Originally Posted by
brendan
Being a good student of sociology, I think of these three trends as ideal-types in the way I think Max Weber originally intended them. That is not as normative standards to which to strive but as generalized trends that can help organize a historical narrative. In other words, I see these three stages as conceptual tools and not as hard and fast truth claims. In any of three stages, elements of the other are visible, not simply as successive elaborations, but as a diverse field where future strategies are prefigured in older forms.
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