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Max Weber (1925)The Distribution of Power within the Political Community: Class, Status, Party 11From the early-capitalist Protestant ethic to late-capitalist Austerity Austerity web definitionsthe trait of great self-denial (especially refraining from worldly pleasures) wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwnsevere simplicitysaving; frugality (austere) ascetic: practicing great self-denial; "Be systematically ascetic...do...something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it"- William James; "a desert nomad's austere life wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwnIn economics, austerity is when a government reduces its spending and/or increases user fees and taxes to pay back creditors. Austerity is usually required when a government's fiscal deficit spending is believed to be unsustainable. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austerity

2Disenchantment of the worldWhile rationalization may breed greater efficiency in obtaining designated ends, it also leads to disenchantment, where there are no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play, but rather that one can, in principle, master all things by calculation. (159)3Webers four types of social actionNonrationalRationalIndividualCollectiveACT IONORDERAffective action

Traditional action

Value-rational action

Instrumental-rational action4Verstehen: interpretive understandingWeber defined sociology as a science which attempts the interpretive understanding of social action in order thereby to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effect

Unlike Marx and Durkheim, who sought to uncover universal laws applicable to all societies, Weber attends to the production of meaningful behavior as it is grounded within a specific historical contextseeks to understand the culturally-patterned states of mind or motivations that guide individuals behavior5Ideal typeThe ideal type is analytical construct, a means to do social researchA tool that aids description and explanationIdeal type is derived from empirical observation, but its an abstraction The combination of elements which although found in reality, are rarely found in this specific form It's not "ideal" in the normative sense, but in the sense that this combination of elements is not found in reality in this pure form e.g., an ideal type of "criminal, monopoly, or plutocracy

6Ideal types of social action traditional: actions controlled by tradition or deeply rooted habits, "the way it's always been done"affective: actions determined by the actor's specific affections and emotional statevalue-rational: actions that are determined by a conscious belief in the inherent ethical, esthetic, religious, etc. value of a type of behavior, regardless of its effectsinstrumental-rational: actions that are carried out to achieve a certain goal; the actor calculates which actions will lead in the best and most effective manner to the goal that's been set

7Class is conceptualized in different waysThe practice of people locatingthemselveswithin a class structure rather than being assigned to classes based on particular relations or attributes, such as wealth or occupation is often called subjective class identification Survey methods typically rely on this conceptualization of classMarx based his concept of class on the social relations of production, property ownership Webers conceptualization is based more broadly on market situation8Fewer Americans identify as middle class9

According to a recent nationally representative Pew Research Center/USA TODAY survey of 1,504 adults conducted Jan. 15-19, 2014 the share of Americans who identify with the middle class has never been lower, dropping to 44% from 53% in 2008 during the first months of the Great Recession.http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/27/despite-recovery-fewer-americans-identify-as-middle-class/9Class, status and partyClasses, status groups, and parties are phenomena of the distribution of power within a communitypower: the chance of a man or of a number of men to realize their own will in a social action even against the resistance of others

10A. Economically determined power and the status orderThe structure of every legal order directly influences the distribution of power, economic or otherwise, within its respective community

Economically conditioned power is not identical with power as suchEconomic power may be the result of power on other groundsPeople do not strive for power only to enrich economically Power may be valued for its own sakeStriving for power often is conditioned by social honor, but not all power entails social honor, e.g., the typical American Boss, the typical big speculator11B. Determination of class situation by market situationClass is economically determined but refers broadly to market situationProperty and lack of property is the basic divisionProperty owners divide into: rentiers and entrepreneursrentier: an archaic word for asset owners or creditors, i.e., individuals who gain income from assets (interest, rent, dividends, or capital gains) rather than laborPropertyless divide into: unskilled workers, skilled laborers, professionals, etc.Class refers to "similarity of life chances" as determined by "economic interests in the possession of goods and opportunities for income" under the conditions of the commodity or labor markets 12C. Social action flowing from class interestThe emergence of an association or even of mere social action from a common class situation is by no means a universal phenomenonOften merely amorphous social action emerges (e.g., grumbling)

