Among the great thinkers of sociology, Max Weber (1864-1920) is considered one of the most influential authors. His works have an enormous range of subjects and are focused on areas of political thought, law, history and economics. This characteristic turned out to be highly valued for apparent reasons: the social world is in direct contact with all these branches to which Weber dedicated his work.
Having been preceded by two other great thinkers in the field of sociology, Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim, Weber also tried to understand the social changes unfolding at the heart of the great cities that lived in the Industrial Revolution. Through studies based on empirical observations, Weber identified central points on which he built key concepts that served as the basis for the rest of his theories.
Social Action for Max Weber
Perhaps the most important concept of Weberian theory is “social action”, which, according to the author, should be the main object of study of Sociology. Weber was more concerned with aspects
closer to the individual precisely because he believed that it was not just the structure of institutions or the economic situation of the subject that would motivate his actions. For Weber, ideas, beliefs and values were the main catalysts for social change. He believed that individuals had freedom for Act and modify The your reality. Therefore, social action would be any action that has a meaning and purpose determined by its author. In other words, a social action is constituted as an action based on the intention of its author in relation to the response he wants from his interlocutor.Human relationships and, in turn, actions that are inserted in the context of these relationships have meaning thanks to their actors. In order to understand the process of communication and social interaction, it is necessary to understand the sense of the actions that exist there and, even more importantly, the objective of the author of the action in his effort communicative. To better clarify the explanation, we can exemplify with the action of a handshake, which, generically, can contain an infinite number of meanings. However, the author of the action, when performing it, intends that his interlocutor apprehend the meaning he wanted to instill in his act, and not just that he understand the generic meaning of the act of shaking hands.
Types of social actions
Weber still stressed four types of social actions: rational action in relation to ends, rational action in relation to values, affective action and traditional action. Rational action toward ends refers to actions taken with a specific end in mind, that is, the author seeks to achieve a goal and acts rationally to achieve it. Rational action in relation to values, on the other hand, refers to actions that are taken according to the moral values of the subject who practices it. The affective action is configured when a subject acts based on their feelings without taking into account the end they want to achieve. Traditional action is related to acting based on custom and habit, that is, the subject acts by the presupposition of tradition without the support of reason.
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Rationalization of the social world
Weber's work also extends to a phenomenon he believes to be of great importance to the modern world and which is related to the structural, cultural and social changes that modern societies have gone through during the time. It is about the “rationalization of the social world”, that is, profound changes at the heart of the thinking of the modern individual and of state institutions, such as the gradual construction of capitalism and the monstrous explosion in the growth of urban environments, which became the basis for the reorganization of the traditional organizations that prevailed until then.
Weber's concern was in trying to grasp the processes by which rational thought, or rationality, impacted modern institutions such as the State and governments, as well as the cultural, social and individual scope of the modern subject. In his denomination of the diverse forms of rationality, Weber distinguished two main forms: formal rationality and substantive rationality.
Types of rationality
formal rationality it is related to the methodical and calculating forms of the legal and economic system of modern societies. It is linked to institutional apparatuses that are structured in a bureaucratic way, organizing themselves in a hierarchy delimited by fixed rules. The substantive rationality it approaches formal rationality, but differs in its conduct, which is not directed towards ends. This means that it takes into account the social context in which it operates, being rational about the disposition of values that guide that specific social world.
ideal types
Another contribution by Weber to sociological thought was the conceptualization of ideal types, a theoretical tool that is still widely used today. The establishment of ideal types does not seek to build generic typologies nor does it even seek to classify from inflexibly the object in question, as is the case with the classifications we find in the sciences natural. Ideal types serve as an observation parameter, an abstract theoretical concept with outlined features that serve only as a point of comparison between the observed object and the theoretical abstraction. These are conceptual models that rarely, if ever, fully exist. In this way, it is possible for us to look, for example, at the political system of a country with an ideal type, such as the of democracy, and, based on the comparison, classify it as being or not a democratic nation in one or the other sense. In this comparison, although not all the characteristics of a model of democracy are observed, this political system it could still be considered democratic if most of its organization were befitting that of a model. democratic.
In any case, Max Weber's comprehensive sociology represented great theoretical advances for sociological thought. The value of his work is invaluable, so that a large part of the works that investigate recent phenomena look for help in his works.
by Lucas Oliveira
Graduated in Sociology
