Weber: Social Action, Authority and Bureaucracy

Weber's types of social action and authority

Max Weber defined social action as behaviour to which the actor attaches subjective meaning and which takes account of the behaviour of others. An act with no subjective meaning and no orientation toward anyone, such as an accidental bump, does not count as social action in his sense. A greeting raised to a colleague or a deliberate refusal to acknowledge a neighbour, by contrast, does count, because each carries meaning directed at another person. Weber identified four ideal types of social action. Instrumental rational action, also called goal-rational or zweckrational action, selects means by calculation to achieve chosen ends. Value-rational action rests on a conscious belief in the intrinsic worth of an ethical, aesthetic or religious value, regardless of whether the action succeeds. Affective action is driven by the actor's current emotional state. Traditional action follows habit, established custom or deference to customary authority. Traditional action can override a person's own calculation of advantage, as when someone stays put because established elders have decided so, even though the calculation favours another course. Authority, for Weber, is power that is regarded as legitimate, meaning subordinates believe the person issuing commands has a right to do so. He distinguished three pure types: traditional authority, which rests on long-standing custom; charismatic authority, which rests on extraordinary personal qualities; and legal-rational authority, which rests on impersonal rules. When charismatic authority is routinised, it acquires a continuing administrative staff, written doctrine and material resources. Weber called this bureaucratised charismatic power. Patrimonial power, by contrast, is a form of traditional rule resting on personal administration of a household-type domain, and it does not by itself explain authority grounded in spiritual charisma.

Weber's Protestant ethic and capitalism

In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber argued that the spirit of capitalism is an ethical disposition that treats methodical work and the pursuit of gain as a calling. He held that this spirit cannot be explained by material factors or by the mere availability of capital sums. Rather, the spirit of capitalism produces its own capital supplies as a means to its ends. An ethic of this kind had to arise first as a way of life shared by whole groups before the capitalist economic order became self-sustaining and imposed its discipline on individuals. Weber's concern is therefore a disciplined and rational spirit, not acquisitive greed adopted by everyone. His analysis of Calvinism showed that Calvin's doctrine of predestination did not directly generate the Protestant ethic. The ethic developed later, when believers' anxiety about their salvation, intensified by their isolation, led pastors to recommend diligent worldly vocation as a sign of election. Predestination itself was not unique to Calvinism, since comparable doctrines appear in other religions. Weber also observed that Protestants were disproportionately represented among business leaders and capitalist entrepreneurs. Key associations in this field are: Weber with Calvinism and the Protestant ethic; Karl Polanyi with substantive rationality, in which the economy is embedded in social relations; Claude Levi-Strauss with the incest taboo as the rule marking the transition from nature to culture; and Anthony Giddens with structuration, the theory linking structure and agency.