Economics and History; Types of Domination

Author: (German) Weber
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-05-01
Features: In the mid-to-late 1980s, China's reform and opening-up were in full swing. While achieving significant successes, it also gave rise to many social issues. The situation faced by China's intellectual circles bore some resemblance to the context Weber encountered in the late 19th century with the German nation-state. Weber described himself as an "economic nationalist" in terms of national interest and acted according to the ethics of responsibility. Weber's unconventional insights, as well as his discussion of modern capitalism as a rational labor organization, may offer some inspiration for Chinese thinkers. "The entire economy is nothing but the history of economic rationalism." With "quantification" as the warp and social action and groups as the weft, Weber wove his vision of history in Economy and History. "Any institution we can imagine cannot function without power to issue commands, hence, there is domination." This is the starting point of Weber's political sociology research. Through Types of Legitimate Domination, Weber, drawing on human historical experience, three "ideal types" of domination: charismatic domination, traditional domination, and legal domination. He analyzes the foundations of legitimacy, the mechanisms of operation, and the impacts of these three forms of domination, focusing on different types of domination and management and their substantive effects on a society's formation and rationalization. Through this approach, Weber's study of domination types is integrated into a complete system with his research on religion, law, and economic history.