Reading Max Weber's Sociology of Law serves both as an introduction and as a distillation of more than thirty years of reading and reflection on Weber's scholarship. It provides a solid and comprehensive introduction to Weber and sets out his main concepts. Drawing on recent research in the history of law, this book also presents and critiques the process by which the law was rationalized and which Weber divided into four ideal-typical stages of development. Hubert Treiber provides commentary in a manner informed both historically and sociologically. The book explores Weber's concepts in relation to the creation of laws between secular the religious powers. The book goes on to examine the codifications that were undertaken by Prussian absolutism and Napoleon in the Code Civil. It further covers Weber's thoughts on antiformal legal tendencies, issues that are still prevalent in law today. This text is no mere reiteration of Weber's concepts. The volume contextualizes Weber's work in the light of current research, setting out to amend misinterpretations and misunderstandings that have prevailed from Weber's original texts. Treiber's introduction is much more than a simple guide through a complicated text. It is an important work in its own right and critical for any student of the sociology of law.

Max Weber's Sociology of Law evaluates the conditions in which modern legal systems were developed. Using recent research alongside history, this book provides a skilful overview of Weber's theories, layered with analysis and critique. A leading expert on Weber, Treiber provides invaluable insights as he dissects and expands on Weber's theories.

A core text for the Law and Society or Sociology of Law course offered in Sociology, Criminal Justice, Political Science, and Schools of Law. * John Sutton offers an explicitly analytical perspective to the subject - how does law change? What makes law more or less effective in solving social problems? What do lawyers do? * Chapter 1 contrasts normative and sociological perspectives on law, and presents a brief primer on the logic of research and inference as it is applied to law related issues. * Theories of legal change are discussed within a common conceptual framework that highlights the explantory strengths and weaknesses of different arguments. * Discussions of "law in action" are explicitly comparative, applying a consistent model to explain the variable outcomes of civil rights legislation. * Many concrete, in-depth examples throughout the chapters.

This book presents a clear and precise account of the structure and content of Max Weber's sociology of law: situating its methodological and epistemological specificity in relation to other approaches to the sociology of law; as well as offering a critical evaluation of Weber's usefulness for contemporary socio-legal research. The book is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the methodological foundations of Weber's sociology of law. The second analyses the central theme of this sociology, the rationalisation of law, from the perspective of its internal logical coherence, its empirical validity, and finally its legitimacy. The third part questions the present-day relevance of the Weberian sociology of law for socio-legal research, notably with regard to legal pluralism. Max Weber, it is demonstrated, is not merely a 'founding father' of the sociology of law; rather, his methodology, concepts, and empirical analyses remain highly useful to the further development of work in this area.

While most people are familiar with The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, few know that during the last decade of his life Max Weber (1864-1920) also tried to develop a new way of analyzing economic phenomena, which he termed "economic sociology." Indeed, this effort occupies the central place in Weber's thought during the years just before his death. Richard Swedberg here offers a critical presentation and the first major study of this fascinating part of Weber's work. This book shows how Weber laid a solid theoretical foundation for economic sociology and developed a series of new and highly evocative concepts. He not only investigated economic phenomena but also linked them clearly with political, legal, and religious phenomena. Swedberg also demonstrates that Weber's approach to economic sociology addresses a major problem that has haunted economic analysis since the nineteenth century: how to effectively unite an interest-driven type of analysis (popular with economists) with a social one (of course preferred by sociologists). Exploring Weber's views of the economy and how he viewed its relationship to politics, law, and religion, Swedberg furthermore discusses similarities and differences between Weber's economic sociology and present-day thinking on the same topic. In addition, the author shows how economic sociology has recently gained greater credibility as economists and sociologists have begun to collaborate in studying problems of organizations, political structures, social problems, and economic culture more generally. Swedberg's book will be sure to further this new cooperation.

Max Weber is indubitably one of the very greatest figures in the history of the social sciences, the source of seminal concepts like 'the Protestant Ethic', 'charisma' and the idea of historical processes of 'rationalization'. But, like his great forebears Adam Smith and Karl Marx, Weber's work always resists easy categorisation. Prominent as a founding father of sociology, Weber has been a major influence in the study of ancient history, religion, economics, law and, more recently, cultural studies. This Cambridge Companion provides an authoritative introduction to the major facets of his thought, including several (like industrial psychology) which have hitherto been neglected. A distinguished international team of contributors examines some of the major controversies that have erupted over Weber's specialized work, and shows how the issues have developed since he wrote. The articles demonstrate Weber's impact on a variety of research areas.

This book provides an indispensable introduction to Weber's Economy and Society, and should be mandatory reading for social scientists who are interested in Weber. The various contributions to this volume, all written by important Weberian scholars, present the culmination of decades of debates about Weber's various concepts and theories. They are sure guides in the maze of conflicting interpretations, and draw out the implications of Weber's sociology for understanding social change in the 21st century. Gil Eyal, Columbia University Many will value this as the best collection of essays on Max Weber in the English language. It surpasses prior studies in using Weber and the world of his endeavors as entry points into the central issues of social science today. Richard Biernacki, University of California, San Diego"