For Weber: Essays on the Sociology of Fate

Available in paperback for the first time, For Weber is widely recognized as one of the most incisive and stimulating books on Weber in the post-war period.

Writing in defence of Max Weber's sociology against the criticisms of academic sociology by Marxists such as Louis Althusser, Bryan Turner rejects the view that Weber's sociology is bourgeois, subjectivist and individualistic. He examines a major theme in Weber's historical sociology, namely the unintended consequences (fate) of social action. The theme of the fatefulness of capitalist civilization was derived from Nietzsche's critical enquiry into the condition of modern society. Turner illustrates this theme in a series of chapters on religion, medicine, law, feudalism, the family and the capitalist economy. He also provides a survey of the strengths and weaknesses of the major sociological approaches in the post-war period.

This long-awaited paperback edition contains a major new preface reviewing the scholarship of Weber since 1981. Among the subjects it covers are the fall of Communism, the demise of Marxist theory and the rise of postmodernism. Without doubt, Turner is one of the world's leading Weberian scholars and this book provides students of sociology and social theory with his most comprehensive and accessible discussions of the richness and relevance of Weber's sociology for contemporary social theory.