11 - The Use and Abuse of Textual Data

Summary

Since its publication in 1904-1905 as a two-part article, Max Weber's thesis on the Protestant ethic has been the focus of the longest running debate in modern social science. The first round of exchanges between Weber and his principal critics, H. Karl Fischer and Felix Rachfahl, lasted until 1910. Weber subsequently incorporated these exchanges in revisions to The Protestant Ethic, responding as well to criticism from Sombart's Der Bourgeois (1913), Brentano's Die Anfdnge des modernen Kapitalismus (1916), and other writings. Since Weber's death, every aspect of his thesis has been attacked by torrents of criticism from Andre Bieler, C. H. George and K. George, Gabriel Kolko, Herbert Liithy, Alan Macfarlane, Stephen Ozment, H. M. Robertson, Kurt Samuelsson, H. R. Trevor-Roper, Immanuel Wallerstein, and others who have not displayed much interest in methodological issues pertaining to interpretative procedures in social science. This development is doubly unfortunate, for Weber wrote extensively on these methodological issues. He began writing The Protestant Ethic in 1903 immediately upon completing part of the methodological critique that would be published as Roscher and Knies; moreover, The Protestant Ethic relies on a carefully delineated interpretative procedure that, as Weber admitted, is susceptible to misunderstanding. Benighted efforts to “test” a “Protestant ethic thesis” by analyzing correlations between religious affiliation and economic status represent the more extreme misunderstandings that are possible.