FROM RATIONALITY TO SUBJECTIVITY
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societies is both more
dynamic
and more subtle than the iron cage metaphor
suggests.
Weber's understanding of "societies" as only loosely held together and
as constituted from an array of competing, reciprocally interacting
domains of action unfolding at varying speeds-the religious, economic,
legal, rulership, status groups, and fancily domains-persuades him that past
developm.ents were extremely important to explain the present. It also
convinces him that customs, conventions, laws, relationships of domination
and values deeply permeate the present in often obscure ways. He rejects
all conceptualizations of societies as either "traditional" or "modern,"
because the past may live on for millennia within the interstices of the pre–
sent and even wi thin its central core. Even the abrupt appearance of "the
new" and even the extraordinary power of charismatic leadership never
fully rupture ties to the past.
Weber calls attention, for example, to the many ways in which the val–
ues of ascetic Protestantism, originating in seventeenth-century colonial
America, continue
to
endure in weakened and secularized forms in daily
life: in an unambivalent support of capitalism and self-reliant individual–
ism, a distrust of the state, a basic orientation to the future and the
"opportunities" it offers, an intolerance of perceived evil, a high rate of
giving donations to charity, a nimble capacity to form civil associations,
and a strong belief in the abili ty of individuals to shape their own des tinies.
Despite vast transformations, such legacies from the feudal and agrarian
past endure, penetrating the homogenizing "structural constraints" of
industrialism. Rather than being radically divorced from the past, Weber
argues that modern societies are best conceptualized as dynam.ic nUxtures
of past and present. Moreover, his view of "modernity" in his sociological
writings is never homogeneous. Instead, he advocates an examination of
each particular country and an assessment of the
uniqueness
of each.
Although both Germany and the U.S., for example, were quite
advanced industrial societies at the fin de siecle, there were significant dif–
ferences. In Germany he pointed to the strong social welfare state, the
authoritarian centralization of power, the weak parliament, the passive cit–
izenry "governed like sheep," and the state church, as well as to hierarchical
social conventions, industrialization directed "from above," and the "for–
mal-rational" continental legal system anchored in a constitution. In the
U.S. a different configuration became prominent: a decentralized and
"weak state," a division of political powers and an activist citizenry, egali–
tarian social patterns and separation of church and state, a strong parliament
and industrialization "from below," and a legal system strongly indebted to
English Common Law based upon precedent.
Hence, again, the depiction of Weber as proposing a global "iron cage"
does not hold. In his sociological writings he views each industrial nation
