Weber's The Protestant Ethic

In Our Time: History

BBC

History

4.4 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 27 March 2014

⏱️ 51 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Published in 1905, Weber's essay proposed that Protestantism had been a significant factor in the emergence of capitalism, making an explicit connection between religious ideas and economic systems. Weber suggested that Calvinism, with its emphasis on personal asceticism and the merits of hard work, had created an ethic which had enabled the success of capitalism in Protestant countries. Weber's essay has come in for some criticism since he published the work, but is still seen as one of the seminal texts of twentieth-century sociology. With: Peter Ghosh Fellow in History at St Anne's College, Oxford Sam Whimster Honorary Professor in Sociology at the University of New South Wales Linda Woodhead Professor of Sociology of Religion at Lancaster University. Producer: Thomas Morris.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time for more details about In Our Time
0:04.1	and for our terms of use, please go to bbc.co.uk slash radio 4.
0:09.0	I hope you enjoy the program.
0:11.5	Hello, in 1905 the German sociologist Max Weber published an essay, suggesting a connection
0:17.8	between religion and the spread of capitalism.
0:20.6	Weber had noticed that the countries in which capitalism had been most successful tended
0:24.9	to be mainly Protestant.
0:26.3	He believed that this was not a coincidence.
0:28.4	And he argued that certain types of religious belief had created a particular ethic, giving
0:33.2	rise to a society in which hard work was celebrated and where the wealthy invested their money
0:37.9	rather than spending it on luxuries.
0:40.1	Weber called his essay, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, and essentially
0:44.3	later, it's still seen as one of the founding works of modern sociology.
0:48.2	The idea of the Protestant work ethic has been enormously influential, although many
0:52.1	later thinkers have disputed Weber's basic arguments.
0:55.4	With me to discuss Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism are Peter
0:59.8	Goche, fellow in history and hands, College Oxford, Sam Wimster, Henri Professor at the University
1:05.8	of New South Wales, and Linda Woodhead, Professor of Sociology of Religion at Lancaster University
1:11.2	Peter Goche, can you tell us a bit more about Max Weber's background and early life?
1:16.7	Well, so Weber is born in 1864, and that's a slightly symbolic date because it's just
1:23.5	before the political unification of Germany in 1866, 1771, and the reason I draw attention
1:31.8	to this is that I think we today tend to think that modern German history is heavily dominated
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