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Max Weber is considered by many to be the preeminent social theorist of the twentieth century. Nearly every aspect of modern social science, including the role of culture, modernization, and ethnic and race relations, can be traced to Max Weber's legacy. A Weberian Theory of Human Society sets forth a general theory of human society whose primary basis is the work of Max Weber. Integrating the often confusing and conflicting aspects of Weber's work and connecting them to the work of other social theorists, Wallace casts a broad new light on human society, addressing the most widespread and central theoretical concerns of late twentieth-century social science.

Opening with a description of the nature of the individual as the most fundamental element of society, Wallace includes a generic definition of human "rationality" that interrelates Weber's, and others', many uses of that term. Wallace presents human society as a system consisting of one set of institutions that takes in and prepares new participant individuals, a second set that organizes the activities of these individuals, and a third set that lets (or puts) them out when they become in some way incapacitated, emigrate, or die. The book focuses heavily on the middle, participant-organizing, set of institutions, their distinctive products and their evolving causal relations to one another. In exploring these relations a new interpretation is offered of Weber's best-known work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. This interpretation identifies two different ethics and two consequent spirits of capitalism--one for the entrepreneurs, and the other for the wage-workers.

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Departing from the recent trend toward the historical contextualization of Max Weber's writings, Wallace offers a positivistic and systematic interpretation of Weber's work. However, Wallace understands that his creation of a system out of the disparate pieces of Weber's writings goes beyond Weber, and is even counter to him. Wallace's radical decontextualization of Weber (reinforced by the use only of English-language sources) and the resulting reinterpretation of concepts, such as instrumental and value rationality, invites challenge. Building on his positivistic interpretation of Weber's four types of behavior, Wallace constructs a system of possible institutional relationships, emphasizing the organizing institutions of economics, science, religion, and politics. He also constructs an evolutionary schema of social change, which consists of gradual "ramps" and abrupt "steps." The latter, which move a society from a natural protoculture to a rational-legal culture, are triggered by charisma. In keeping with his belief in the predictive nature of sociology, Wallace offers some speculations on the future in his last chapter. There are two appendixes on preconceptions and method. Advanced undergraduate; graduates; faculty. C. T. Loader; University of Nevada, Las Vegas