (Hall, 1968). Wilensky (1964: 194) identified the structural attributes as: the creation of a full-time occupation out of the work done, the establishment of a training model reflecting the knowledge base of a profession, the formation of a professional association, and the formation of a code of ethics. The attitudinal attributes have been identified as belief in self-regulation (Greenwood, 1957: 4455). the belief in autonomy (Scott, 1965), the use of a professional association as a major reference (Goode, 1957: 194), and the possession of a sense of calling to the field (Gross, 1958: 77-82). Although criticized (Johnson, 1972: 1973; Roth, 1974: 7-25), the professional model has come to gain some acceptance in the literature of occupational sociology as the ideal type measuring tool used to determine how far along the professionalization path a particular occupation has moved. Movement toward correspondence with the model is what is generally considered to constitute the process of professionalization (Vollmer and Mills, 1966). It can be said that during the colonial era the Kenyan legal profession was developing toward correspondence with the model. Part of this development is documented by Ghai and McAuslan (1970: 381-406). During the initial development of the profession, 1901-1905, the delivery of legal services was not exclusive