For class action, the contrast of life chances must be distinctly recognizable and seen as resulting from either the given distribution of property (seen in urban centers of Antiquity and the Middle Ages) or the structure of the concrete economic order (seen in the class situation of the modern proletariat)13D. Types of class struggleA class does not in itself constitute a groupSocial action that brings forth class situations is not basically action among members of the identical class; it is an action among members of different classesWeber described the changing nature of class struggle through the late 19th century as shifting from the issue of credit, to struggles in the commodity market (exchange) to wage disputes on the labor market (production), and claimed Today the central issue is the determination of the price of labor.What about 2014?14Market situation: the rise of creditorsThe creditor-debtor relation becomes the basis of class situations first in the cities where credit markets are located and concentrated in the hands of a plutocracy. Therewith, class struggles begin. (194)Some claim such a situation exists today: Wage conflict was the great strife of the industrial era, but the struggle over debt is shaping up to be the frontline conflict of the years to come. Not because wage conflict is over (it never will be) but because debts, for most people, are the wages of the future, to which creditors lay claim far in advance. Each new surrender of a part of our lives to private debt-financing further consumes the fruit of labor we have not yet performed, in the form of compensation we have not yet earned. That is why, to put it bluntly, many household debts are a thinly disguised form of wage theft. (Andrew Ross, Guardian, 3/4/2014)15The latest Quarterly Release on Household Debt and Creditfrom the Federal Reserve shows 2 notable trends: 1) the amount of consumer debt is declining, but delinquencyrates are stabilizing above what they were pre-crisis; 2) the number of people subject to 3rd party collections has doubled since 2000. Ten years ago, 1 in 14 Americans were pursued by debt collectors. Today its 1 in 7.

16E. Status honorStatus situation is determined by social estimation of honor, which may be connected with any quality shared by a plurality and, of course, it can be connected to a class situation In contrast to classes status groups are usually groups but are often amorphousClass distinctions are linked in varied ways with status distinctionsStatus is stratification according to principles of consumption of goods and services, i.e., "lifestyle"17https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb0L3KH6YGY17F. Ethnic segregation and casteStatus groups can evolve into closed castes Status distinctions are then guaranteed not merely by conventions and laws, but also by religious sanctionsthis generally happens only when underlying differences are said to be "ethnic"Ethnic segregation grown into a caste transforms the horizontal and unconnected coexistences of ethnically segregated groups into a vertical social system of domination and subordinationEthnic communities are based on a belief of commonality rather than any objective racial differencesThe relationship between ethnicity/race and social status is variable18G. Status privilegesStratification by status goes hand in hand with a monopolization of ideal and material goods or opportunitiesMaterial monopolies provide the most effective motives for the exclusiveness of a statusPhysical labor generally disqualifies one from membership in the most privileged status groups Weber: This disqualification is now setting in in America against the old tradition of esteem for labor. Often economic pursuits, especially entrepreneurial activity, is seen as a debasement of status19H. Economic conditions and effects of stratification"With some oversimplification, one might say that classes are stratified according to their relations to the production and acquisition of goods; whereas status groups are stratified according to the principles of their consumption of goods as represented by special styles of life." (200)The general effect of the status order is "the hindrance of the free development of the market""Therefore, everywhere some status groups and usually the most influential, consider almost any kind of overt participation in economic acquisition as absolutely stigmatizing" e.g., the parvenu or nouveau riche

20I. PartiesWhereas classes are within economic order, status groups within the social order, "parties reside in the sphere of power"Compared with class and status groups, party-oriented social action always involves association directed toward a goal, which is striven for in a planned mannerThe goal may be a cause or may be personalParties are only possible in groups with an associated character, i.e., some form of rational order and a staff of persons available to enforce itParties need not be based on purely class nor statusParties differ according to whether or not the community is stratified by status or by class, above all, according to the structure of authority

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