Central to the development of sociology. For readers interested in the great sociologists of the 19th century, Marx, Durkheim, and Weber, this is a key read. Start with THE PROTESTANT ETHIC by Weber, but ECONOMY AND SOCIETY is a rich and brilliant elaboration of Weber's central themes.

It's dry, but it's great thinking, and very important.

What can I say of this work that has not already been said. This is the core of Structural Functionalism. It is presented as an argument against Karl Marx's Capital and his 1844 Manuscripts. Weber argues that the economic sphere is not the only factor in determining social structure. While Marx divides society into owners and workers, Weber presents society as composed of several layers of classes and status groups.

Weber's Economy and Society was the number one pick by sociologists at the World Congress of Sociology. Twenty percent chose the book as one of the top ten. No other book had as high a percentage of admirers. Many key concepts come from this encyclopedic work: Modern Capitalism, modern bureaucracy, charismatic authority, and goal-rational social action. The overall thesis of this complex magnum opus concerns the de-mystification and rationalization of our world, the famous iron cage thesis. One neglected aspect is Weber's ideal type model of patrimonial prebendal traditional authority and its oscillation with feudal authority. Feudalism promoted capitalism and capitalism has a tendency to become an iron cage of instrumental rationality. The main difficulty with the book is the casuistic writing style; it is not a book to sit down and read, but more like a reference work. Before accepting trendy PoMo discourses take a good look at this in depth examination of one key aspect of globalization. (This two volume set supplants previous partial translations of portions of the book, e.g. Parsons' translation of one part, and the editing work is in the highest scholarly tradition.) Everyone interested in social science should study this book! It is an exemplar for comparative historical analysis in sociology (CHS) that is neither naively Positivistic nor dogmatically Marxist.