Weber's work in the field of sociology of religion started with the essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and continued with the analysis of The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism, The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism and Ancient Judaism.

In political sociology, one of Weber's most significant contributions is his Politics as a Vocation essay.

The essay can also be interpreted as one of Weber's criticisms of Karl Marx and his theories.

Weber's discussion of the relationships between status groups, social class, and political parties is found in his essay " Class, Status, Party " which was written in German before World War I.

The essay is based on Weber's observations of American businessmen in 1904, during a trip he took to visit relatives in Ohio and North Carolina, and to do research in the libraries of American universities that had Protestant affiliations.

The Protestant Ethic formed the earliest part in Weber's broader investigations into world religion: he would go on to examine the religions of China, the religions of India and ancient Judaism, with particular regard to the apparent non-development of capitalism in the corresponding societies, as well as to their differing forms of social stratification.

Weber's best known work in economics concerned the preconditions for capitalist development, particularly the relations between religion and capitalism, which he explored in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism as well as in his other works on the sociology of religion.

( See Talcott Parsons ' translation of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, translator's note on Weber's footnote 9 in chapter 2.

Cover of the original German edition of Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

These explorations into the achievement motive seem to turn naturally into the investigation of national differences based on Max Weber's thesis that the industrialization and economic development of the Western nations were related to the Protestant ethic and its corresponding values supporting work and achievement.

As argued by political scientist Mihaela Czobor-Lupp, his was an " alternative " to the rationalist perspective, and a counterweight to Max Weber's study on The Protestant Ethic.

Although not a detailed study of Protestantism but rather an introduction to Weber's later studies of interaction between various religious ideas and economics ( The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism, The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism, and Ancient Judaism ), The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism argues that Puritan ethics and ideas influenced the development of capitalism.

In a paper published on 10 November 2009, Harvard economist Davide Cantoni tested Weber's Protestant hypothesis using population and economic growth in second-millennium Germany as the data set, with negative results.

There has been a revitalization of Weber's interest, particularly in a New York Times article, published in June 8, 2003, where the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released an article that seems to confirm that " the experience of Western Europe in the past quarter-century offers an unexpected confirmation of the Protestant ethic.

The relationship between capitalism and modernity is a salient issue, perhaps best demonstrated in Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism ( 1905 ) and Simmel's The Philosophy of Money ( 1900 ).

It can be used to analyze both a general, suprahistorical phenomenon ( like capitalism ) or historically unique occurrences ( like Weber's own Protestant Ethics analysis ).

Indeed according to Max Weber's study of capitalism and the Protestant ethic, frugality, sobriety, deferred consumption and saving were among the key values of the rising bourgeoisie in the age of the Reformation.

Elsewhere, U. S. A .: How We Got from the Company Man, Family Dinners and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, BlackBerry Moms and Economic Anxiety ( 2009 ) is Conley's latest book, chronicling how American society has moved from embodying Max Weber's Protestant ethic in the 19th and early 20th Centuries to William H. Whyte's " social ethic " during the mid-20th Century to today's " elsewhere ethic.

Weber's idea of the Protestant work ethic and Hegel's Spirit were certainly influential.

In essence then, Weber's " Spirit of Capitalism " is effectively and more broadly a Spirit of Rationalization.

Sombart's 1911 book, Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben ( The Jews and Modern Capitalism ), is an addition to Max Weber's historic study of the connection between Protestantism ( especially Calvinism ) and Capitalism, with Sombart documenting Jewish involvement in historic capitalist development.

A later work was " Islam and Capitalism " ( 1966 ), the title echoing to Max Weber's famous thesis regarding the development of Capitalism in Europe and the rise of Protestantism.

From 1893 to 1899 Weber was a member of the Alldeutscher Verband ( Pan-German League ), an organisation that campaigned against the influx of the Polish workers ; the degree of Weber's support for the Germanisation of Poles and similar nationalist policies is still debated by modern scholars.

Also in 1893 he married his distant cousin Marianne Schnitger, later a feminist activist and author in her own right, who was instrumental in collecting and publishing Weber's journal articles as books after his death and her biography of him is an important source for understanding Weber's life.

Especially important to Weber's work is the neo-Kantian belief that reality is essentially chaotic and incomprehensible, with all rational order deriving from the way in which the human mind focuses its attention on certain aspects of reality and organises the resulting perceptions.

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the " deep tension between the Kantian moral imperatives and a Nietzschean diagnosis of the modern cultural world is apparently what gives such a darkly tragic and agnostic shade to Weber's ethical worldview.

Though the influence of his mother's Calvinist religiosity is evident throughout Weber's life and work, and though he maintained a deep, lifelong interest in the study of religions, Weber was open about the fact that he was personally irreligious.

It is argued that this work should not be viewed as a detailed study of Protestantism, but rather as an introduction into Weber's later works, especially his studies of interaction between various religious ideas and economic behaviour as part of the rationalisation of the economic system.

Weber's ideal bureaucracy is characterised by hierarchical organisation, by delineated lines of authority in a fixed area of activity, by action taken ( and recorded ) on the basis of written rules, by bureaucratic officials needing expert training, by rules being implemented neutrally and by career advancement depending on technical qualifications judged by organisations, not by individuals.

The great differences between that school's interests and methods on the one hand and those of the neoclassical school ( from which modern mainstream economics largely derives ) on the other, explain why Weber's influence on economics today is hard to discern.

The breadth of Weber's topical interests is apparent in the depth of his social theory:

Weber's work is generally quoted according to the critical Gesamtausgabe ( collected works edition ), which is published by Mohr Siebeck in Tübingen.

The theme of a religious basis of economic discipline is echoed in sociologist Max Weber's work, but both de Tocqueville and Weber argued that this discipline was not a force of economic determinism, but one factor among many that should be considered when evaluating the relative economic success of the Puritans.

The most commonly used definition is Max Weber's, which describes the state as a compulsory political organization with a centralized government that maintains a monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a certain territory.

In one of his novels, entitled Invitatie la vals, referring to Carl Maria von Weber's " Invitation to the Dance " ( later orchestrated by Berlioz ), a comparison is made between the novel's main character and Manon Lescaut.

In early 19th-century cantatas the chorus is the vehicle for music more lyric and songlike than in oratorio, not excluding the possibility of a brilliant climax in a fugue as in Ludwig van Beethoven's Glorreiche Augenblick, Carl Maria von Weber's Jubel-Kantate, and Felix Mendelssohn's Die erste Walpurgisnacht.

Weber's contribution to vocal and choral music is also significant.

More specifically, they lie between Weber's Line and Lydekker's Line, and thus have a fauna that is rather more Australasian than Asian.

* The Wild Hunt is mentioned as one of the seven spectres during the casting of the magic bullets in Karl Maria von Weber's opera Der Freischütz.

Depicting different types of “ economic man ” ( each depending on the social context ) is in fact possible with the help of cultural anthropology, and social psychology ( a branch of psychology economists have strangely ignored ), if only those types are contrived as socially and / or historically determined abstractions ( such as Weber's, Korsch's, and Fromm's concepts of Idealtypus, “ historical specification ”, and “ social character ”).

According to Weber's definition, entry and subsequent advancement is by merit or seniority.

According to Weber's definition, entry and subsequent advancement is by merit or seniority.