The problem of mapping or classifying people's political attitudes is more complicated than it looks. Placing people on a spectrum from left to right is convenient but over-simple. It assumes that there is a single dimension of political difference, ranging from conservative to liberal, and …
Ideal types, values, and selectivity
image: cover of Max Weber, The History of Commercial Partnerships in the Middle AgesI've never really understood why the exposition of one of Max Weber's most important methodological ideas, his theory of ideal types, occurs in the context of an essay that is primarily about the role of values in the social sciences. This is his …
Understanding Society 