Introduction: Max Weber's 'Science as a Vocation' as a Political Failure

Science as a Vocation was one episode within Weber’s broader charm offensive toward German students. Between 1917 and 1919, he tried to entice students into his view of university teaching and into the understanding of the relation between science and action, including political action that was embodied in his own life philosophy. Weber deployed this attempt to seduce students because he considered them to be the future of Germany and also because he thought that they were jeopardized by circumstances of their modern times and the radical ideologies propagated by a variety of prophets, in and outside the university. Weber was right in that the students had to reorient their lives. This reorientation was not only a result of their age; for many, it was also a consequence of having fought at the front. Young people frequently experienced the war years as bringing societal and individual disorder and sharpening the preexisting problems of the Kaiserreich. In the face of adversity, Weber wanted to show them his way of confronting such conditions. Accordingly, as he engaged with the young students, Weber deployed all his skills as an “educator” (Hennis). However, Weber’s attempt can be counted among his political failures

The Cold War Origins of Global IR. The Rockefeller Foundation and Realism in Latin America

The literature on global international relations (IR) has argued that the discipline develops in the footsteps of world politics, but no sustained attention has been given to more immediate causes such as the funders that pay for IR teaching and scholarship. These donor–recipient relations have only attracted the attention of authors interested in cultural hegemony and those contributing to the recent historiography of IR. Among the latter, some have studied how during the Cold War the Rockefeller Foundation attempted to buttress classical realism in the United States and Western Europe. This article connects and moves forward IR historiography and the global IR literature by shedding light on philanthropic foundations’ attempts to further a specific IR theory—classical realism—and area studies in the global south. The article argues that world politics influenced global IR, but this influence was mediated by highly contingent events. Even a proximate cause like science patronage, let alone “world politics,” is not a sufficient cause capable of determining IR theories and disciplinary boundaries. Donors may achieve some impact but only under specific circumstances such as the ones explored here, that is, the donor is a unitary actor determined to advance its agenda by resorting to conditionality, alternative donors and funding are scarce, the discipline is either poorly or not institutionalized, and the recipient perceives the donor's preferences as legitimate. The article uses previously untapped, fine-grained, primary sources to unravel philanthropy's impact on Latin America's first IR center. Because science patronage is exposed to many sources of indeterminacy and to contingency, donors cannot determine scholarship, which makes cultural hegemony all but impossible. Still, IR scholars need to study their patrons to understand their discipline, in and outside Europe and the United States.La bibliografía sobre Relaciones Internacionales (RI) globales sostiene que la disciplina se desarrolla al compás de la política mundial, pero no se ha prestado una atención sostenida a las causas más inmediatas, como los fondos que financian la enseñanza y el estudio académico de las RI. Estas relaciones entre donantes y beneficiarios solo han atraído la atención de los autores interesados en la hegemonía cultural y de los que contribuyen a la historiografía reciente de las RI. Entre estos últimos, algunos han estudiado el intento de la Fundación Rockefeller de apoyar el realismo clásico en los Estados Unidos y la Europa Occidental durante la Guerra Fría. Este artículo conecta y promueve la historiografía y la bibliografía de las RI globales al arrojar luz sobre los intentos de las fundaciones filantrópicas que buscan promover una teoría específica de las RI (el realismo clásico) y los estudios de área en el sur global. El artículo sostiene que la política mundial influyó en las RI globales, pero esta influencia estuvo mediada por acontecimientos de carácter muy contingente. Ni siquiera una causa inmediata, como el mecenazgo científico, ni mucho menos la “política mundial” son causas suficientes que puedan determinar las teorías de las RI y los límites disciplinarios. Los donantes pueden lograr cierto impacto, pero solo en circunstancias específicas como las que se exploran aquí; es decir, el donante es un actor unitario decidido a promover su agenda recurriendo a la condicionalidad, los donantes y la financiación alternativos son escasos, la disciplina está poco o nada institucionalizada y el receptor percibe las preferencias del donante como legítimas. El artículo utiliza fuentes primarias, hasta ahora inexploradas, para desentrañar el impacto de la filantropía en el primer centro de investigación en relaciones internacionales de la región. Dado que el mecenazgo científico está expuesto a muchas fuentes de indeterminación y a la contingencia, los donantes no pueden determinar los estudios académicos, lo que hace que la hegemonía cultural sea casi imposible. Aun así, los académicos de las RI necesitan estudiar a sus mecenas para entender su disciplina, dentro y fuera de Europa y los Estados Unidos

