Max Weber's Genteel Racism

kelley kwalker2 at gte.net
Thu Dec 7 10:46:27 PST 2000


At 11:34 AM 12/7/00 -0500, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>At 08:00 AM 12/7/00 -0500, Michael wrote:
> >
> >Perhaps. The original question was whether or not he was a racist. And
> >I'm arguing that no, theoretically he was not.
> >
>
>
>But that question is irrelevant, at least outside cultish grouplets.

not really. yoshie wasn't just claiming that W had ethnocentric/eurocentric stereotypes but, rather, that his work was premised on, according to yoshie, a claim that europeans were rational while others were not. of course, the point is that weber doesn't use rational to describe europe and irrational to describe others. yoshie's rhetorical trick, based on secondary readings and lack of firsthand knowledge, is to use rationality as if weber used it as the opposite of irrationality (in the way we mean that term today and in english). perhaps yoshie could tell us what she means by rationality/irrationality and where she finds evidence that weber said, in yoshie's words, that the west was "rational" & the latter (non-west) "irrational" or "less rational"". she might conclude by telling us about weber's uses of "ideal types" and the relationship between conceptual ideal-types such as rationality and the empirical world.

kelley



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