Max Weber (1864-1920) does not figure in the history of anthropology in the way Durkheim, Freud, or even Marx do because Weber made next to no use of ethnographic (or proto-ethnographic) materials in his work—indeed, few histories of anthropology make any mention of Weber.' Weber was trained in economic history, and his very large corpus of work is centrally concemed with historical processes in the great civilizations of the world. His historical sociology has, however, considerable relevance to an anthropology that has become increasingly historically oriented. David Gellner (2001, p. 1), in his introduction to The Anthropology of Buddhism and Hinduism: Weberian Themes, writes, "The conjunction of 'Weber and anthropology' is sufficiently unusual to warrant justification." In this essay I seek both to offer such a justification and to show that whereas there may not be "Weberian anthropology," much anthropological work has been influenced directly or indirectly by the work of Max Weber. Moreover, there are good reasons, I believe, for rethinking Weber's work in light of contemporary anthropological concems. This article is about the influence of the work of Max Weber on English-speaking anthropologists. No effort is made here to assess the broader influence of Weber on the social sciences, especially in sociology and political science, where Weber has been and continues to be read more than in anthropology. I also consider only the English translations of Weber's work.
Weber's Sociology Of Religion And The Anthropological Study Of Religion
Weber's interpretive method is predicated on an assumption that is also fundamental to his theoretical approach. In a passage on "Religious Groups" in Economy and Society Weber posited that "the human mind... is driven to refiect on ethical and religious questions, driven not by material need but by an inner compulsion to understand the world as a meaningful cosmos and to take up a position toward it" (Weber 1963, pp. 116-117, emphasis added). Whereas much of the meaning that makes possible acting in the world derives from what Weber termed "tradition" (perhaps better formulated in terms of Bourdieu's habitus), there are experiences that render problematic conventional meaning. Parsons, refiecting on such "problems of meaning," observed that Weber postulates a basic 'drive' towards meaning and the resolution of these discrepancies on the level of meaning, a drive or tendency which is often held in check by various defensive mechanisms, of which the pre-eminent one here relevant is that of magic. But whatever the situation regarding the effectiveness of this drive, there is a crucial point conceming the direction in which this tendency propels the development of culture. This is that the search for grounds of meaning which can resolve the discrepancies must lead to continually more 'ultimate' reference points which are progressively further removed from the levels of common sense experience on which the discrepancies originally arise.
The 'explanations,' i.e., solutions to the problems of meaning, must be grounded in increasingly generalized and 'fundamental' philosophical conceptions. (Parsons in Weber 1963, pp. xlvii-xlviii). "Ultimate" meaning can never be attained through refiection and rationalization; rather, it can come only, Weber argued, through the nonrational acceptance of the dogmatic propositions embedded in the salvation ethic of a religion. Salvation the absolute certainty that the cosmos is ultimately meaningful—is more psychological than cogtiitive. "The quest of certitudo salutis itself has... been the origin of all psychological drives of a purely religious character" (Weber 1958a, p. 228). Geertz's (1966; 1973, pp. 87-125) "Religion as a Cultural System" starts with and elaborates on this Weberian position. Asad (1983; 1993, pp. 27-54) has strongly criticized Geertz's approach, and although this was not his intent, his criticism points to some important differences between Geertz and Weber. "(1) First, Asad (1993, pp. 30) points to Geertz's (1973, pp. 92) definition of religion as a "system of symbols" as entailing a confusion between symbols as an "aspect of social reality" (what I would term, following Weber, an aspect of social action) and symbols as representations of social reality. Weber, like Asad, saw meaning as embedded in social action, in Asad's (1993, pp. 32) words, being "intrinsically and not temporally connected."
