>>> kwalker2 at gte.net 12/06/00 01:24PM >>>
Weber grinds one axe throughout his work: the pattern of relations among the various factors is absolutely crucial in terms of their effect on economic rationalization. Indeed, if Weber is to be faulted, he ought to be faulted, as Bhaskar complains, for advancing a theory of social change in which change is extrinsically accidental: for Weber, a certain confluence of conditions leads to a development and a change in any one factor is enough for history to have moved in a completely different direction. There was no inevitability to the emergence of rationalized capitalism in the West. Instead, large-scale rationalized capitalism was the result of a series of complexes of conditions--intermediate, background, and ultimate conditions--which had to occur together. As I suggested, Bhaskar complains that social change, for Weber, is based on the concatenation of unique events and complex combinations of conditions and factors that are so rare that they seem accidental, particularly on Weber's account.
((((((((((((
CB: This sounds like what Carrol calls contingency.