In the sociology of Max Weber, the history of any social institution corresponds to the constant interplay of a dominant and an assertive group and their supportive ideologies. While Weber himself posited the relevance of such interaction for the study of educational change, he limited himself to the description of historical stages in this process without attempting to account for their sequence. To do so requires a specification of the necessary condition for successful educational domination or assertion by any group. The factors of such domination over the social institution of education may at times coincide with those required for social domination–defined as domination over the main institutions of a society. This coincidence will depend on the degree to which education is integrated with other social institutions. When education is largely unintegrated with such institutions, the group dominating it will tend to be distinct from the ruling group in society. A corresponding statement can be made about assertion. However, as education is never completely autonomous, a theory of educational change (1) necessarily goes beyond this institution to the extent to which it is integrated with others.

De nombreuses sociétés africaines connaissent et pratiquent la fraternité par le sang telle que la mentionne déjà Hérodote parlant des Scythes (1). Souvent, l'auteur qui décrit la conclusion du pacte relate une expérience personnelle : après avoir mêlé son sang à celui d'un chef indigène et prononcé une formule imprécatoire, parfois léché la blessure de son partenaire ou partagé avec lui un mets arrosé de leurs sangs respectifs, le voyageur était assuré d'une entière protection sur l'étendue du territoire que contrôlait son frère de sang. La facilité avec laquelle un total étranger se voyait offrir un lien en apparence aussi étroit a surpris plus d'un. Contre son gré et quelque répugnance que lui inspirât la cérémonie, Stanley dut s'y soumettre à plusieurs reprises pour pouvoir continuer sa route.

Between 1870 and 1914, a great deal of creative sociological research was completed in France. But this activity did not follow any sort of regular, coherent process of development; there were several quite separate lines of investigation which generally corresponded to distinct social groupings. And while the term “school” may imply too rigid a demarcation, there were at this time a number of what we may term “clusters” of researchers.

Research institutes are nearly as varied as the results they produce. The term itself generally implies the continuing cooperation of two or more persons in order to conduct research of one kind or another. Beyond these minimal conditions, however, innumerable variations are possible. The research institute as such is a recent phenomenon, one that did not arise, or at any rate did not become widespread, until the nineteenth century. Research institutes grew with the idea of research and while, of course, research has been conducted for centuries, the idea that academic scholarship should be combined with creative research became widespread only in the nineteenth century.

In 1892 the Verein für Sozialpolitik (Association for Social Policy) published six studies of agricultural workers in Germany (1). Five of the six authors were Karl Kaerger, H. Losch, Kuno Frankenstein, Friedrich Grossman, and Otto Auhagen. The sixth author was Max Weber. He was only 28 years old. But his study of agricultural workers touched on many themes that he developed in his more mature scholarship, and on some of the dilemmas that he faced in his later political writings and political activities.