Description:
Max Weber and Islam is a major effort by Islamic-studies specialists to reexamine and appraise Max Weber's perspectives on Islam and its historical development
Brief description:
Toby E. Huff is professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. He is editor of On the Roads to Modernity: Conscience, Science and Civilization--Selected Writings by Benjamin Nelson and the author of Max Weber and the Methodology of the Social Sciences and The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West.
Review Quotes:
"Although Weber is best known for his work on the role of Protestantism in the development of capitalism, he also did important studies on comparative sociology of religion... The centerpiece essay by Wolfgang Schluchter (sociology, Univ. of Erfurt, Germany) expertly recreates the sources of Weber's understanding of Islam and puts his scattered comments into a coherent whole. Ten other essays alternately apply Weberian categories to a specific aspect of the Islamic world or evaluate a statement of Weber's about Islam... Excellent summaries of both Weber's theories and Islam appear throughout."
--G. J. Miller, Choice
"This book is a collection of essays first published in German in 1987 and usefully updated with an extensive new introduction by Toby Huff.... The essays by Huff, Schluchter, and Crone focus on Weber's sociology and the place of Islam in it. The other essays are substantive contributions to the study of Islamic history and societies from a Weberian perspective."
--Said Amir Arjomand, American Journal of Sociology