494134

2013
JCS14410.1177/1468795X13494134Journal of Classical SociologyBanton

Article

Journal of Classical Sociology

Updating Max Weber on the

2014, Vol. 14(4) 325­–340
© The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/1468795X13494134
national jcs.sagepub.com

Michael Banton
University of Bristol, UK

Abstract
Weber said that his work would soon be superseded. While his 1911 drafts about race, ethnic
community, and nation have recently attracted attention, his concern for the growth of objective
knowledge has not been followed through. Weber maintained that a shared belief in common
descent does not of itself constitute a group, but he failed (i) to develop his distinction between
the concepts of the historian and the sociologist; (ii) to analyse the ways in which physical
and cultural differences were used to mobilize for collective action; and (iii), while writing
about social closure, to examine the opening of previously closed relationships. Contemporary
social scientists working in this field may cite Weber as an authority, yet they have not built
systematically upon the advances he pioneered. The possible future development of his line of
analysis is sketched.

Keywords
Closure, collective action, critical rationalism, emic/etic, ethnicity, nation, race, trade-off, Weber

Most sociologists can recall Weber’s declaration that, ‘[i]n science, each of us knows that
what he has accomplished will be antiquated in ten, twenty, fifty years. That is the fate
to which science is subjected; it is the very meaning of scientific work …’ (1947: 138,
emphasis in original). The meaning of scientific work can be exemplified by reference to
the studies of Gregor Mendel in crossing varieties of the garden pea. In tracing the inher-
itance of their seed colour and other characters, Mendel made a signal contribution to the
growth of knowledge about biological inheritance. That his work is now antiquated does
not detract from the honour due to him.
Knowledge in genetics has attained a form in which new research problems, new
explananda, are continuously generated by new findings. By contrast, the growth of

Corresponding author:
Michael Banton, Fairways, Luxted Road, Downe, Orpington BR6 7JT, UK.
Email: michael@banton.demon.co.uk

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326 Journal of Classical Sociology 14(4)

knowledge in sociology is hampered by pressure to serve the ends of social policy and
by a widespread assumption that research should seek understanding. Mendel sought
explanation.
Sociologists have not asked how Max Weber’s work on the racial, the ethnic, and the
national might have been rendered antiquated. Instead, many have explored the internal
consistency of Weber’s writings as a distinctive corpus and have related it to the times in
which he lived. They have not examined with sufficient care the material he left about
ethnic groups or considered how it might be carried forward.
To place Weber’s writing within a growth-of-knowledge perspective, it is necessary
first to explain that after his death in 1920, some papers were found in his desk. They
have been described as ‘a heap of manuscripts, many of them incomplete, mostly with-
out definite titles or with no titles at all’ (Mommsen, 2005: 71). After Weber’s death
these papers were published by his widow, Marianne Weber, as Part Two of the volume
Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft; this has been known in English since 1968 as Economy
and Society. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft was a noble lie; it was a lie because it was too
heterogeneous a collection to be a proper book, but a noble one because it made avail-
able so much valuable scholarship. Members of the International Sociological
Association voted it the most influential sociological work of the twentieth century
(Camic et al., 2005: 1).
Among these papers were two sets of pages apparently written in 1911, without titles,
that were presented as a chapter, ‘Ethnische Gemeinsamkeitsbeziehungen’, in Part Two
of the volume. To consider their place in the growth of sociological knowledge, the ways
in which they constituted an advance upon the ideas prevailing at the time should be
taken into account. Then they should be related to the academic context of their publica-
tion ten years later in 1921. Though sociologists of racial and ethnic relations paid little
attention to these pages until the English translation appeared in 1968, they are now
shown great respect. Their place in the contemporary understanding of racial and ethnic
relations should therefore be assessed.

Race in history
In various European languages, starting in the fifteenth century, the word race was used
in an ordinary-language sense in ways that emphasized its vertical dimension of meaning
(for example, the ‘the race of Abraham’). From the end of the eighteenth century, the
word race was additionally used in ways that emphasized its horizontal dimension of
meaning, notably as a classificatory category of a pre-Darwinian kind. This gave rise to
the doctrine of racial typology.1
In the shadow of Darwin’s discovery of the theory of natural selection, scholars spec-
ulated about the significance of racial differences in human affairs. They assumed that
the unit of selection was the species, and that the social categories identified as races
corresponded to species; this was the origin of what came to be called Social Darwinism.
It was exemplified in Ludwik Gumplowicz’s Der Rassenkampf of 1883, Georges Vacher
de Lapouge’s Les Selections Sociales of 1896, and James Bryce’s 1902 lecture on The
Relations of the Advanced and Backward Races of Mankind.

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Banton 327

The belated discovery of Mendel’s research reinforced what biologists were learning
about the mode of inheritance; this led to the establishment of genetics as a new branch
of science. In The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (1930), R.A. Fisher demon-
strated that it was the gene, and not the species, that was the unit of selection. That in turn
led to new constructs, such as DNA, RDA, and the genetic code. The new kinds of theory
solved problems in both botany and zoology, so the map of learning was rearranged. This
revolution in thought took the better part of a century, and in the meantime much hap-
pened in the wider world.

