Max Weber and the social sciences in America

European Journal of Political Theory

Volumn 3, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 121-132

  Scaff, Lawrence A ^a  

^a WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

American exceptionalism; American social science; Exile studies; German immigrants; Max Weber; New School for Social Research; Political economy; Reception of Weber's work; Weber's trip to the US

Indexed keywords

EID: 34247650293     PISSN: 14748851     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1474885104041042     Document Type: Article

References (57)

1. Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers (1992) Correspondence 1926-1969, ed. L Kohler and H. Saner, tr. Robert and Rita lumber, pp. 148-50. New York: Harcourt Brace.
2. This compelling anecdote has also captured the attention of other writers, who have used it for different purposes: see e.g. Peter Baehr, 'The Grammar of Prudence: Arendt, Jaspers, and the Appraisal of Max Weber', in Steven E. Aschheim (2001) Hannah Arendt in Jerusalem, pp. 306-24. Berkeley: University of California Press.
3. Weber occasionally referred to himself as an 'outsider', and he enjoyed characterizing the German Sociological Society formed in 1909 as a salon des refusés. Peter Gay confirms that professional historians and Weber's contemporaries, such as Georg von Below, tended to dismiss Weber as an 'outsider', just as they dismissed any kind of 'sociology'.Peter Gay, 'Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider', in D. Fleming and B. Bailyn (eds) (1969) The Intellectual Migration: Europe and America, 1950-1960, pp. 11-93, 62. Cambridge: Belknap Press.
4. James T. Kloppenberg (1986) Uncertain Victory: Social Democracy and Progressivism in European and American Thought, 1870-1920. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 107-14, 442 n. 68.
5. Leo Lowenthal (1987) An Unmastered Past: The Autobiographical Reflections of Leo Lowenthal, ed. Martin Jay, p. 148. Berkeley: University of California Press.
6. Rolf Wiggershaus (1994) The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance, tr. M. Robertson, p. 69. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
7. Especially revealing is the rejection of Albert Salomon's chapter on Weber for a standard sociological theory textbook as too 'philosophical', notwithstanding his high standing among the emigres as an early authoritative interpreter of Weber's social theory. Salomon's subsequent articles in Social Research (1934, 1935a, b, all listed in n. 27 below) presented a rather different Weber from the one presented previously in Die Gesellschaft (1926), though the New School's periodical had a rather specialized readership among sociologists. See Ulf Matthiesen, '"Im Schatten einer endlosen großen Zeit": Etappen der intellektuellen Biographie Albert Salomons', in Ilja Srubar (ed.) (1988) Exil. Wissenschaft. Identität: Die Emigration deutscher Wissenschaftler, 1933-1945, pp. 299-350. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp.
8. Emil Lederer (1934) 'Freedom and Science', Social Research 1(2) (May): 219-30.
9. Paul Honigsheim (1968) On Max Weber, tr. Joan Rytina. New York: Free Press.
10. Paul Honigsheim (2000) The Unknown Max Weber, ed. Alan Sica. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
11. Karl Loewenstein (1966) Max Weber's Political Ideas in the Perspective of Our Time, tr. Richard and Clara Winston. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
12. Franz L. Neumann (1944) Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2nd edn.
13. Arnold Brecht (1959) Political Theory: The Foundations of Twentieth-Century Political Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
14. Alfred Schutz (1959) The Phenomenology of the Social World. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
15. Paul F. Lazarsfeld, 'An Episode in the History of Social Research: A Memoir', in D. Fleming and B. Bailyn (eds) (1969) The Intellectual Migration: Europe and America, 1930-1960, pp. 270-337. Cambridge: Belknap Press.
16. Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Anthony R. Oberschall (1965) 'Max Weber and Empirical Social Research', American Sociological Review 30(2): 185-99.
17. Erich Voegelin (1925) 'Über Max Weber', Deutsche Vierteljahrsschriftfür Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 3(2): 177-93.
18. Eric Voegelin (1989) Autobiographical Reflections, ed. Ellis Sandoz. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
19. Leo Strauss (1953). Natural Right and History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
20. Herbert Marcuse, 'Industrialization and Capitalism', in Otto Stammer (ed.) (1971) Max Weber and Sociology Today, tr. K. Morris, pp. 133-51. New York: Harper.
21. A more complete account would have to include even younger generations of emigre scholars, among them particularly Reinhard Bendix, who emigrated from Berlin to the US in 1938 at age 22, and became a major interpreter of Weber's work and proponent of a Weberian historical sociology, as well as his student and Weber-Kenner, Guenther Roth, who arrived in his elective homeland in the early 19505. See Reinhard Bendix (1986) From Berlin to Berkeley: German-Jewish Identities. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
22. Guenther Roth (2001) Max Webers deutsch-englische Familiengeschichte 1800-1950, pp. xx, 23. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
23. Franz L. Neumann, 'The Social Sciences', in Neumann et al. (1953) The Cultural Migration: The European Scholar in America, p. 22. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
