<ARTICLES>W. Schluchter’s Reconstruction of the Weberian Research Program: Weber-Reception in the Context of Contemporary Sociological Theory (1)

This paper will examine which contemporary sociological theories are referred to, and how, in Wolfgang Schluchter's reconstruction of the Weberian research program in his main works from the 1970's to the 2010's; it will make clear how the characteristics of the reconstructed Weberian research program and its location among sociological theories have changed; and investigate how these changes are related to the context of contemporary sociological theory. In his first attempt to systematize the Weberian research program, Die Entwicklung des okzidentalen Rationalismus (1979), Schluchter, using conceptual frameworks borrowed from Parsons, Luhmann and Habermas, reconstructs Weberian sociology as a "history of society [Gesellschaftsgeschichte] of the West", and claims to place it in an intermediary position between "the universal-historical comparison" and (functionalist and logical) evolutionism. However, he practically reconstructed it along the lines of the evolutionist perspective. This problem has something to do with the ambiguous status of the sociological theories developed after Weber (especially those of Parsons, Luhmann and Habermas) in Schluchter, because they are not only sources of frameworks available for interpreting Weber's texts but also alternative approaches to the Weberian research program reconstructed by him. Furthermore, other aspects of Weberian sociological theory, especially that of the microfoundation of his macrosociology, are not investigated sufficiently. How these problems are dealt with in his later studies on Weber, and how the changes in his conception of Weberian sociology are related to the trend of contemporary sociological theory, will be discussed in the second half of this paper, to appear in the next issue