Weber in 1911
At sociological congresses in 1910 and 1912, Weber criticized the then prevailing racial
theory (Radkau, 2009: 339–341), warning that there was no evidence of ‘the decisive
importance of completely specific hereditary qualities for particular concrete social phe-
nomena’. Though strongly nationalist in his private life, Weber maintained that any
German nation for which it was worth living had to be based on German culture, not on
the idea of some Teutonic race. It was about this time that Weber penned his pages on the
racial, the ethnic, and the national.
Their sociological context is to be found in Weber’s attempt to account for
Gemeinschaft. What caused humans to identify with one another? Were certain social
formations natural in origin? What accounted for those that were social in origin? Weber
was exploring the possibility that the ethnic community and the nation might be two of a
set of six formations to be found in many kinds of society. The sequence ran: household,
neighbourhood, kin group, ethnic group, religious group, and then political group. Weber
seems to have been asking to what extent the differences between these kinds of group
had a basis in nature.
The original pages have now been published in the Gesamtausgabe (the collected
works, Weber, 2001: A 168–190). There the editors have given them the title
‘Ethnische Gemeinschaften’. They begin with a passage that asks what might be
meant by ‘membership of a race’, and offer the answer that common descent only
expresses itself in the form of a ‘community’ when the individuals concerned have a
subjective feeling of their common identity supported by social relations between
them. This differentiated Weber’s views from the belief of the Social Darwinists that
inherited qualities of which individuals were not conscious could make them behave
distinctively.
Was there anything distinctive about these social relations? Weber referred to the
monopolization of power by whites in the Southern states of the USA. Then he general-
ized the observation by noting ‘[a]ny cultural trait can serve as a starting point for the
familiar tendency to monopolistic closure’.2 He went on to assert that while almost any
kind of similarity or opposition in habit and way of life could generate a belief that the
sentiment of community sprang from some racial affinity, that belief might have no
objective foundation. Its origins might lie elsewhere. The rest of the paragraph then out-
lines an alternative in the form of four important and original propositions. They are
quoted here from Runciman’s Selections (1978: 364) because its translation of them is
better than that in the Economy and Society volume (1968: 389).

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328 Journal of Classical Sociology 14(4)

They read as follows:

1. ‘We shall use the expression “ethnic” groups to describe human groups (other
than kinship groups) which cherish a belief in their common origins of such a
kind that it provides a basis for the creation of a community.’
2. ‘The “ethnic” group differs from the “kinship group” in that it is constituted sim-
ply by the belief in a common identity, whereas a kinship group is a genuine
“community”, characterized by genuinely communal activity.’
3. ‘By contrast, the sense of a common ethnic identity (as that expression is being
used here) is not itself a community, but only something which makes it easier to
form one.’
4. ‘Conversely, it is often the political community, even when formed in a highly
artificial way, which gives rise to beliefs in ethnic identity … .’

The translation in Economy and Society uses the potentially misleading expression ‘eth-
nic membership’, which distracts attention from questions about the nature of the units
of which people were members. Weber focused on the sense of community with certain
other persons who might be simply a set of individuals; whether they used this sentiment
to change themselves from a category into a social group, and make ‘membership’ pos-
sible, was a further question.
On another page in the original, Weber stated: ‘The concept of “nationality” shares with
that of the Volk (or “people”) – in the “ethnic” sense – the vague connotation that whatever
is felt to be distinctively common must derive from common descent’ (1968: 395).
Two features of this outline invite discussion. One is the nature of community and its
differentiation from association. The other feature is the way in which a sense of com-
mon identity can stimulate collective behaviour. If ‘[a]ny cultural trait can serve as a
starting point for the familiar tendency to monopolistic closure’, what determines which
of several possible traits is chosen as a starting point? This question will be addressed in
the next section.
Where did Weber get his ideas about ethnic community? Why did he try (and fail!) to
distinguish the ‘ethnic’ from the ‘national’? That he felt unsure about these constructs
can be seen from his liberal use of quotation marks. He may indeed have been the first
writer to wonder about how an ethnic minority differed from a national minority, or how
‘ethnic origin’ differed from ‘national origin’ (these two expressions are now used in
international law and the laws of many states; they have the virtue of precision because
an individual may wish to acknowledge more than one ethnic origin). The answer may
lie in Weber’s four-month visit in 1904 to the United States. There he will have met many
German-Americans, so he probably had them in mind when he wrote about how ‘colo-
nists’ spiritual ties with their homeland survive’. He seems to have regarded German-
Americans as an ethnic group rather than as a national group because ‘they have become
so thoroughly adapted to their new environment that they themselves would find it intol-
erable to return to their old homes’ (Runciman, 1978: 363).
Later in his notes Weber reviewed shared ethnic origin as a dimension of social life at
the sub-national level more generally. He found it to be associated with a miscellany of
differences, linguistic and religious, with the experience of migration, with membership

