Max Weber and Anthropology

Abstract:In spite of the obvious presence of anthropological analysis in his writings, Weber is seldom considered as an anthropologist. We think however that an ‘anthropological moment’ is indeed one of the components of his work: a significant part of his writings deals with so-called ‘archaic’ societies. In the last analysis, his scientific project—the formation of the Western modern rationality—only becomes meaningful through the gap with ‘primitive’ societies. Weber is therefore an anthropologist, in so far as he wants to explain pre-modern societies, and from this analysis he wants to follow concepts that are useful to understand modernity. Anthropology and sociology are inseparable from a historical approach. What distinguishes them is less the method or the objects—religion, social norms, family—than the kind of society/community studied.