Reading Questions:  German Sociology
 
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
 
**The required reading in Weber’s Protestant Ethic is, in the Penguin edition, pp. 8-42, 67-87, 105-117, 120-122; in other editions, 47-121, 155-174, 180-183.  It is also available online, in the older translation, but without the page references below.
 
In the questions below, you will find references to both editions.  The numbers in parentheses (xx/xx) refer to the different editions of the book:  the first page number refer to the Penguin edition, the second number refer to all other editions.  Alternate versions of quotes are treated the same way:  the first is from the Penguin edition, the other will be found in all other editions.
 
1.  Pay close attention to just how Weber defines the specific spirit of modern capitalism.  Why is it not simply ambition, greed, or the desire for power and recognition? Why does he describe it instead as an “ethically-slanted maxim for the conduct of life/an “ethos"? (11/51)?
 
2.  What was the Protestant idea of the calling?  How did Luther’s and Calvin’s versions of it differ?  (32-34/85-88)
 
3.  What is the idea of predestination?  How did Calvin’s treatment of this “‘dangerous and obscure’ doctrine”/“dark and dangerous teaching” differ from Luther’s? (72/102)
 
4.  By what series of steps did belief in predestination lead to such things as “systematic self-examination”/“systematic self-control” (79-82/115-119) and a “transformation of asceticism to a purely innerworldly variety”/“transformation of asceticism to activity within the world” (82/120)?  What does he mean by “innerworldly” or “worldly” asceticism?
 
5.  What does Weber mean by the “historic process” of “the elimination of magic from the world” (105)?  Note:  this passage does not appear in the Penguin edition.
 
6.  What is the “shell as hard a steel”/“iron cage” that Weber refers to in the closing passages (121/181)?  Who are the “specialists without spirit, hedonists without a heart”/“specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart” who inhabit it (121/182)?
 
7.  According to Weber, the age of “full and fine humanity”/“full and beautiful humanity” is over (120/181).  Why?  What is Weber?s attitude toward the ascetic culture that has taken its place?
 
8.  While Weber insists that asceticism and specialization are the precondition of any valuable work in the modern world, he also calls this world an steel-hard shell or an iron cage.   Is there a contradiction here?  What attitude toward modernity is he recommending to readers in his time?  To us?
 
Georg Simmel, "Fashion"
1.  Simmel regards fashion as a perfect example of a social "form."  What does he seem to mean by form, and how is it different from content?  For instance, when he asserts that "[t]he only motivations with which fashion is concerned are formal social ones," what view of fashion is he trying to set up?
 
2.  Simmel constantly uses pairs of opposed terms to set up his analysis.  Fashion, he says, reflects needs for imitation and distinction, sociation and individuation,  submission and domination,  conformity and the "release of an inner sphere." How does fashion meet these opposed needs?
 
3.  How does fashion work as a marker of class distinctions?
 
4.  How does fashion generate a distinctive sense of time in the modern world?  What does he mean when he claims that "[a]s fashion spreads, it gradually goes to its doom" (302)?
 
5.  How does Simmel explain why women are fashion's "staunchest adherents" (308)?
 
6.  Does Simmel seem to be talking about something we might call the fashion industry here?
 
7.  Step back and ask yourself:  what is Simmel trying to show us about fashion?