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Banton 329

in a political unit like a tribe, with endogamous social circles concerned to defend their
status, differences in clothing, style of housing, food, eating habits, and the division of
labour between the sexes. As if this was not confusing enough already, he added that
‘what matters is precisely those things which may otherwise appear to be of only minor
social importance’ (Runciman, 1978: 366). Weber assumed that a rigorous sociological
analysis would have to distinguish all these factors and assess their differential impact.
This is a muddle. It arose because Weber had begun by looking to see if a single pos-
sible cause – for example, Nationalgefühl, or national feeling – corresponded to a social
formation built from many different elements. He was looking for a one-to-one relation
between a sentiment and a social form. When he found no correspondence, he concluded
that ‘feelings of identity subsumed under the term “national” are not uniform but may
derive from diverse sources’ (1968: 397). Instead of identifying and focusing on an
observation that called for explanation, Weber assumed that a ‘rigorous sociological
analysis’ of ‘“ethnically” determined social action’ (1968: 394) would have to separate
all the factors that could create ethnic attraction and repulsion; were this done, he noted,
‘the collective term “ethnic” would be abandoned’ (1968: 395). It led him to conclude
that the concept of an ethnische Gemeinschaft ‘which dissolves if we define our terms
exactly, corresponds in this regard to one of the most vexing, since emotionally charged
concepts: the nation, as soon as we attempt a sociological definition’ (1968: 395, empha-
sis in original). The word dissolves is a verb in English used to represent the adjective
verflüchtigende or ‘evaporating’, but it is a happy translation because dissolves reflects
Weber’s reasoning, and the mistakes he was making in 1911.
There were two mistakes here. Firstly, the difference between the ethnic and the
national had turned out to be one of circumstance, not of Gefühl. Weber had failed to spot
an intervening variable. Possibly unlike German-born people in Germany’s African colo-
nies, German-Americans constituted an ethnic rather than a national minority because
their intention of remaining in the USA trumped their sense of being German. When, in
1916, the USA declared war on Germany, this issue became critical for them.
Shared ethnic origin can be a dimension of social life at different levels. There is the
continental level, exemplified in the distinction between Europeans and Africans; there
is the state, or national, level; and there is the sub-state level. Shared national origin has
to be analysed in relation to movements seeking the establishment of a state and to the
maintenance of an existing state. At this level the other attributes of which a belief in
shared national origin can serve as a sign are so important that they enforce a stronger
conceptual distinction between state-oriented ethnic action and other ethnic action than
is to be found in Weber’s text.
Secondly, while Weber recognized that the sentiment, the Gefühl, had more influence
in some situations than others, he did not build it into the four propositions noted above.
Many sentiments are associated with relationships, and the same person is involved in
many relationships simultaneously. This may be called multi-dimensionality. Two per-
sons, A and B, may interact as man and woman, or as persons of the same gender. They
can also interact as persons of the same, or different, social status, ethnic origin, citizen-
ship, religious faith, and so on. The number of possible dimensions to their relations is
great indeed. A gender relationship is differentiated from a status relationship or an eth-
nic relationship by the parties’ awareness of norms that define the nature of the

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330 Journal of Classical Sociology 14(4)

relationship. A common ethnic origin may sponsor a norm in one relationship and not in
another.
The communities that are considered relatively cohesive are the communities whose
members relate to one another on a multiplicity of relationships. They are also the com-
munities in which two or more social categories are very closely associated, as Jews and
Sikhs are defined by both ethnic origin and faith. This association of categories is some-
times called inter-sectionality. Its significance explains why it was misleading of the
Economy and Society translation to give prominence to the idea of ‘membership’ in an
ethnic or national group. Real groups (as opposed to categories) are multidimensional.
There are both ethnic and national dimensions to a social relation if there are distinct
ethnic and national norms of behaviour.

Weber in 1920
Had Weber lived longer, he might have been able to locate the issues he addressed in
1911 within a larger scheme; it is improbable that he would have agreed to the publica-
tion of the earlier notes as if they were considered conclusions. There are too many intel-
lectual gaps (Tenbruch, 1999: 135–146).
By 1920, Weber had prepared for publication three chapters setting out his conception
of an interpretive sociology; this was his Kategorienlehre, or doctrine of categories.
They sketched a scheme intended to comprehend all kinds of social action, starting from
the proposition that ‘[a]ction in the sense of subjectively understandable orientation of
behaviour exists only as the behaviour of one or more individual human beings’ (Weber,
1968: c–cii, 13, emphasis in original). Marianne Weber presented the chapters as open-
ing Part One of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Together with her co-editor, Melchior Palyi,
she included, as Part Two, a collection of papers from 1909–1914 under the title ‘The
Economy and Social Orders and Powers’, in the mistaken belief that the two parts
together constituted a comprehensive project of Weber’s.
The Kategorienlehre represented a new departure, inconsistent with the mode of
explanation Weber had employed in his substantive writings on the world religions
(Fulbrook, 1978). Just before his death, he had written to his former pupil Robert
Liefmann, an economist,

If I now happen to be a sociologist according to my appointment papers, then I became one in

order to put an end to the mischievous enterprise which still operates with collectivist concepts
[Kollektivbegriffe]. In other words, sociology, too, can only be practiced by proceeding from
the actions of one or more, few or many individuals.
(Bruun, 1972: 38)

The three chapters on interpretive sociology were a first attempt to put an end to the
mischievous enterprise. They started from `the behaviour of one or more individual
human beings’ instead of from the sources of community. They outlined a bottom-up
sociological theory as an alternative to the top-down theories that shaded into philoso-
phies of history.

