Just Finished Reading: The City by Max Weber (FP: 1921/1924)

According to the 1958 preface of this short work American sociology, at least in regard to the cultural aspects of the city, was in disarray. The problem was twofold – US cities hadn’t really been around long enough to have accumulated enough studies of a high enough quality to work with and the much more extensive European literature on the subject was considered to be irrelevant because of the supposed cultural differences between the Old world and the New. The translation and publication of Weber’s book was designed to address both issues – both by supplying the depth of historical research much needed in American circles to give the necessary perspective and by showing, with examples from the Ancient world, Medieval Europe, India and China that despite often profound cultural differences the structure and development of cities had enough similarities and common themes that Weber’s theories could be applied to the American city just as easily.

Whilst the preface itself was interesting enough, giving as it did an insight into 1950’s American thinking on the subject, the body of the work was the meat of the argument. Despite its wide range, both geographically and temporal, I found the discussion on the political wrangling and frank experimentation of the Italian city states in the years before unification and the mercantile empire of the German Hansiatic League most interesting. What I found much more of a struggle was the style of writing (both rather dry and academic) and the seemingly endless repetition. This became much more explicable after I had searched for the original German publication date not mentioned inside my 1960 hardback English edition of the earlier 1958 American one. Everything fell into place once I discovered that this book was published posthumously in 1921 (and again in 1924 as part of a larger work) from notes the author had produced some 8-10 years previously. I had a definite ‘that explains things’ moment when I discovered this as I’d thought that parts of the book had a real feel of notes rather than fully formed thoughts. It is indeed quite possible that, like Aristotle’s most famous works, what finally ended up in book form was never actually intended for publication. I expect that, if Weber had lived long enough to publish this work in his lifetime then it would have been much more polished. Unfortunately, despite no doubt the dedicated attention of the publishing house, this had a distinct unfinished feel to it which probably distracted from the quality of the book. Interesting and informative at times I felt that this is definitely one for the hard-core urbanophiles only.

Translated from the German by Don Martindale and Gertrud Neuwirth.