Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T04:07:36.345Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Religion, Political Culture, and the Weberian Tradition

Review products

SmithDonald Eugene, Religion and Political Development. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970, 298 pp., $3.95 paper.
RodinsonMaxime, Islam and Capitalism. Translated by PearceBrian. New York: Pantheon, 1974, 309 pp., $10.00.
PadenJohn N., Religion and Political Culture in Kano. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973, 461 pp., $16.50.

Show more reviewed productsShow more reviewed products

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

David D. Laitin
David D. Laitin
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
Get access

Abstract

A summary and reinterpretation of Weber's Sociology of Religion and The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism provides the framework within which four contemporary studies in political culture, which purport to be in the Weberian tradition, are examined. The framework distinguishes three levels of analysis in which “religion,” as a social fact, can be defined. The social, economic, or political consequences that can be attributed to religious adherence are different depending on the doctrine of the charismatic founder, the practical religion, or the practical religion of the converted. The author suggests a new, perhaps more fruitful agenda for research based on the methodological arguments of the paper.

Type
Review Articles
Information
World Politics , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , July 1978 , pp. 563 - 592
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1978

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The quotation from Montesquieu is from The Spirit of the Laws, Bk. XXIV, sec. 3. For de Tocqueville, see Democracy in America, I, chap. 2. The quotation from Hegel is from The Philosophy of History (New York: Dover 1956), 96. For the modern tradition, see Almond, , “Comparative Political Systems,” Journal of Politics, XVIII (August 1956)Google Scholar; Almond, and Verba, , The Civic Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1963);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Pye, and Verba, , Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1965).CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Eckstein, Harry, Division and Cohesion in Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1966).Google Scholar

2 Arguments that use norms and values as independent variables to explain the possibility of stable democracy are central in the subdiscipline of political culture. I am in fundamental agreement with the three major critiques of this approach. See Barry, Brian, Sociologists, Economists and Democracy (London: Macmillan 1970);Google ScholarPateman, Carole, “Political Culture, Political Structure and Political Change,” British journal of Political Science, 1 (July 1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Rogowski, Ronald, Rational Legitimacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1974).Google Scholar These critics emphasize the circular nature of the arguments provided by Parsons, Almond, Verba, and Eckstein, based on the assertion that in their research designs, there is no sure way of discerning whether political norms influence and direct political structures or vice versa. I have proposed to reformulate cultural explanations of politics in an attempt to overcome the points made by the critics; see Laitin, , Politics, Language, and Thought: The Somali Experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1977)Google Scholar, chaps. 6–8.

3 Weber, , The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans, by Talcott Parsons (New York: Scribner's Sons 1958)Google Scholar [hereafter cited as PE]. To substantiate my point that the argument requires re-examination, see Benjamin Nelson, “Weber's Protestant Ethic: Its Origins, Wanderings, and Foreseeable Futures,” in Glock, Charles Y. and Hammond, Phillip E., Beyond the Classics? Essays in the Scientific Study of Religion (New York: Harper and Row 1973)Google Scholar. Even where scholars have properly understood Weber's argument, there is considerable debate among sociologists and economists over whether that argument is correct. See, e.g., Swanson, Guy, Religion and Regime(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 1967);Google ScholarGreeley, Andrew, “The Protestant Ethic: Time for a Moratorium,” Sociological Analysis XXV (Spring 1964)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Eisenstadt, S. N., The Protestant Ethic and Modernization: A Comparative View (New York: Basic Books 1968).Google Scholar The present essay is not concerned with the question of the explanatory power of Weber's central hypotheses, but rather with the implications of his methodological approach for future theorizing. On this point, see S. N. Eisenstadt, “The Implications of Weber's Sociology of Religion,” in Glock and Hammond, p. 148.

4 Weber, Max, Sociology of Religion, trans, by Ephraim Fischoff (Boston: Beacon 1963)Google Scholar [hereafter cited as SR].

5 The vagueness of “supports” is intentional, reflecting Weber's lack of precision in stating the nature of the linkage. An important inroad to our understanding of the specific relationship, in political terms, of the Puritan message and actual behavior has been made by Seaver, Paul, The Puritan Lectureships: The Politics of Religious Dissent 1560–1662 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press 1970)Google Scholar. The politics of determining the message of the sermons engaged the Puritans and Anglicans in a pitched battle for a century after the accession of Elizabeth.

6 Weber was quite explicit on the issue of membership in a sect and how it enables one to engage in business and raise capital over a far larger market than personal ties would allow; see “The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism,” in Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. Wright, eds., From Max Weber (New York: Oxford 1946)Google Scholar, esp. 303–05. He also discussed the implications of these ties for the rationalization of large-scale markets.

7 See The Protestant Ethic, p. 234, where Weber argued that the Catholic doctrine of salvation involves an accounting with careful balances. Shouldn't this support economic rationalism? Or see pp. 162 and 265 for a lame distinction between Calvinist calling and Hindu caste.

8 See Banton, Michael, ed., Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion (London: Tavistock 1966)Google Scholar, esp. on the differences between Melford Spiro and Geertz, Clifford. Geertz's essay, “Religion as a Cultural System,” is reprinted in his Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books 1973)Google Scholar. Those scholars who focus on the religious experience itself, irrespective of the effect of the symbolic meanings of the rituals for other cultural systems, are engaged in a different enterprise from mine—that of self-consciously maintaining a religious as opposed to a sociological perspective. For the implications of the use of the religious perspective, see the above essay, esp. fn. 35.

9 Pye, Lucian, Aspects of Political Development (Boston: Little, Brown 1966)Google Scholar, chap. 2.

10 Pye, Lucian, Politics, Personality, and Nation Building (New Haven: Yale University Press 1962)Google Scholar.

11 This argument is not to be associated with the one which holds that capitalism yields underdevelopment.

12 See Peel, J.D.Y., Aladura: A Religious Movement Among the Yoruba (London: Oxford 1968)Google Scholar, esp. chap. 6, for a good account of how the sociological meaning of a religious movement at the time of its founding continues to portray the same message for more than a generation, even though the sociological conditions have changed. It is quite suggestive for studies of religious movements which are more politically focused.

13 Besides the book under review, see Geertz, , Peddlers and Princes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1963)Google Scholar for another excellent use of the comparative method.

14 See, for example, Trimingham, J. Spencer, Islam in East Africa (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1964), 58Google Scholar: “The Somali group conversion changed the religious elements of their life and, reinforcing their national consciousness, gave them a different outlook but scarcely influenced their social institutions.” In The Influence of Islam upon Africa (London: Longmans 1969)Google Scholar, however, Trimingham argues that although changes due to Islamic conversion often seem superficial, “in time Islam revolutionizes the inner man” (p. 47). These two statements are not necessarily inconsistent; they reflect a pattern common to essays on comparative religion. They find, as Geertz did, that local cultures are tenacious; but they also recognize, as Smith did, that world religions are powerful forces. My point is that few people have tried to weigh the impact of world religions on local cultures in a systematic manner.