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Banton 331

One example of the shift towards individualist explanations was Weber’s presentation
of community and association as characterized by two kinds of relationship. The former
were to be identified by the existence of subjective feelings of belonging together. The
latter were to be identified by the rational adjustment of interests. Weber did not make
this explicit, but he appears to have believed that while a subjective feeling on the part of
individuals creates a social relationship, that relationship also creates the feeling. So
communal and associative feelings were to be seen as the product of different kinds of
relationship. Not only did feelings and relationships act reciprocally, so did interests and
relationships.
An individual might share a belief in a common identity, or a perception of a shared
interest, with persons he or she perceived as being of the same race, ethnic or national
origin, social class, religious faith, gender, and so on, and this might induce the individ-
ual to act together with other persons. Some individuals would find themselves con-
fronted by alternatives. In a given situation, which sense of common identity would be
most important? Could the sense of a personal interest on the part of an individual create
a contrary incentive?
This is complex, and it is unsurprising that Weber did not tease out these elements in
the kinds of situation he analysed. Section 10 of Chapter 1 of Economy and Society, on
‘Open and Closed Relationships’, reverts to his earlier statement that a cultural trait
could serve as a starting point for monopolistic closure. He observes that a social rela-
tionship might be either open or closed to outsiders. The closure of a social relationship
could offer individuals ‘opportunities for the satisfaction of spiritual or material inter-
ests’. Many examples were offered. One of them was the interest of trade union members
in maximizing their bargaining power by restraining ‘competitive struggle within the
group’. By voting for a closed shop, and imposing a rule upon themselves and their fel-
lows, workers could maximize their average earnings – just as the whites had done in the
Southern states of the USA. By contrast, ‘If the participants expect that the admission of
others will lead to an improvement of their situation, an improvement in degree, in kind,
in the security or value of the satisfaction, their interest will be in keeping the relation-
ship open’ (Weber, 1968: 43).
Weber envisaged many ways in which this analysis might be extended, but he paused.
‘All the details must be reserved for later analysis.’ That was never possible. Had he
reworked his 1911 notes about the racial, the ethnic, and the national, he might have
observed that an appeal to presumed biological differences could be a more powerful
ideological rationale for closure than a reference to cultural differences. He might have
linked up this discussion with what he wrote elsewhere about self-interest, and stated
explicitly that the members of any racial, ethnic, or national group will have both shared
interests and individual interests. If the members’ shared interests are strong, they will
benefit from collective action. This is facilitated by closure. The strategy of the Black
Power movement in the USA was one of closure; it strengthened its members’ bargaining
position. An example of how closure can serve ‘spiritual’ interests is provided by the
insistence in Sikh communities that males wear turbans and that both males and females
display other symbols of their religious distinctiveness.
If members’ individual interests gain strength relative to their shared interests, so that
individuals go their own ways, group solidarity will decline. Change will come from the

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332 Journal of Classical Sociology 14(4)

opening of previously closed relationships. A closed social relationship is one in which a

person cannot trade off any of the benefits of that relationship against benefits that might
be obtained from another relationship. Once he or she can trade off such benefits, the
degree of closure will decline. As Weber wrote, closure is relative. The varying social
significance of racial, ethnic, and national characteristics could have been analysed
within a single conceptual framework that would plot the determinants of relative
closure.
Weber had moved on from the position adopted in 1911. There are passages in these
new chapters, and in his essay ‘The “Objectivity” of Knowledge in Social Science and
Social Policy’ (written as an editorial introduction to the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft),
that suggest that he was edging towards the philosophy of critical rationalism later
expounded by Karl Popper. For present purposes, critical rationalism has four prime
characteristics. Firstly, it sees scientific activity as a process leading to the growth of
objective knowledge. Secondly, it maintains that this activity starts from the recognition
of, and the attempt to solve, intellectual problems. Thirdly, it distinguishes two worlds of
knowledge with their accompanying conceptual vocabularies. Fourthly, it employs nom-
inalist rather than essentialist definitions.
The question ‘Is this an original contribution to knowledge?’ sets the academic gold
standard. It assumes that the knowledge in question has an objective character. This is
implied in Weber’s affirmation that his work would become antiquated. It is also evident
from his inelegantly phrased statement that

… a methodologically correct form of proof in the social sciences, if thought to be complete,

has to be recognized as correct even by a Chinaman, or – more precisely – that it must at any
rate strive to reach a goal perhaps not completely attainable for lack of material.

