《Max Weber - Remarks On Technology And Culture (2016 Theory》.pdf

Remarks on Technology and Culture Max Weber Editor’s Note: From 19 October to 22 October 1910, Max Weber, Alfred Weber, Georg Simmel, Ferdinand Toennies, Ernst Troeltsch and various other scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds met in Frankfurt- am-Main for the first meeting of the Deutsche Soziologische Gesellschaft (German Sociological Society). The following commentary was made by Max Weber on the second day of the conference in reply to Werner Sombart’s lecture on ‘Technik und Kultur’ (Technology and Culture). Weber commented on several other papers at the conference as well, most of which have now been translated into English: on the concept of race (Weber, 1971 [1910], 1973b [1910]), Christian-Stoic conceptions of natural law (1973a [1910]), and law and science (untranslated). He also presented a ‘Business Report’ where he outlined the tasks of the Society as a whole and proposed collaborative sociological studies of the press (1976b [1910], 1998 [1909–10]), voluntary associations and the selection of professions (2002 [1910]). Frustrated with internal disputes and inaction among Society members, and with difficulties in funding the new organization, the follow- ing year he resigned from his executive position as treasurer and publi- cations editor, and after the 1912 meetings in Berlin he withdrew entirely from any further participation in what he called ‘this salon des refusés’ (Weber, 1994: 656). Nevertheless, this first meeting was certainly a major episode in Weber’s career, and in many ways prefigures the diversity of topics and conflicting approaches to sociology that have often characterized the discipline ever since. Sombart’s lecture sketched a remarkably wide-ranging survey of the influential and indispensable part played by p