Max Weber in America

Max Weber, widely considered a founder of sociology and the modern social sciences, visited the United States in 1904 with his wife Marianne. The trip was a turning point in Weber's life and it played a pivotal role in shaping his ideas, yet until now virtually our only source of information about the trip was Marianne Weber's faithful but not always reliable 1926 biography of her husband.Max Weber in America carefully reconstructs this important episode in Weber's career, and shows how the subsequent critical reception of Weber's work was as American a story as the trip itself. Lawrence Scaff provides new details about Weber's visit to the United States--what he did, what he saw, whom he met and why, and how these experiences profoundly influenced Weber's thought on immigration, capitalism, science and culture, Romanticism, race, diversity, Protestantism, and modernity.Scaff traces Weber's impact on the development of the social sciences in the United States following his death in 1920, examining how Weber's ideas were interpreted, translated, and disseminated by American scholars such as Talcott Parsons and Frank Knight, and how the Weberian canon, codified in America, was reintroduced into Europe after World War II. A landmark work by a leading Weber scholar, Max Weber in America will fundamentally transform our understanding of this influential thinker and his place in the history of sociology and the social sciences.

Table of Contents:
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ix PREFACE xi INTRODUCTION 1 PART 1: THE AMERICAN JOURNEY CHAPTER ONE: Thoughts about America 11 Traveling to Progressive America 11 New Horizons of Thought 16 A "Spiritualistic" Construction of the Modern Economy? 20 CHAPTER TWO: The Land of Immigrants 25 Arriving in New York 25 Church and Sect, Status and Class 29 Settlements and Urban Space 36 CHAPTER THREE: Capitalism 39 The City as Phantasmagoria 40 Hull House, the Stockyards, and the Working Class 43 Character as Social Capital 48 CHAPTER FOUR: Science and World Culture 54 The St. Louis Congress: Unity of the Sciences? 54 The Last Time for a Free and Great Development: American Exceptionalism? 60 The Politics of Art 66 Gender, Education, and Authority 69 CHAPTER FIVE: Remnants of Romanticism 73 The Lure of the Frontier 74 The Problems of Indian Territory 82 Nature, Traditionalism, and the New World 90 The Signifi cance of the Frontier 95 CHAPTER SIX: The Color Line 98 Du Bois and the Study of Race 100 The Lessons of Tuskegee 108 Race and Ethnicity, Class and Caste 112 CHAPTER SEVEN: Different Ways of Life 117 Colonial Children 117 Nothing Remains except Eternal Change 119 Ecological Interlude 127 Inner Life and Public World 129 The Cool Objectivity of Sociation 133 CHAPTER EIGHT: The Protestant Ethic 137 Spirit and World 139 William James and His Circle 146 Ideas and Experience 151 CHAPTER NINE: American Modernity 161 Strange Contradictions 164 Becoming American 168 Cultural Pluralism 174 TEN Interpretation of the Experience 181 The Discourse about America 182 A Way Out of the Iron Cage? 185 America in Weber's Work 191 PART 2: THE WORK IN AMERICA CHAPTER ELEVEN: The Discovery of the Author 197 Author and Audience 197 Networks of Scholars 198 Translation History 201 The Disciplines 206 CHAPTER TWELVE: The Creation of the Sacred Text 211 An American in Heidelberg 213 Parsons Translates The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 217 CHAPTER THIRTEEN: The Invention of the Theory 229 Gerth and Mills Publish a Weber "Source Book" 229 Parsons's "Theory of Social and Economic Organization" 233 Weber among the Emigres 238 Weberian Sociology and Social Theory 244 Weber beyond Weberian Sociology 249 APPENDIX 1: Max and Marianne Weber's Itinerary for the American Journey in 1904 253 APPENDIX 2: Max Weber, Selected Correspondence with American Colleagues, 1904-5 257 ARCHIVES AND COLLECTIONS CONSULTED 267 BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTES 269 INDEX 305

About the Author :
Lawrence A. Scaff is professor of political science and sociology at Wayne State University. He is the author of Fleeing the Iron Cage: Culture, Politics, and Modernity in the Thought of Max Weber.

Review :
Winner of the 2012 Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award, History of Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association "In 1904, shortly after emerging from severe psychological illness and between the two essays that made up The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber traveled with his wife, Marianne, to the U.S., where he would deliver a paper at the Congress of Arts and Science in St. Louis. Drawing from a rich variety of archival material, Scaff has written the definitive story of that trip."--Choice "Max Weber in America ranks among the very best interpretations of Max Weber's sociology."--Bryan S. Turner, American Journal of Sociology "Scaff has undertaken a prodigious amount of archival research in tracing Weber's path through the United States, and it is difficult to conceive of what would comprise a more definitive examination of this period in Weber's life and work."--John G. Gunnell, Journal of American History "This close-grained reading of Weber's American trip and the American dissemination of his writings sheds illuminating light on both... Weber scholars will find Scaff's meticulous treatment of the translation of Weber's texts extremely useful."--Daniel Rodgers, H-Net Reviews "Given its scale, the uniqueness of its insights and the relentless industry displayed, this is a work of scholarship which is most unlikely to be superseded. The study comes at Weber from an unexpected angle and adds much to the understanding of this multifaceted giant founder of sociology."--Kieran Flanagan, Canadian Journal of Sociology "[A] readable intellectual biography of a major work in social science as well as a fascinating discussion of the politics and personalities behind what seems ... an inevitable and unalterable stand alone work. Those unfamiliar with Weber may flounder at first, but the anecdotes about the various people and places should hold the reader until the rhythm of the work becomes comfortable and the ideas fall into place. A well developed and insightful presentation should maintain Scaff's status as a leading Weber scholar."--John Barnhill, 49th Parallel "[T]his is an extraordinary work of dedicated research, performed by a scholar who came to the task with genuine Weberian instincts. Scaff treats his subject with an empathy, sobriety and fairness that are a model to social and political scientists. Admittedly, not many in our ranks could approach Weber's heights of scholarly innovation, because, as Scaff quietly reminds us, he saw further and deeper into American society than most native born or foreign researchers. Max Weber in America is a tribute to a scholar who built his social theory on scientific notions of objectivity and moral impulses of decency."--Irving Louis Horowitz, European Legacy