(2004: 365)

If there is objective knowledge in a field of study, it is possible to trace the steps by

which that knowledge has grown, the new ideas, the new techniques, and, of course, the
upsets when one line of explanation is found to be mistaken. It can be instructive to iden-
tify mistakes in reasoning (Banton, 2005).
The researcher’s attention is caught by an observation, or by a finding, that does not
fit comfortably into the existing body of knowledge. It is something that calls for expla-
nation. Weber agreed that the growth of knowledge starts with the identification of a
research problem. His statement that ‘there is no “objective” analysis of “social phenom-
ena” independent of special and “one-sided” perspectives, on the basis of which such
phenomena can be (explicitly or implicitly, consciously or unconsciously) selected as an
object of research’ (Weber, 2004: 365, 374), is not a statement about the nature of the
knowledge won by research. It is his recognition that subjective factors influence the
selection of a problem to study.
Weber aligned himself with the critical rationalist outlook in at least two other places.
In dispute with the Social Darwinists he objected to any attempt ‘to demarcate domains
and provinces of knowledge a priori, before the relevant knowledge exists, and to say
that one thing belongs to our science and another does not’ (Runciman, 1978: 389, 390).

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Banton 333

Later he wrote: ‘Scientific domains are constituted not by the “objective” relation of
“things”, but by the relationship of problems in thought,’ and then: ‘In other words, it is
the investigator and the prevailing ideas of the time that determine what becomes the
object of investigation, and how far this investigation extends back into the infinity of
causal relationships’ (Weber, 2004: 371, 383).3
Popper wrote of three worlds: the first world of physical states, the second world of
mental states, and the third world of objective knowledge. The second world mediates
between the other two; it is in this world that people undertake research in search of
knowledge (Popper, 1972: 153–161; see also Gellner, 1998: 3–13). For present purposes
it is sufficient to distinguish just two worlds: the world of practice, which uses the folk
constructs of ordinary language; and the world of theory, which is built from analytical
constructs, or technical language.
In ordinary language the meanings of words are decided by their daily use in many
different kinds of situation and in changing circumstances. The words used may there-
fore have many different shades of meaning. To discover which usage is considered
correct or appropriate, the inquirer consults a dictionary. In the world of theory, as
exemplified in scientific writing, the meanings of words are also decided by their use,
but that use is strictly controlled. The conduct of an experiment, or the attempt to repli-
cate someone else’s findings, depends upon replication, and upon employing standard
definitions. The best definition of a concept is the one with the greatest explanatory
power. Language in the world of theory therefore has its own character; it strives to be
context-free, to be addressed to-whom-it-may-concern. To do so, it has to develop cul-
ture-free constructs, valid in different world regions and different time periods. This
aspiration to new knowledge was endorsed by Durkheim when he wrote: ‘If there is
such a science as sociology, it can only be the study of a world hitherto unknown’ (1962
[1897]: 310), that is, of a world of culture-free constructs distinct from those of popular
consciousness. In like manner, Popper observes that ‘scientific explanation, whenever
it is a discovery, will be the explanation of the known by the unknown’ (1972: 191,
emphasis in original).
In the contemporary social sciences, notably economics, psychology, and sociology,
scholars sometimes address policy issues and employ the ordinary language of politi-
cians, administrators, and voters. At other times they seek to develop a technical vocabu-
lary that will help them to identify underlying causes. For this purpose they need a
technical language.
Many writers have recognized this distinction, though they have given different
names to the two kinds of language. Marx wrote of ‘phenomenal form’ and ‘necessary
relations’. Weber (1972: 9–10) also drew a distinction in kind between two vocabularies.
He maintained that in contrast to historical writing (which must use constructs with mul-
tiple meanings), sociology must seek univocal constructs, each with but one meaning,
and be eindeutig.4 It was in order to achieve Eindeutigkeit that he advocated the develop-
ment of ‘ideal types’. For the concepts to be eindeutig, nominalist definitions will have
been required. The full significance of Weber’s distinction is not brought out in the
Economy and Society translation.5 Weber identified a very important distinction, bigger
than that between the work of the historian and the sociologist, but then offered his solu-
tion to a different problem.6

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334 Journal of Classical Sociology 14(4)

Weber used no concept of ‘society’ because it was not eindeutig and would not have
helped him solve any of the problems in which he was interested. Likewise, it is difficult
to imagine that, for the same reason, he would ever have used a construct like that of
racism.
Where, as in the social sciences, the two main forms of knowledge are mixed together,
ways are needed of identifying which words or concepts belong in which forms. They
have been contrasted as folk and analytical concepts, but a simpler distinction is that
drawn by American anthropologists between emic and etic constructs. An everyday
example of the difference is that when a patient goes to a doctor for treatment, he or she
reports his or her symptoms in ordinary language and uses emic constructs. The doctor
makes a diagnosis, drawing upon technical knowledge expressed in etic constructs.
According to one formulation, emic constructs are accounts expressed in categories
meaningful to members of the community under study, whereas etic constructs are
accounts expressed in categories meaningful to the community of scientific observers
(Lett, 1996).
The emic/etic distinction identifies two kinds of vocabulary. Emic constructs like
anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, multiculturalism, racism, and so on, are useful in desig-
nating the kinds of attitudes people wish to oppose and the social relations they wish
to promote. Such words are used with many different meanings; their significance
changes over time. While this flexibility is necessary to political discourse, it is out of
place in a technical vocabulary; that is most effective when its constituent words retain
the same meaning in all places and at all times. They can do so best if their definition
is univocal and nominalist, designed to distinguish them from things with which they
might be confused, rather than to grasp their essences. In the world of theoretical
knowledge, knowledge grows in ways that it cannot grow in the world of practical
knowledge.
Taking a further step, it should be noted that the existence in ordinary language of a
word that appears to be a name for something (for example, angel), does not mean that
there must be a thing that corresponds to the word. That in the dictionary there are entries
for race and ethnicity does not mean there are corresponding realities; to qualify for a
place in a technical vocabulary, such a word must have a single meaning and the word
must be necessary to the explanation of an observation.

