SOCY 122 Chapter : Weber and Understanding Social Action

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Social Sci, Edu and Soc Work - Sociology
• Course: SOCY 122
• Professor: Rob Beamish

Document Summary

Weber was extremely disciplined, principled, politically engaged with a highly developed work ethic and deep commitment to scholarship of high standard. For weber, sociology involves the development of a comprehensive understanding of social action. Social life is the product of meaningful social action and sociologists must strive to develop an interpretive understanding of the social world from the perspective of the human agents involved in it. Locate that meaningful action within the broader social framework within which it developed. The suggestion that one might try to develop generalizations from the unique events of everyday life was completely inappropriate for any undertaking within humanities and social sciences (from a historical school perspective) Weber argues that consciousness and the formation of human understanding in the social world cannot be reduced to solely the economic base (contrary to marx) Weber focuses on how one must clearly establish the fundamental premise and demonstrate how the arguments that follow build from those premises.