Asad (1993, pp. 28) further criticized Geertz for adopting a modem post- Enlightenment Westem view of religion as having an autonomous essence separate from politics. Although this criticism might not be sustainable if one were to take into account Geertz's ethnographic work on Islam in Indonesia and Morocco, the point I want to make here is that Weber certainly would not make such a distinction. In "Religious Rejections of the World and Their Directions," for example, he wrote. The widely varying empirical stands which historical religions have taken in the face of political action have been determined by the entanglement of religious organizations in power interests and the stmggles for power, by the almost unavoidable collapse of even the highest states of tension with the world in favor of compromises and relativities, by the usefulness and the use of religious organizations for the political taming of the masses and, especially, by the need of the powers-that-be for the religious consecration of their legitimacy. (Weber 1958b, pp. 337-38) Weber maintained that from time to time in all societies in which religions with rationalized salvation ethics have evolved tensions develop between religious and political institutions: Every religiously grounded unworldly love and indeed every ethical religion must, in similar measure and for similar reasons, experience tensions with the sphere of political behavior. This tension appears as soon as a religion has progressed to anything like a status of equality with the sphere of political associations. (Weber 1963, p. 223)
I disagree with Asad's criticism of Geertz's predication of religion on the experience people encounter with fundamental problems of meaning. Geertz, who in this respect is very much following Weber, formulates these problems as ones in which "chaos—a tumult of events which lack not just interpretations by interpretability—threatens to break upon man: at the limits of his analytical capacities, at the limits of his power of endurance, and at the limits of his moral insight. Bafflement, suffering, and a sense of intractable ethical paradox are all, if they become intense enough or are sustained long enough, radical challenges to the proposition that life is comprehensible and that we can, by taking thought, orient ourselves within it—challenges which any religion . . . which hopes to persist must attempt somehow to cope" (Geertz 1973, p. 100, emphasis in original). Geertz (1973, pp. 109-10) went on to argue that the experiences of fundamental problems of meaning "drives" people toward "belief" in particular formulations of ultimate meaning that constitute what he calls a "religious perspective." Asad ignored, in his critique of Geertz's discussion of the religious perspective, the central point that "religious belief involves... a prior acceptance of authority which transforms" the experiences of problems of meaning (Geertz 1973, p. 109). Asad's failure to recognize or unwillingness to accept that problems of meaning, albeit always in particular manifestations, are universal led him to the untenable conclusion that religion, except in "the most vacuous sense," is not "basic to the structure of modem lives" (Asad 1993, p. 49)."(2)
One wonders how he would approach a study, to take only two presumably very modem societies, of the significance in America of the religious right in politics, the moral debate over abortion, or the proliferation of New Age religions or in Japan of the debate over the visit of a prime minister to a Shinto shrine, the attack on the Tokyo subway of a movement identified as a cult, or the moral debates over the use of organs of deceased persons, and so on. There is now a growing hterature that demonstrates well the persistence, resurgence, and transformation of religions in modem societies owing to the fact that although "science and technology, together are basic to the structure of modem lives" (Asad 1993, p. 49, emphasis in original), problems of meaning continue to impel people in modem societies towards religion.'(3) "My aim," Asad (1993, p. 54) wrote in the conclusion to his essay, "has been to problematize the idea of an anthropological definition of religion by assigning that endeavor to a particular history of knowledge and power... out of which the modem world has been constructed." This statement could very easily be used to characterize Weber's Collected Essays in the Sociology of Religion. Weber sought in this collection to undertake a comparative sociology of the relationship between the major salvation religions of the world (Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Chinese religion, and Islam), the political economies of the societies in which large majorities of the populations found the soteriological practices of these religions compelling. Weber was always concemed with the distinctive "developmental history" of each of these religious traditions rather than trying to fit them into a procnistean mold of some essentialized religion.
Notes:
(1) Although Asad shows some familiarity with Weber, he does not draw on him to any significant extent. What is striking, however, is that Asad seeks to push anthropological work in the same direction as Weber In his introduction to Genealogies of Religion he wrote, "I am concemed with how systemacity (including the kind that is essential to what is called capitalism) is apprehended, represented, and used in the contemporary world" (Asad 1993, pp. 7) and "Modem capitalist enterprises and modemizing nation-states are the two most important powers that organize spaces today..." (Asad 1993, p. 8).
(2) It might seem curious that Asad should, thus, have contributed a most insightful essay on torture to a book entitled Social Suffering that is clearly concemed with exploring crossculturally what Geertz termed the "the sense of intractable ethical paradox" (Asad 1997).
(3) I cannot survey all the relevant literature on this subject but point to only two works that both take up the theme of problems of meaning in modem societies: Keyes et al. (1994) and Kleinman et al. (1997).
Reference:
Ferguson, Niall. Economic Affairs, Dec2004, Vol. 24 Issue 4, p37-40, 4p;
Patterson, Eric. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Sep2004, Vol. 43 Issue 3, p345-362, 18p, 8 charts
Sharot, Stephen. Sociology of Religion, Winter2002, Vol. 63 Issue 4, p427-454, 28p
Keyes, Charles F.. Annual Review of Anthropology, 2002, Vol. 31 Issue 1, p233-255, 23p
Besecke, Kelly. Sociology of Religion, Fall2001, Vol. 62 Issue 3, p365-381, 17p
Swartz, David. Sociology of Religion, Spring96, Vol. 57 Issue 1, p71, 15p
Adriance, Madeleine. Sociology of Religion, Summer94, Vol. 55 Issue 2, p163, 16p
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