The Ju Ju of War

[marct]

Hi Tom,

If not the iron cage, then basically I am suggesting an application of the ideas in Weber's Protestant Ethic for battling Islamist extremism. My reasoning goes like this. Since any theocratic system, in order to exist, must have convenience for a politico-economic system, then the more specialization that occurs on the theological side of the house, the more bureaucratization, and hence more modernity, occurs on the politico-economic side of the house.

Honestly, I think you are misreading Weber, here. His Protestant Ethic was an explanation (erkennen) situated in a very specific space-time locus. It was not a generic explanation but, rather, a particular one centered around the development of a theological justification for a way in which people could find clues to their salvific status. In order to operate, it requires that individual knowledge of salvation be a) predestined and b) not specifically knowable (i.e. unachievable via works or practice). And yet, the second criterion is contradicted in almost all branches of Islam.

Secondl, you are assuming tat theocratic systems must "have convenience for a politico-economic system", but this is not true. It relies on two assumptions that are invalid: a) that the social system that is quite bounded and, b) that the political-economic system dominates the symbol system. Neither of these assumptions is valid at the present time. For example, economic globalization disproves the first, while there are countless examples disproving the second (in all cases, the symbol system creates alternate political-economic systems that eliminate the ones that disagree with them).

Third, the belief that increasing specialization leads to increasing bureaucracy is also invalid: Islam has a far greater range of law that Christianity does, and yet it has not produced many secularized states.

The resultant tendency of the spiritual mind to "exhaust" itself, so to speak, while trying to comprehend all the theological specialties would force a "practical" turn toward secularism. I'm just applying Weber as I understand that kind of sociology.

Honestly, I just don't see that happening. Why would this happen? Historically, there are very few societies that have highly significant percentages of their populations involved in "spiritual" matters (pre-invasion Tibet was one). The far more probable result, at least historically speaking, is the development of either an ecclesiam type of structure or a mass fragmentation.

One of the appeals of Islamist, other-worldly mysticism is the principle of least effort, a kind of non-participation, if you will, driven by hedonistic desires.

I think that this is a characteristic of almost every religion, at least in potential. Still and all, it is also usually held by a very small percentage of any population.

In my mind, it was Parsons who had Weber down the best in this regard, not so much in reconciling hedonism with sociological peace, but in devising a system of action (adaptation) involving willful participation in community affairs. However, as Parsonian systems rely so heavily on pre-existant norms and roles, the problem comes back to conflict with customs and folkways (or maybe I've got this conflict stated wrong). I only have an undergraduate degree in anthropology. Can somebody fill me in on what conflict I'm doing so badly at describing?

Well, there is an argument, which I tend to agree with, that Parsons systematically "slanted" his translations of Weber to mesh in with his own models. Also, as an historical note, Parsons really didn't have that much to do with Anthropology. He spent one term studying with Malinowski at the LSE (Michaelmas term, 1927), and never really got what Malinowski was saying.

A large part of Parsons' problem was that he was locked into a top-down model of functionalism. So, using your example, he sets up a conflict between norms and roles on the one hand with customs and folkways on he other. Unfortunately, what he never got was that neither of them is "naturally" better or more apropos - they are, in actual fact, exactly the same thing differing only in where they derive their legitimacy from (tradition or imposition).