After 1920
The sociological study of racial and ethnic relations started in US universities indepen-
dently of Weber’s writing. Initially, it focused on race. By utilizing analogies drawn from
ecological studies, Robert E. Park found a way around the confusions that stemmed from
assumptions about the biological origins of racial differences. Lloyd Warner and his col-
laborators then showed that black–white relations in the Deep South were a combination
of caste relations and class relations. Not every encounter between a black person and a
white person was ‘racial’; it might be defined as a `business’ relationship. (In Weberian
terms, black–white relations were not completely closed.) Oliver Cox then maintained
that both these theories overlooked the way these relations were structured by the inter-
ests of the ruling class.

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Banton 335

If so-called ‘racial’ relations were not determined by biological differences, their

study had to be combined with the study of ethnic relations. This was a new departure.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the expression ‘ethnic group’ entered the
English language in 1935 when Julian Huxley and A.C. Haddon recommended it as a
substitute for one of the senses of the word race. Reporting on Massachusetts in 1945,
W. Lloyd Warner and Leo Srole employed ‘ethnic’ to differentiate Irish-Americans from
Italian-Americans and White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Then in 1953 David Riesman
went one step further when he wrote of ‘[t]he groups who, by reason of rural or small-
town location, ethnicity, or other parochialism, feel threatened by the better educated
upper-middle-class people’.
The sociological approach underwent a dramatic change following upon publica-
tion of the book Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. In it, the Norwegian anthropologist
Fredrik Barth shifted investigation to the ethnic boundary that defines the group,
instead of focusing on ‘the cultural stuff that it encloses’. Having found a good prob-
lem, Barth (1969: 9, 15) inspired others to study the processes by which ethnic
groups were created and maintained (even ‘despite a flow of personnel’ across their
boundaries), and the processes by which they were sometimes dissolved. He identi-
fied interesting new explananda; he did not furnish new explanantia. It should also
be noted that Barth employed the adjective ethnic; he did not employ the noun
ethnicity.
Twelve years before the publication of Barth’s book, the economist Gary Becker
(1957) had shown how to analyse the price that white persons placed upon their taste for
discrimination against blacks. This can be seen as an elaboration of what Weber had writ-
ten about the means/end relation. It also pointed to ways in which an individual might
have to choose between several senses of shared identity and to a possible conflict
between the call of social solidarity and personal interest; it opened the path to the analy-
sis of ethnic preferences. It helped the move to subsume the study of racial differences
and the study of ethnic differences within a single conceptual scheme.
A Weberian influence then came in from a different direction. In 1947 Gerth and Mills
published a translation, ‘Class, Status and Party’, of part of a chapter on which Weber
had worked between 1911 and his preparation of the Kategorienlehre. This text inspired
John Rex to argue that the overarching sociological problem was the differential incor-
poration of racial and ethnic groups into the structures of the states in which they resided.
In the process of incorporation, political and legal structures were as important as eco-
nomic ones, and the groups interacted as classes (Rex, 1986: xii). When Siniša Maleševič
(2004) included in The Sociology of Ethnicity a chapter on ‘Neo-Weberian Theory:
Ethnicity as a Status Privilege’, he reviewed work inspired by the text ‘Class, Status and
Party’ (now reprinted in Economy and Society), not that which had been inspired by the
chapter on ‘Ethnic Groups’.
The Economy and Society translation of Weber’s 1911 drafts has been reprinted in
several volumes of readings about ethnic relations (Fenton, 2003: 61) without any edito-
rial discussion that might help the reader interrogate their argument, understand their
origin, or appreciate their historical significance. Though it was presumably an aware-
ness of their deficiencies that led Weber to squirrel these drafts away in a drawer, they
can be seen as precursors of more recent developments.

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336 Journal of Classical Sociology 14(4)

While Weber had made no use of any concept of society,7 Rex at least could not
abstain from doing so. Differential incorporation gave rise to ‘plural’ societies and forms
of closure that had to be avoided if the concept of a multicultural society was to offer a
meaningful ideal. Generalizations about society or societies are more difficult to sustain
than generalizations about states. It is easier to oppose a concept of` ‘civil society’ to that
of ‘the state’. For a political unit to qualify as a state, it has to be recognized by other
states. It has treaty obligations. Its government has to be subordinated to a constitution.
If classes interact, they do so within both the civil society and the state, and the two have
to be differentiated. This may help explain why some of the controversies of this period,
with their competing appeals to Marx and Weber, did not lead to any simple
conclusions.
Other sociologists took up the question of a sociological vocabulary, though without
reference to Weber’s thoughts on this problem.8 It was maintained that race and ethnicity
were culture-bound folk concepts utilized differently in different times and places. They
could not serve analytical purposes (Banton, 1979). This argument received wider accep-
tance when Robert Miles (1982: 31) invoked Marx’s distinction between phenomenal
form and essential relations to similar effect. Then, in the United States, Loïc Wacquant
(1997) and Rogers Brubaker (2004: 31–32) added further reinforcement. Brubaker made
the same point when he differentiated categories of practice from categories of
analysis.

