Max Weber: Selections in Translation

The short selections which are included in this final section have been chosen partly to illustrate the wide range of Weber's interests but partly also for their intrinsic interest. They all deal with topics which, although peripheral to the major studies on which Weber's reputation rests, nonetheless reflect the same underlying presuppositions with which he approached all aspects of social organisation and culture.

The first selection is from the chapter in Economy and Society which Weber devoted to what he called ‘communal relationships’ of an ‘ethnic’ kind. Under this heading, he deals with what tend nowadays to be called ‘race relations’, including the question how far, if at all, these need to be understood in biological rather than sociological terms. But he extends the discussion to broader considerations of folk, tribal and national relationships and loyalties with which he considered ethnic relationships and loyalties to be closely connected. His view, like that of the overwhelming majority of later anthropologists and sociologists, was that inherited physical characteristics as such play no significant role in ‘ethnic’ relations. It is, however, consistent with Weber's general view of social stratification that he analyses them in terms not merely of cultural selfdifferentiation but also of attempted monopolisation by rival groups of social status and political power.