Max Weber and the spirit of resentment: The Nietzsche legacy

Abstract

This article considers three aspects of the sociology of resentment. Firstly I describe Nietzsche's relationship to Max Weber. Secondly this article outlines Weber's account of resentment as the driving force behind religious beliefs as a theodicy, specifically an ideology of disprivileged social groups. Whereas the dominant class seeks legitimacy for its position in society, disprivileged groups seek compensation. While the dominant pity such subordinate groups, the disprivileged resent their superiors. Thirdly, the article concludes with a preliminary elaboration of a theory of social status, competitive relationships and resentment. The hypothesis is that in modern societies the fluidity of social structures, the apparent absence of any clear relationship between success and worth, and the propinquity and visibility of competitive social groups have an inflationary effect on resentment. This hypothesis leads to a question that is largely beyond the scope of this discussion about the conditions under which individualized resentment evolves into collective rage. These developments are briefly sketched out by reference to the credit crisis, the Moral Majority and Tea Party populism in the United States.

Book Review: Luc Boltanski on Critique. A Sociology of Emancipation

“…Boltanski makes an effort to defend class analysis in chapter six, but it is frankly not convincing and his inquiries in The New Spirit of Capitalism suggest that contemporary disputes are not likely to find an adequate collective vehicle around social class. There is another possibility which Boltanski does not explore, namely that in contemporary societies indignation is more likely to end in resentment rather than rage giving rise to Tea Party denunciations of Washington rather than an attack on capitalism as such (Turner, 2011).…”

‘Crises of Modernity’ Discourses and the Rise of Financial Technologies in a Contested Mechanized World

“…Scholars like the Weber brothers emphasized that European culture was defined by the Kulturmensch-by creative geniuses like Goethe and Beethoven. The destruction of the higher cultural ideals of Bildung through industrial development, in their view, had paved the way for World War I: mechanized warfare had come to crush humanity (Turner 2011). 3 The Second 'Crisis of Modernity' Discourse After World War I, industrial capitalist society was marked by new turmoil, brutalization, hyper-inflation in 1922-3, the Wall Street Crash (1929), vulnerability to total economic collapse in Germany in 1929, the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the rise of totalitarianism-the breeding ground for new catastrophes and for the second 'crisis of modernity' discourse (Roseman 2011;Harrington and Roberts 2012). More than the first discourse, this second discourse resolved around financial crises and the Keynesian welfare state as the way out of such crises (Dahrendorf 2008: 52;Petersen and Petersen 2013;Berend 2013: 4).…”

“…The loss of legitimacy is expressed in worldwide protests that are typically labelled as 'post-11 movements' (see Davis et al 2016), like Occupy Wall Street, Blockupy Frankfurt, and the Indignados movement, as well as movements like Wikileaks and Anonymous (Swyngedouw 2011;Turner 2011;Kalb 2012;TaylorGooby 2013: 2). Scholars assess the meaning of such protests in different ways.…”

Deliberate By-Catch of the Caspian Seal and the Development of Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) in Dagestan, Russia: A Socio-Economic Approach

“…Пдробнее рассмотрение «Протестантской этики» в связи с идеями Ф. Ницше в:Hennis 1998;Stauth 1992;Turner 2011;Tyrell 2014]. 27 «Если оставить в стороне детали изложения Ницше, то две морали сведутся к весьма простой, а после Канта к весьма обычной дистинкции между абсолютной и безусловной ценностью, с одной стороны, и гипотетической или случайной ценностью, с другой»[Данто 2000: 193].…”