Weber and the academic roots in the spirit of the capitalism

After having analyzed Durkheim’s perspectives about the methodological and sociological approaches and his theoretical paradigms, we have Weber and his new methodological contributions. Weber focuses on the ideal type of the social action and the analysis of the origins of the capitalism as the motives by which the culture of the current economic system has been deeply assimilated by the Western society. The assimilation of the spirit of capitalism involves not only the bureaucracy social class, but also involves the different educational institutions which have assumed the economic ethics as part of its unconsciousness of knowledge reproduction. Weber points out that, nobody has the option to choose to be part of the economic systems.

As Mary Douglas has analyzed, there is a great encouragement from institutions to the get the people involve in their systems, based on the rational organization of the orbital economic system and under its reinforcement. In addition, this author describes how those institutions reinforce the social and cultural characteristics. In addition, Bourdieu describes how the educational systems reproduce the social class (even economic) and establish a competence. His perspective is rooted in the Weberian descriptions of capitalism and its expansion to the all the components of the cultural components, becoming the main or common style of life. Bourdieu points out that the habitus and the field of the social scientists (among others scientists) are the space where the scientists compete, trying to achieve what Weber would call the individual success. By this way, the modus operandi described by Bourdieu can be seen as a result of Weberian descriptions of the spirit of capitalism.

Weber and Bourdieu would coincide in the points mentioned above. In addition, we could say that Bourdieu´s analysis of the academic system as a file of competence is rooted in Weber’s perspectives about the influence of the economic systems in the different spheres of the society. However, those authors would not coincide in some points related to the participatory of social scientists, which implies different steps and methodological approaches for both of the authors.
Weber has influenced all his predecessors with his strong explanations of the origin of the capitalism. Thus, we can see how, many of the contemporary theories take his academic reflexivity about the system of life (that now is not only economic), and the extraordinary analysis about the “vulnerability” of the Western culture to the external and dominant economic spirits born in a small group of poeple not many centuries ago.

Once everything becomes an economic profit =$

Weber’s historical context was characterized by the implosion of mechanical and technological developments and the expansion and advance of agriculture. That mean of production started to use land and natural resources never imagined before, for the benefits of the big cities where the upper coming classes needed new goods and services.

As Weber describes the religious affiliation and the social stratification have two clear causes which can be observed: the separation of business from the households and the rational book keeping. Agriculture was one of the production in which we can observe the transformation from small scale and domestic p to industrialized and utilitarian production. The expansion of capitalism to all the different kinds of production was characterized by the idea of a duty of the individual toward the increase of his capital, which is assumed “as an end in itself”. According to Weber man is dominated by the making of money, by the acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life.

As Weber describes the religious affiliation and the social stratification have two clear causes which can be observed: the separation of business from the households and the rational book keeping. Agriculture was one of the production in which we can observe the transformation from small scale and domestic p to industrialized and utilitarian production. The expansion of capitalism to all the different kinds of production was characterized by the idea of a duty of the individual toward the increase of his capital, which is assumed “as an end in itself”. According to Weber man is dominated by the making of money, by the acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life.

Weber analyzed the origin of the “rationalism” of the capitalism and its relationship with religion. Those aspects are deeply rotted in western history and all our comprehension of the reality as a consequence of that historical process.

“Remember that time is money (…) Remember, that money is of the prolific, generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more, and so on." (Benjamin Franklin in M. Weber, 1902)

See this interesting video/example of someone who wanted to make money from nature, becoming an entrepreneurship in agriculture:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pDTiFkXgEE&feature=related

The division of labor and Durkheim’s concepts about society, groups, individuals, and equilibrium…

The analysis of Durkheim’s writings have to be contextualized in his historical time and his analyses of primitive societies where men seemed to be more free and equal to the others. According to this author the conditions by which the society was established in western cultures were based on the assumption that humans have received some natural heredity for being social agents. This author points out that an individual receives at birth tastes and aptitudes that predispose him to certain functions, and these predispositions have certainty and influence upon the tasks are distributed.[1] Thus there is a strong relationship between the human nature and the division of labor. The greater the role of heredity in the distribution of tasks the more invariable that distribution is within each society. However, the heredity is only part of the secondary factors of Durkheim’s description of human nature, being the human natural condition of cooperation the most important one. According to this author, solidarity is an essential aspect of the human nature. Thus, the society is not a collection of individuals which a machine keeps united and compressed against each other by the use of force. For Durkheim solidarity comes from the inside of the society, and humans are attached to one another “as naturally as the atoms of a mineral and the cells of an organism” (Durkheim 1895). The affinity that the individuals feel, and which holds them together, is based upon sympathy like an essential human condition. In addition, this solidarity is expressed by social structures such as the state or the religion. That argument has been questioned by some contemporary authors, mainly by those which base their arguments in the functions of social conflicts. For Lewis Coser (1956), the kind of relationships among the individuals is strongly related with the conflicts. Contrary to the equilibrium searched by Durkheim, this author points out that conflicts are part of the dynamic social life , and that close relationships provide frequent occasions for conflicts. If, however, conflicts occur despite suppression, they tend to disrupt the relationship because they are likely to assume peculiar and accumulation of suppressed hostilities.[2]
Among other more contemporary theorists, Coser (1954) was one of those who has recognized and used some of the methodological bases pointed out by Durkheim, but has made differences about the social predisposition of solidarity, which have been easily understandable considering the different historical contexts of those authors. As Coser (1984) points out in his introduction to one of Durkheim’s book, he attempted systematically to distinguish the type of solidarity prevalent in relatively simple societies from those to be found in the modern world.[3]
Today, the complexity and the specification of the division of labor imply the social analysis from different approaches. Many of the theories which are based on qualitative and ethnographical methodologies are used as part of the methodological fashion among the academia. However, the current complexity developed by our “organic” economic system seems to have many units of study as part of a huge system. The whole picture of that big social system or web seems to be closer to Durkheim’s ideas about rules of methodologies. But the small unit of analysis (Durkheim’s villages or tribes) can serve us to analyze some facts such as conflicts and those described above, where the psychological aspects avoided by Durkheim, seem to easily arise and be observed or investigated.

[1] Durkheim, E. 1997, The Division of Labor in Society, p.246, The Free Press, US.
[2] Coser, Lewis, 1956, The Functions of Social Conflict, The Free Press, Ney York, US.
[3] Coser, Lewis, 1984, in Introduction of The Division of Labor in Society, p. xiv, The Free Press, US.