文档介绍：02_kemple-2_054989 (jk-t) 12/7/05 1:06 pm Page 23
Remarks on Technology and
Culture
Max Weber
Editor’s Note: From 19 October to 22 October 1910, Max Weber, Alfred
Weber, Simmel, Ferdinand Toennies, Ernst Troeltsch and various
other scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds met in Frankfurt-
am-Main for the first meeting of the Deutsche Soziologische Gesellschaft
(German Sociological Society). The mentary was made by Max
Weber on the second day of the conference in reply to Werner Sombart’s
lecture on ‘Technik und Kultur’(Technology and Culture). Weber
commented on several other papers at the conference as well, most of which
have now been translated into English: on the concept of race (Weber, 1971
[1910], 1973b [1910]), Christian-Stoic conceptions of natural law (1973a
[1910]), and law and science (untranslated). He also presented a ‘Business
Report’ where he outlined the tasks of the Society as a whole and proposed
collaborative sociological studies of the press (1976b [1910], 1998
[1909–10]), voluntary associations and the selection of professions (2002
[1910]). Frustrated with internal disputes and inaction among Society
members, and with difficulties in funding the anization, the follow-
ing year he resigned from his executive position as treasurer and publi-
cations editor, and after the 1912 meetings in Berlin he withdrew entirely
from any further participation in what he called ‘this salon des refusés’
(Weber, 1994: 656). Nevertheless, this first meeting was certainly a major
episode in Weber’s career, and in many ways prefigures the diversity of
topics and conflicting approaches to sociology that have often characterized
the discipline ever since.
Sombart’s lecture sketched a remarkably wide-ranging survey of the
influential and indispensable part played by particular technologies in the
formation of various cultural spheres: the effect of the steam engine in trans-
forming capitalist industry;