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Max Weber as Social Theorist

While Max Weber is commonly treated as a social theorist or a theorist of social stratification, relatively little attention has been paid to the theory of the social that is developed in his work. In view of this, this article turns to Weber’s most explicit theorization of the social: the section of Economy and Society entitled ‘Class, Status, Party’. In this work, Weber treats class as a non-social form, in contrast to status groups and parties, which are seen to emerge through communal or associative modes of socialization. Given this, it is argued that it is a mistake to reduce ‘Class, Status, Party’ to an argument about social stratification. Rather, this work is a general theorization of the social in relation to the spheres of economics and politics. Read in this way, Weber’s work is presented as a possible resource for rejuvenating social theory that goes beyond study of class or ‘societal’ structures, and which privileges analysis of social relationships (including those that go beyond nation-state boundaries) in the competition for social and political power.