WEBER’S ECONOMIC ETHOS OF THE WORLD RELIGIONS

Over the last decade of his life, Max Weber had embarked on two massive projects, both with a central non-Western component and neither of which he was able to complete. One of these was his contribution to the Grundriss der Sozialökonomik (Outline of Social Economy), later published as Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Economy and Society). Parallel to this, Weber was engaged in another, more explicitly comparative, project: a series of studies collectively entitled Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen: Vergleichende religionssoziologische Versuche (The Economic Ethos of the World Religions: Comparative Experiments in the Sociology of Religion. This contribution begins by outlining the origins, structure and subsequent fate of The Economic Ethos of the World Religions. It then goes on to summarize Weber’s arguments on the relationship between religion, politics, social structure and economic activity in China, the Indian subcontinent and ancient Israel).