Weber and Durkheim

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how Max Weber, the first analyst of modern bureaucracy, the Industrial Revolution and the technical age, despaired of what he called the iron cage of rationality. It also looks at how the student of ancient humanity, Emile Durkheim, bemoaned the condition of modern angst or estrangement from traditional, more communal ways of life. It examines how these two men both feared the tendency of modern life to curtail the better aspects of human nature, rather than to reinforce what each saw as the essential purpose of humankind.

From the Paper:

"Emile Durkheim, writing somewhat later than Weber, also speculated upon the emotional and moral impact upon human life of modernity. Durkheim also examined the daily life of persons living in a modern and industrial bureaucratic state and working for the supposedly rational administrative and economic systems created by capitalism. Durkheim called the unfortunate mental state produced by modernity "anomie." Anomie is best expressed as the state of alienation felt by the modern urbanite, dwelling far away from traditional family structures and religious rituals. "Anomie is impossible whenever interdependent organs are sufficiently in contact and sufficiently extensive. If they are close to each other, they are readily aware, in every situation, of the need which they have of one another, and consequently they have an active and permanent feeling of mutual dependence." (Durkheim, p.184, cited by Dunman, 1996)"

Sample of Sources Used:

• Dunman, Joe. "The Emile Durkheim Archive." Created 1996. Updated 2003. [12 Jul 2006] http://durkheim.itgo.com/anomie.html
• Elwell, Frank. "Max Weber's Home Page." 1996. [12 Jul 2006] http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/Theorists/Weber/Whome.htm
• Giddens, Anthon. Emile Durkheim; Selected Writings. London: Cambridge University Press, 1972.
• Weber, Max. Max Weber on Law in Economy and Society. Max Rheinstein, Editor. Translated by Edward Shils and Max Rheinstein. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1921, reprinted 1968.

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