ABSTRACT

This chapter considers the empirical methods used by Weber. Key concepts like Weber's ideal types, his demand for value freedom and his approach to sociological explanation referring to a systematic distinction between social structure and social action, as described in the second chapter, will be briefly reviewed. Our focus, however, will be on how Weber conceptualized experience-based methods of gaining scientific knowledge in sociology. For this purpose, some of his main works, like Psychophysik der industriellen Arbeit (Psychophysics of industrial work), will be discussed. Because Weber's empirical work has not received much attention so far, we attempt to trace his influence on later empirical social research and to identify his mark on today's empirical social research, thereby focusing on industrial sociology and the sociology of work. Our leading question in this attempt will be whether Weber can be understood as an early proponent of a mixed methods approach to gaining experience-based insights into both social structure and social action, and why his methodological works received little attention.

Max Weber is famous for the way in which he questioned the social world and approached the description and explanation of social phenomena, thereby picking up on the main sociological issues of his time. In particular, he suggested a new methodological approach to tackle major problems (see Tribe and Maurer in this volume for more details). His central tools, like the action- oriented approach and the use of abstract models (ideal types), have inspired important methodological approaches such as analytical sociology and mechanism- based approaches to sociological explanation. Whereas his methodological contributions were widely known at the time, Weber left few traces as an empirical social researcher. Nevertheless, he extensively used empirical data and developed and applied methods of empirical social research to study central questions of his time with the aim of extending our empirical knowledge about the world. We introduce this lesser known aspect of Weber and introduce him as an empirical social scientist.

Before we analyse Weber's approach and explore the research methods that he applied in his empirical studies, we look at some of the key concepts that Weber introduced into the methodology of the social sciences. We recall the most important aspects of Weber's work here, because our consideration of Weber as an empirical social researcher starts from sound reflections on his methodological concepts.