Max Weber's methodology: an ideal-type.
Weber dealt-in contrast to the textbook image of his method-with rational and nonempathetic explanatory interpretation. His ideal-type for social action emerged in a very formative period, as a mediation between history and theory and can be characterized as releasing what was inherent in a historicist tradition in crisis. Theoretical elements from Austrian marginalism provided Weber with the prototype for developing contrafactual schemes into ideal-types. Weber as a scholar at the crossroads resolved the problem of uncontrolled value-intrusion in a way that provided rational evidence and limited objectivity, in the form of instrumental means-end analysis. His methodology was coherent over time but gradually emerged when contemporary polemics called for his voice to be heard.
Eliaeson
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Stockholm's University, Stockholm, Sweden.
D001519:Behavior; D003210:Concept Formation; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D005197:Famous Persons; D006664:History; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D012945:Social Values; D012961:Sociology / Q000266:history* / Q000379:methods; D014481:United States