Weber
Essay by angela • February 26, 2012 • 287 Words (2 Pages) • 1,438 Views
Max Weber author of Class, Status, Power goes on to explain his view of class and how class, status groups and political parties make up the structure of our society. According to Weber the three are a, "phenomena of the distribution of power within a community." Granted, the essay, Class, Status, Party that is found in Intersecting Inequalities is only a crumb of his 490 page book entitled, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. The chosen piece, Class, Status, Party details the human desire for social power and how, through class certain forms of power are achieved.
He contends that the pursuit of social power is essentially an attempt to acquire social honor. Weber also mentions that power does not always lead to social honor and uses the notion of the American Boss as an example. However, he acknowledges that those who are considered honorable by society often gain social power or have a greater chance to do so.
Aware that money or capital also has a large role in the distribution of power, Weber begins to discuss class and how economic inequality shapes class. To determine class he used the following three principles: "when (1) a number of people have in common a specific causal component of their life chances, in so far as (2) this component is represented exclusively by economic interests in the possession of goods and opportunities for income, and (3) is represented under the conditions of the commodity or labor markets." Simply put, a person's class is determined by what choices that person or community has in order to sustain comfortable means of living. A person living in Camden, NJ isn't exactly going to have the same opportunities as someone from Mendham,NJ.
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