24. Guenther Roth (2002) 'Max Weber: Family History, Economic Policy, Exchange Reform', International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 15(3): 509-20, 509.
25. Honigsheim (2000: n. 7), 269.
26. David Zaret 'Max Weber und die Entwicklung der theoretischen Soziologie in den USA', in G. Wagner and H. Zipprian (eds) (1994) Max Webers Wissenschaftslehre: Interpretation und Kritik, pp. 332-66, 332. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
27. Wolfgang Schwentker, 'Western Impact and Asian Values in Japan's Modernization: A Weberian Critique', in Ralph Schroeder (ed.) (1998) Max Weber, Democracy and Modernization, pp. 166-81. New York: St Martin's.
28. Peter Gay, '"We Miss our Jews": The Musical Migration from Nazi Germany', in R. Brinkmann and C. Wolff (eds) (1999) Driven into Paradise: The Musical Migration from Nazi Germany to the United States, pp. 21-30. Berkeley: University of California Press.
29. Neumann (n. 12), 21.
30. Agnes Erdelyi (1992) Max Weber in Amerika: Wirkungsgeschichte und Rezeptionsgeschichte Webers in der anglo-amerikanischen Philosophie und Sozialwissenschaft. Vienna: Passagen.
31. Guenther Roth, 'Weber the Would-Be Englishman: Anglophilia and Family History', in H. Lehmann and G. Roth (eds) (1993) Weber's Protestant Ethic: Origins, Evidence, Contexts, pp. 83-121. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
32. Guenther Roth (1997) 'The Young Max Weber: Anglo-American Religious Influences and Protestant Social Reform in German', International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 10(4): 659-71. Roth (nn. 11, 13).
33. Gay (n. 17), 26.
34. For a new translation by Peter Baehr and Gordon Wells of the 1920 revision of the article, '"Churches" and "Sects" in North America: An Ecclesiastical and Sociopolitical Sketch', see Max Weber (2002) The Protestant Ethic and the 'Spirit' of Capitalism and Other Writings, ed. and tr. Peter Baehr and Gordon C. Wells, pp. 203-19. New York: Penguin.
35. Lawrence A. Scaff (1998) 'The "Cool Objectivity of Sociation": Max Weber and Marianne Weber in America', History of the Human Sciences 11(2): 61-82. Ross misses this side of Weber's assessment of American social life.
36. See Dorothy Ross (1991) The Origins of American Social Science, pp. 234-5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
37. Kloppenberg (n. 3), 321.
38. Arthur J. Vidich and Stanford M. Lyman (1985) American Sociology: Worldly Rejections of Religion and their Directions. New Haven: Yale University Press.
39. Albert Salomon (1926) 'Max Weber', Die Gesellschaft 3(2) (Feb.): 131-53, 144.
40. H. Stuart Hughes, 'Franz Neumann between Marxism and Liberal Democracy', in D. Fleming and B. Bailyn (eds) (1969) The Intellectual Migration: Europe and America, 1930-1960, pp. 446-62. Cambridge: Belknap Press.
41. John H. Herz (1969) 'Otto Kirchheimer', The Legacy of the German Refugee Intellectuals. (Salmagundi 10-11), 303-6.
42. Albert Salomon (1934) 'Max Weber's Methodology', Social Research 1(2) (May): 147-68.
43. Albert Salomon (1935a) 'Max Weber's Sociology', Social Research 2(1) (Feb.): 60-73.
44. Albert Salomon (1935b) 'Max Weber's Political Ideas', Social Research 2(3) (Aug.): 368-84.
45. Neumann (n. 8), 6, 77-82, 387, 477. The fact that Neumann cites Weber's little-known essay from 1894, 'Entwicklungstendenzen in der Lage der ostelbischen Landarbeiter', is an indication of the depth of his textual knowledge. This essay, an excellent summation of Weber's early work as an agrarian economist, has now been translated and published by Keith Tribe (ed.) (1989) Reading Weber, pp. 158-87. London: Routledge.
46. Lazarsfeld (n. 9), 278, 292. Lazarsfeld and Oberschall (n. 9). Theodor W. Adorno, 'Scientific Experiences of a European Scholar in America', in D. Fleming and B. Bailyn (eds) (1969) The Intellectual Migration: Europe and America, 1930-1960, pp. 338-70, 350. Cambridge: Belknap Press.
47. Frieda Wunderlich (1961) Farm Labor in Germany 1810-1945. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
48. Peter M. Rutkoff and William B. Scott (1986) New School: A History of the New School for Social Research, p. 201. New York: Free Press.
49. Cf. Claus-Dieter Krohn (1993) Intellectuals in Exile: Refugee Scholars and the New School for Social Research, tr. Rita and Robert Kimber. Amherst: University of Massachusetts.
50. Lewis Coser (1984) Refugee Scholars in America: Their Impact and their Experience, pp. 102-9. New Haven: Yale University Press.
51. Neumann (n. 12), 19.
52. Knight to Parsons, 1 May 1936, a typed letter in the Talcott Parsons Papers, Harvard University Archives; I am grateful to Professor Charles Camic for generously providing a copy of this letter. For the best discussion of the early Parsons, see Charles Camic (1991) 'Introduction: Talcott Parsons before The Structure of Social Action', in Talcott Parsons: The Early Essays, pp. ix-lxix. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
53. These mimeographed translations are in the Frank Knight Papers at the University of Chicago. Alexander von Schelting, Edward Shils and Camilla Kample are credited with having completed the translations.
54. Karl Mannheim ([1931] 1953) 'American Sociology', in Essays on Sociology and Social Psychology, pp. 185-94. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
55. Karl Mannheim ([1933] 1993) 'Problems of Sociology in Germany', in Kurt H. Wolff (ed.) From Karl Mannheim. New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Transaction.
56. Lee Congdon (1991) Exile and Social Thought: Hungarian Intellectuals in Germany and Austria, 1919-1933, p. 305. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
57. Neumann (n. 12), 24-5.