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Lecture: Why Should Weber's Epistemology Be Called the Use of Ideal Type Models?

The Department of Historical Sociology, Faculty of Humanities, CU is pleased to invite you to a guest lecture "Why Should Weber's Epistemology Be Called the Use of Ideal Type Models?" given by prof. J. I. Hans Bakker (University of Guelph, Canada). The lecture takes place in Jinonice on October 7.

The lecture is part of "Milestones of European historical development in historical and sociological context" course.

Abstract of the lecture:

It is well known that Max Weber (1864-1920) advocated the use of what he called "ideal types". But, unfortunately, many people do not pause to consider what that really means. It is even true that sometimes the use of ideal types is simply considered a research technique. But it is an epistemological position. Weber was well aware of the struggle concerning Methodologies (Methodenstreit). The binary between the idiographic and the nomothetic was not adequate, he felt, since there is something in between those two "pure types" and that is the ideal type epistemological approach. A truly idiographic epistemology would require "thick description" in the strict sense of careful description of one time (t-1) and one place (p-1). A truly nomothetic set of true "laws" would require generalizations that are "universal" for all relevant times (t-u) and spaces (s-u) in the "universe" that is being discussed. An ideal type, in turn, is relevant for a SET of times and places (t-n, p-n). What I myself add to this is the notion that an Ideal Type Model (ITM) is a set of Ideal Types (ITM= IT-1, IT-2, IT-3, IT-4 .... IT-n). I exemplify that in the analysis of traditional bureaucracies versus modern bureaucracies.

Prof. J.I. Hans Bakker taught Sociology and Anthropology at four different universities early in his career but became a Full Professor at the University of Guelph, in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. His work has focused on Comparative Historical Sociology with an empirical emphasis on Indic Civilization. He has written about Gandhi and about colonialism in the Indonesian archipelago before independence. He has also done consulting work for the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) in Sulawesi, Indonesia, some of which involved studying the Bajo (Bajau, Sea Nomad) people. His recent edited books are entitled: The Methodology of Political Economy: Studying the Global Rural-Urban Matrix (Lexington, 2015) and Rural Sociologists at Work: Candid Accounts of Theory, Method, and Practice (Routledge, 2016). He guest edited a special issue of the journal Sociological Focus on Grounded Theory (2019). In addition to his academic activities he is also very interested in religious institutions and spiritual paths, having studied Tibetan Buddhism and the history of Judaism and Christianity in depth. His philosophical orientation is based on the work of Wilhelm Dilthey and his sociological theory is Neo-Weberian but also includes aspects of Neo-Marxian World Systems Theory (WST) (e.g. Wallerstein).

Website: http://jihansbakker.com/

The event has been supported by the Progres Q20 programme.