Weber today
The opening, since 1920, of previously closed relationships has been notable in respect
of the nation. There is now much greater public recognition of shared responsibilities at
the global level. A European citizenship was created in the Maastricht Treaty (1992) and
there is wider acceptance of dual citizenship. There are now 193 UN member states, of
which 32 have populations of less than one million so that some of the smallest depend
upon the support of a larger neighbour state. Some regions within states enjoy substantial
autonomy. Identifying a nation becomes ever more difficult. As Dominique Schnapper
(1998: 185) has suggested, the national units Weber had in mind are better designated as
historical collectivities.
There could be closed relationships based upon the criterion of race when that con-
struct was used to create a discontinuous distribution. The presumption of a scientific
basis for this action has been dismantled, while in some situations there is now greater
recognition of a continuous distribution of social status based instead upon colour
(Banton, 2012). Shared ethnic origin has been a basis for a closed relationship only when
it has been associated with a distinctive religion or language. These characteristics
become less distinctive in the circumstances of life in a modern industrial city. These
changes parallel the opening of previously closed gender-based relationships; they have
been brought about by processes of trade-off, whereby one party has given up a degree
of privilege in order to secure an advantage of another kind.
To explain the opening of previously closed relationships in accordance with Weber’s
aspiration to proceed ‘from the action of one or more, few or many individuals’, and to
conceptualize collectivities as the products, over time, of individuals acting within

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Banton 337

structural constraints, his account of ethnic identification can be reformulated: ‘Presumed

ethnic origin may be used (either by one person, self-referentially, or by others, or by
both) to identify a person with a social category.’ The social implications of this identifi-
cation vary because the nature of ethnic categories varies, both from society to society
and within societies. This is because every person is identified with many categories and
an ethnic identification overlaps with different other categories in different circum-
stances. Shared ethnic identification can be a basis for collective action and for the cre-
ation of a community. It can also be weakened when this identification becomes less
important relative to other identifications.9
In his Kategorienlehre, Weber implied that the growth of sociological knowledge
would depend upon the formulation of univocal or what might now be called etic con-
structs. He seems to have assumed that they could be created by scholarly reflection
upon historical materials and by observation of everyday social interaction. That was
not the secret of Mendel’s success. He isolated the paired units of heredity, now known
as genes, as occurring in alternative forms: AA and aa in the parental varieties, and Aa
in the hybrids. Mendel called the character that prevailed in the hybrid dominant, and
the one that appeared to be suppressed recessive. These were two new etic constructs.
The point to note is that the constructs were the outcome of the experiments that made
their creation necessary. Sociologists cannot undertake experiments of this kind, but,
like social psychologists, they can design studies that will lead to observations of a
standardized character, and then look to see what best accounts for their special fea-
tures.10 They can concentrate upon the study of problems that are capable of explana-
tion. The explanans need not be a word; it can be a position on a scale or an algebraic
symbol.
When sociologists design interview studies, it is not difficult for them to present
interviewees with brief descriptions of imagined situations in which someone has to
make a choice and to ask them what preference they think would be exercised by their
peers. The nature of the choices can then be permuted (Banton, 1994). Individuals may
prefer, in given circumstances, to associate themselves with their co-ethnics, but a
preference is always relative. In other circumstances, an alternative identification, or a
personal interest, may outweigh an ethnic preference. For example, some persons
might not be willing to report a co-ethnic to the police for committing a minor misde-
meanour, but would do so unhesitatingly had a serious crime been committed. One of
the factors that can open a previously closed ethnic relationship can be a sense of civic
obligation.
It has often been observed that people do not always act in accordance with what oth-
ers believe to be their interests. For example, a study in Kampala, Uganda, reported that
the residents of the poorer neighbourhoods had to cope with major problems of drainage,
garbage removal, and personal security. Heavy rainfall caused severe flooding, and this
was made more serious by the accumulation of refuse in the open drains. The city council
failed to keep all the drains clear and to remove all the garbage. The cessation of funding
for the community patrols that once served as a protection had meant that the constant
threat of theft had reduced the quality of local life. Why, then, did the residents of many
neighbourhoods not themselves organize to remove garbage and establish a neighbour-
hood watch?