La gran dama: Science Patronage, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mexican Social Sciences in the 1940s

If Latin America's public universities are considered part of the state, then it seems plausible to characterise them as similar to the state, i.e. as clientelistic. However, this plausible hypothesis has never been examined by the literature on twentieth-century Mexican social sciences. Just like clientelism, science patrons such as US philanthropic foundations have similarly been neglected. In this article I argue that, as an alternative to what the Rockefeller Foundation perceived as clientelism and amateurism at Latin American universities, it claimed to patronise liberal scholarship, practised according to formal rational criteria. While foundations have been frequently considered part of a US imperialistic drive towards cultural hegemony in Latin America, they were not unitary actors and frequently failed to predict the actual impact of their grants. In Mexico in the 1940s, the Rockefeller Foundation boosted the humanities, but missed the opportunity to support a local take on social science teaching and research

Philanthropic Foundations and Transnational Activist Networks: Ford and the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights

Foundations provide key funds for nongovernmental organizations. We know little about what they do for transnational activism or the mechanisms via which they seek/achieve influence. We carve a middle ground between those who see donors as supporting actors in transnational advocacy networks (TANs) and those who think they distort activism through impersonal market forces. Our negotiation-oriented approach looks at the micro-dynamics of donor–grantee relations. We argue that influence is a function of donors’ organizational characteristics. Only some, especially foundations, have the vision/means to shape grantees. However, internal complexity can cause coordination problems, complicating influence. Additionally, if many donors exist, recipients’ leverage increases. It does so too if their expertise is in short supply. Using archival evidence, we reconstruct how Ford tried to shape the Inter-American Human Rights Institute, a pillar of the region's human rights regime, and the factors conditioning success. For Ford, the Institute could play a role in a fledging TAN, but only if it downplayed its emphasis on research and directly engaged activists. Coupled with analyses of USAID’s relationship with the Institute and Ford's relationship with Americas Watch, we shed light on the activities of an important class of donor and illuminate foundations’ role in the development of TANs

Max Weber’s style. On his involvement in politics and on the scientific way of writing sociology

During the last two and a half years of his life, Max Weber wrote letters that could be used to write a sociology of the Central European intelligentsia during the wars. Rather than discussing Weber’s encounters with the most renowned writers —Thomas Mann, Hugo von Hofmannsthal— and musicians —that of Richard Strauss, among several composers and conductors— of his time, this article discusses three more conventionally Weberian topics, which are nonetheless insufficiently understood: first Weber’s involvement, that and of some of his students, like Georgy Lukaçs, in politics at the end of World War I. Second, Weber’s writing style, which has been fre-quently decried, but that actually represents his attempt to overcome a challenge that had become important for his own project as a university professor. This is the third topic of the article: how Weber intended to found academic sociology as a disci-pline that should combine empirical facts, the historical past, and institutions, on theone hand, with the use of models, or ideal-types, as propounded by the Austrian School, on the other hand. To Weber’s short spell at the University of Vienna in 1918 corresponds an intellectual achievement as mediator between economy and sociology that has rested too long in oblivion

Álvaro Morcillo Laiz's Quick Files

The Quick Files feature was discontinued and it’s files were migrated into this Project on March 11, 2022. The file URL’s will still resolve properly, and the Quick Files logs are available in the Project’s Recent Activity

Notice to Mariners. The Spanish Translation of Economy and Society by Max Weber

Any scholarly reading of Max Weber’s Economía y sociedad may substantially benefi t from a comparison between the German and the Spanish version of the work. This article fulfi lls this task. In order to accomplish it, the following aspects are examined: the external outlook of Economía y sociedad, its shortcomings in terms of oversights, changes in the word sequence, omissions, biased translations of a concept, and the rendering of Weber’s terms of the art, like Verband organization, Ordnung order y Betrieb establishment. In Economía y sociedad these terms are sometimes translated in ways that suggets connotations absent from the German original, suppress others that were actually implicit, without the required consistency. These shortcomings set hurdles to a proper understanding of the work and speak for a new translation

International organizations, their staff and their legitimacy: Max Weber for IR

If the journal was to fulfil its given task, it obviously had to seek capitalism wherever it was available, without any consideration of national boundaries … This systematic expansion towards the possibly broadest territory granted the Archiv an international character in even a higher degree than other publications within the discipline.1441144729