![](/public/assets/img/publi/_default/cover.jpg)
Publication details
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Place: Basingstoke
Year: 1977
Pages: 55-77
Series: Critical Social Studies
ISBN (Hardback): 9780333215982
Full citation:
, "Consciousness and society", in: Beyond the sociology of conflict, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1977
![](/public/assets/img/bookmark.png)
![](/public/assets/img/rights/COPR.png)
Consciousness and society
Weber, Schutz, ethnomethodology and rex
pp. 55-77
in: , Beyond the sociology of conflict, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1977Abstract
Weber's methodological writings can be viewed as the starting point for much of the twentieth-century debate on the nature, forms and determination of social consciousness. The aspect of Weber's theory which has placed him at the centre of subsequent developments in this area is the tension in his work between the acceptance of the general principle of causality in social life, and its removal from the sphere of exclusively external relations. In particular, he opposed what he saw to be the "more naive" historical materialist thesis that "ideas originate as a reflection or superstructure of economic situations".1 Causality, for Weber, is a function of the interactive, motivated plans of individual social actors working in a necessarily social environment and deriving the content of their action orientations from the resources available within it. The task of sociology is to formulate law-like generalisations in which motives have a causal role.
Publication details
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Place: Basingstoke
Year: 1977
Pages: 55-77
Series: Critical Social Studies
ISBN (Hardback): 9780333215982
Full citation:
, "Consciousness and society", in: Beyond the sociology of conflict, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1977