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338 Journal of Classical Sociology 14(4)

Several earlier studies had reported that cooperative action takes place more readily
among socially homogeneous groups. While the Kampala study supported the conclusion
that ethnically heterogeneous communities have greater difficulty acting collectively, the
researchers concluded that the sharing of ethnic origin did not provide a sufficient expla-
nation. Underlying the social behaviour there appeared to have been a universal norm of
reciprocity. The subjects apparently found it easier to develop reciprocal relations with
co-ethnics; that was why they more readily engaged in collective action (Habyarimana et
al., 2009: 103–104, 125). If this finding can be confirmed, it will point to an unconscious
source of ethnic preferences, one that could not easily have been found by other methods
of research.
In his study of suicide, Durkheim based his claim to sociology’s distinctiveness by
assembling evidence that variations in suicide rates were determined by factors of which
the parties were not conscious. The use of physical or cultural traits in the generation of
reciprocal behaviour may be an unconscious influence upon the character of the relations
accounted ethnic and racial that is comparable with Durkheim’s discovery of uncon-
scious influences predisposing people to suicide. It should be possible to investigate this
by measuring more carefully what correlates with the degrees to which persons identify
themselves or others with ethnic categories.
Many sociologists today still find inspiration in Weber’s innovatory studies of reli-
gion, of the state, of legitimation, and of the process of rationalization; he is remembered
for his insistence that politics has no place in the classroom (Weber, 1947:145). On these
subjects his arguments were much clearer than those of the new approach he started to
develop after 1918. His description of that teaching as his doctrine of categories was
confusing. The first chapter of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Part One, formulated a set of
concepts (Begriffe). The second, said to be on sociological categories of economic action,
was also about concepts. By contrast, Weber’s argument that the recognition of real or
supposed similarities of race or ethnic or national origin could help the creation of social
categories and groups pointed to a way of explaining observed behaviour. This was an
original and theoretically potent innovation (Banton, 2011). If, one day, Weber’s hypoth-
eses about the sources of racial, ethnic, and national identification can be subsumed
within a more general evidence-based schema comprehending all kinds of social cate-
gory, it may be time to declare that one of his goals has been achieved. His work in this
field will have been rendered antiquated.

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.

Notes
I thank the anonymous referees for their comments on an earlier version of this article.
1. On the use of the word race in history, see Banton (1998); the distinction between vertical and
horizontal dimensions is set out in Banton (2010).
2. Here the Economy and Society (Weber, 1968: 388) translation of monopolistischen
Abschließung as ‘closure’ is to be preferred to its translation as ‘monopolistic exclusive-
ness’ in Runciman’s Selections (1978), because ‘closure’ links up with Weber’s discussion of
‘Open and Closed Economic Relationships’ (1968: 341).

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Banton 339

3. Other characteristics of his later writing suggest that though in some contexts Weber might
be edging towards a philosophy of critical rationalism, he had not revised his manuscripts to
bring them into line with his declaration to Robert Liefmann. For example, while Chapter 1
of Part One lays the foundations of a new approach, in Chapters 2 and the notes for a Chapter
4, Weber defines categories without explaining the uses to which he thought they might be
directed. They do not carry forward an argument, as Chapter 3 (on legitimation) starts to do.
4. ‘Wie bei jeder generalisierenden Wissenschaft bedingt die Eigenart ihrer Abstraktionen es,
daß ihre Begriffe gegenüber der konkreten Realität des Historischen relativ inhalts leer sein
mussen. Was sie dafur zu bieten hat, ist gesteigerte Eindeutigkeit der Begriffe. … Damit
mit diesen Worten etwas Eindeutiges gemeint sei, muss die Soziologie ihrerseits „reine”
(„Ideal”-) Typen von Gebilden jener Arten entwerfen …’ (Weber, 1972: 9–10).
5. The difference between multi-vocal and univocal concepts is a difference in kind, but the
Economy and Society translation (Weber, 1968: 20) presents it as a difference of degree.
6. One possible solution would be to take a multi-vocal concept and strip away all meanings except
one, to be represented as the pure type. This is not what Weber did; he sought, as an ideal
type, a corresponding form of social action. His aim was to understand a ‘case’ and to build a
Verstehendesoziologie, whereas the aim of a critical rationalist perspective is deductive explanation.
7. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft is translated as Economy and Society, but Gemeinschaft for
Weber had a much more limited meaning than society has in English-language sociology.
8. In 1951, forty years after Weber penned his drafts, the author puzzled over the relevance of
the chapter on Ethnische Gemeinsamkeitsbeziehungen in the second edition of Wirtschaft
und Gesellschaft to his dissertation about the settlement of New Commonwealth immigrants
in London’s East End. Only now, after a further sixty years, has the author a sense of how
Weber’s Kategorienlehre could be developed into an analytical framework within which such
research might have found a place.
9. Fenton (2003: 181) has observed that whereas Weber in 1911 associated ‘ethnically oriented
action’ with the category of ‘affect’, much subsequent thinking has assimilated ‘ethnic action’
to ‘rational or instrumental action’.
10. For an example of a progressive research programme that generates new problems, as in
genetics, see Laitin’s research on coordination in the establishment, maintenance, and breakup
of national communities (summarized at Laitin, 2009).

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Author biography
Michael Banton is Professor Emeritus of Sociology in the University of Bristol. He taught social
anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, 1954–1965; political science at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, 1962–1963; and sociology at the University of Bristol, 1965–1992. He
was President of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 1987–1989.

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