Weber And Rationalisation

Want to read the rest of this paper? Join Essayworld today to view this entire essay and over 50,000 other term papers

to form a stranglehold on all sectors of Western society.
Denying the possibility of developmental laws in sociology, Weber essentially presented rationalisation as the master trend of Western capitalist society. Rationalisation is the process whereby every area of human relationships is subject to calculation and administration. While Marxists have noted the prominence of rational calculation in factory discipline and the labour process, Weber detected rationalisation in all social spheres - politics, religion, economic organisation, university administration, the laboratory and even musical notation. Weber's sociology as a whole is characterised by a metaphysical pathos whereby the process of rationalisation eventually converted capitalist society into a meaningless 'iron cage'.
For Weber, rationalisation involved: in economic organisation, the organisation of the factory by the bureaucratic means and the calculation of profit by systematic accounting procedures; in moral ...

Get instant access to over 50,000 essays. Write better papers. Get better grades. Already a member? Login

case of the rationalisation process was bureaucracy. In the modern world, while bureaucracies continue to exist and to be of great importance, George Ritzer believes that the fast-food chains have become the model of rationality. The process in which the principals of the fast food-restaurant become dominating in relation to more and more sectors in American society as well as the rest of the world. The principals Ritzer is referring to is: efficiency, predicability, calculability, and control. He states that "the foundations of McDonaldisation" entry in society creates a society in which creativity, intelligent insight, transparency, and real human contact is more or less absent.

...

Succeed in your coursework without stepping into a library. Get access to a growing library of notes, book reports, and research papers in 2 minutes or less.

CITE THIS PAGE: