PART FOUR—
CULTURE, TECHNOLOGY, AND WORK

11—
The Promise of a Cultural Sociology:
Technological Discourse and the Sacred and Profane Information Machine

Jeffrey C. Alexander

The gradual permeation of the computer into the pores of modern life deepens what Max Weber called the "rationalization of the world." The computer converts every message—regardless of its substantive meaning, metaphysical remoteness, or emotional allure—into a series of numerical bits and bytes. These series are connected to others through electrical impulses. Eventually these impulses are converted back into the media of human life.

Can there be any better example of the subjection of worldly activity to impersonal rational control? Can there be any more forceful illustration of the disenchantment of the world that Weber warned would be the result? Much depends on the answer to this portentous question, for discourse about the meaning of advanced technology demarcates one of the central ideological penumbra of the age. If the answer is yes, we are not only trapped inside of Weber's cage of iron but also bound by the laws of exchange that Marx asserted would eventually force everything human into a commodity form.

This query about the rationalization of the world poses theoretical questions, not just existential ones. Can there really exist a world of purely technical rationality? Although this question may be ideologically compelling for critics of the modern world, I will argue that the theory underlying such a proposition is not correct. Because both action and its environments (Alexander 1982–1983, 1988a) are indelibly interpenetrated by the nonrational, a pure technically rational world cannot exist. Certainly the growing centrality of the digital computer is

an empirical fact. This fact, however, remains to be interpreted and explained.

It is theory that provides the framework for interpretation and explanation. In the following section I outline a theoretical model that provides a more accurate understanding and that points to a more culturally sensitive sociology. On the basis of this model, I will argue against the validity of Weber's conception of rationalization. First, I critically examine sociological accounts of technology in general, arguing that by eliminating technology's symbolic status, these accounts reduce it to a cog in the social system. From there I turn to an empirical examination of the social understandings of the computer that have emerged over the last half century. Far from leading to (or from) the rationalization of society, this prototype of modern technology has been caught within a deep and traditional cultural web. I conclude that the rationalization thesis is a reflection of this web of symbolism rather than an explanation of it. It crystallizes the sentiments and symbolic meanings that underlie what is perceived to be peculiarly modern about our world.

Taking Meaning Seriously

Contemporary sociology is almost entirely the study of social elements from the perspective of their place in the social system. The promise of a cultural sociology is that a more multidimensional perspective can be attained. From this multidimensional perspective, social elements would no longer be seen naturalistically, as things that can exist, in and of themselves, without the mediation of cultural codes. Although this naturalistic view seems pragmatically justified in terms of how we experience the world (Rochberg-Halton 1986), in fact, it reifies persons and institutions.^[1]

Such reification is most obvious in the theoretical traditions that have emerged from the dichotomies of the post-Parsonian world (Alexander 1987: chaps. 8–20). Microtheorists tend to see actors as omnipowerful meaning-creators, as hard-headed rationalizers, as participants in networks that have immediate situational relevance. Macrotheorists are inclined to see the world in terms of Realpolitik .^[2] In more subtle ways, this pragmatic reification has vitiated the contributions of theorists who have given the cultural realm more serious attention. From Simmel to Parsons, theorists have justified an exclusively social system

reference for sociology—its self-limitation to institutions, interactions, and institutionalized values—by apportioning disciplinary specialties. Anthropology or literary studies explain symbolic patterns; sociologists focus on real interactions.^[3]

While Simmel and Parsons described this specialization as an analytic one, the argument is closely connected to the approach that makes culture into a concrete variable. In the worst case this variable is high culture. From this perspective, "cultural sociologists" are limited to research on art museums and musical taste, and mass society theorists speak about the decline of culture in the modern world.^[4] More common, but just as misleading, culture is equated with ideological attitudes and contrasted to—measured against the effect of—economic interests; it is equated with values and contrasted with norms; it is equated with religion and weighted against the effects of political position. Common to all these approaches is the "everything else" argument. Other than this particular variable, their adherents suggest, everything else is noncultural. Everything else exists in its social system form.

The alternative to such "type analysis" is an analytic approach, but one that will not relegate symbolic status to disciplines outside sociology. This approach, rather than understanding symbolic and material forces in a pluralistic and "generous" way, assumes that both are always present as analytical dimensions of the same empirical unit. From the analytic perspective, every social object can be analyzed as a cultural object, every social structure as a "culture structure" (for this concept, see Rambo and Chan 1990; for a general defense of the analytic approach to culture, see Kane 1991). Events, actors, roles, groups, and institutions, as elements in a concrete society, are part of a social system; they are simultaneously, however, part of a cultural system that overlaps, but is not contiguous with, the society. I define culture as an organized set of meaningfully understood symbolic patterns. It is because of their location in such an organized set that every social interaction can also be understood as a text (Ricoeur 1971).

Only if these analytical transformations are made, can the thickness of human life (Geertz 1973), its dimensionality and nuance, enter into the language of social science. Dilthey (1976) prepared us to respect this density by insisting that all social action rests upon the reservoir of our inner experience of life. Because we experience the world rather than simply behave in it, the world is meaningful. As social scientists, we must describe the world's inner life or we will fail to describe "it" at all. We cannot, moreover, handle the problem of meaning cavalierly,

taking its character for granted as something obvious and shifting our attention to this meaning's cause or effects, as does the culture-as-variable approach.^[5] Rather, we must willingly inhabit the world of meaning itself.

To try to inhabit this world does not mean orienting ourselves to the idiosyncratic attitudes of individuals. This is the "getting into the actor's head" approach advocated by microtheorists such as symbolic interactionists.^[6] Because culture is an environment of every action, to inhabit the world of meaning is, rather, to enter into the organized sets of symbolic patterns that these actors meaningfully understand. This is not to say that social science aims to describe cultural patterns in and of themselves. In the first place, mere description is impossible; cultural analysis consists of interpretation and reconstruction. In the second place, to attempt a complex understanding of meaningful sets is not to eschew a fuller explanatory goal. Indeed, my contention here is quite the opposite. Only with a more muscular understanding of culture can we gain a real, multidimensional understanding of the relation between symbolic systems and more traditional sociological referents.^[7]

We cannot enter this world of meaning armed only with methodologies, our sensibilities and hermeneutical circles well in hand. We can do so only with strong theories about how the cultural system actually works. For this, hermeneutics, whether Dilthey's or Gadamer's, is hopelessly unprepared. Sociological theories of modern culture are not much better. Beyond the death of meaning, Weber (1958) suggests its fragmentation into autonomous spheres of cognitive, moral, and aesthetic knowledge. This perspective leads us to understand the antagonism, or paradoxes, between different beliefs and competing social actions (Schluchter 1979). It does not lead us to pattern-interpretation, the effort to understand these patterns in and of themselves.^[8] For his part, Durkheim (1951) often endorses a complementary view of the dissolution of meaning. In the best-known examples to the contrary, he (1933, 1973) theorizes the generalization and growing abstraction of the collective conscience. This approach lends itself to the blurring and vulgarization of the symbolic patterns in organized sets, leading the analyst to look at culture from the outside, in terms of its social effects.

Parsons draws on both Weber's and Durkheim's theories, transmuting them (for example, Parsons 1966) into accounts of cultural differentiation and value generalization. The precision of his theorizing makes the implications of this approach much clearer than in classical work. Parsons (for example, Parsons and Shils 1951) declares that he is not

concerned with the internal geography of the culture structure, which he calls symbol systems . Rather, he says, sociology should study only the institutionalized segment of culture, in Parsons's terms not the cultural system , but the latency , or pattern maintenance, subsystem of the social system. These specialized elements are called values in Parsons's theory.^[9] Parsons examined socialization and specification to study the manner in which differentiated and generalized values affect the organization of the social system: the support for politics, the motivation for work, the nature of professions, and the operation of universities. He studied, in other words, not the internal structure of symbolic systems, but the processes by which a given culture structure becomes institutionalized in society.^[10]

Contemporary critical theory is similar in surprising respects, though it hardly gives institutionalization its due. For Habermas, neither meaning nor culture structure is the real object of analysis. On the basis of Weber's and Parson's evolutionary theory, the existence of a small number of abstract, differentiated, and specific normative patterns is assumed (Habermas 1984). The concern is not with interpreting normative patterns but with tracing how actors refer to patterns and, particularly, with the effect this reference has on the relations between actors and institutions. Recreating the inner world of modern objects, however, involves much more rigorous and internally complex theoretical resources. To acquire these resources, we must turn to extrasociological traditions and to sociological theories of premodern life.

If we begin with the notion that culture is a form of language, we can make use of the conceptual architecture provided by Saussure's semiotics, his "science of signs." Though they perhaps are not as tightly organized as real languages (but see Barthes 1983), cultural sets have definite codelike properties. They are composed of strongly structured symbolic relationships that are largely independent of any particular actor's volition or speech. Cultural codes, like linguistic languages, are built upon signs, which contain both signifier and signified. Technology, for example, is not only a thing, a signified object to which others refer, it is also a signifier, a signal, an internal expectation. The relation between signifier and signified, Saussure insists, is "arbitrary." When he writes (1964) that the former "has no natural connection with the signified," he is suggesting that the meaning or nature of the sign—its name or internal dimension—cannot be understood as being dictated by the nature of the signified, that is, by the sign's external, material dimension.

If the meaning of the sign cannot be observed or induced from

examining the signified, or objective, referents, then how is it established? By its relation to other signifiers, Saussure insists. Systems of signs are composed of endless such relationships. At their most primitive, these relationships are binary. In any actual system of cultural sets, they become long strings, or webs, of interwoven analogies and antitheses, what Eco (1979) calls the "similitude of signifiers" that compose the "global semantic field."^[11] Structural anthropology has illustrated the usefulness of this architecture, most famously in the work of Lévi-Strauss (1967) and most usefully in the work of Sahlins (1976, 1981).

Yet, even at its most socially embedded, semiotics can never be enough. By definition it abstracts from the social world, taking organized symbolic sets as psychologically unmotivated and as socially uncaused. By contrast, for the purposes of cultural sociology, semiotic codes must be tied into both social and psychological environments and into action itself. I will term the result of this specification discourses , in appreciation of, though not identification with, the phenomena conceptualized by Foucault. Discourses are symbolic sets that embody clear references to social system relationships, whether defined in terms of power, solidarity, or other organizational forms (cf. Sewell 1980; Hunt 1984).^[12] As social languages, they relate binary symbolic associations with social forms. In doing so, they provide a vocabulary for members to speak graphically about a society's highest values, its relevant groups, its boundaries vis-à-vis conflict, creativity, and internal dissent. Discourse socializes semiotic codes and emerges as a series of narratives (Ricoeur 1984)—myths that specify and stereotype a society's founding and founders (Eliade 1959; Bellah 1970a), its critical events (Alexander 1988b), and utopian aspirations (Smith 1950).

In their theories of premodern cultures, classical sociologists constructed powerful models of how this social construction of semiotic codes can proceed. They did so in terms of their theories of religion. Thus, drawing from primitive totemism, Durkheim (1964) argued that every religion organizes social things into both binary relations and deeply felt antitheses between sacred and profane. Because sacred objects have to be protected, the "society" maintains a distance between them and other objects, either routine or profane. Actors not only try to protect themselves from coming into contact with polluted (Douglas 1966) or profane (Caillois 1959) objects, but also seek a real, if mediated, contact with the sacred. This is one primary function of ritual behavior (Turner 1969; cf. Alexander 1988c).

While Weber's better-known theory of religion overlaps with Durk-

heim's, it is historically and comparatively specific. Given the emergence of a more formal and rationalized religion, the goal of believers becomes salvation from worldly suffering (Weber 1946a). Salvation creates the problem of theodicy, "from what" and "for what" one will be saved. Theodicy involves the image of God. If the gods or God is immanent, worshipers seek salvation through an internal experience of mystical contact. If God is transcendent, salvation is achieved more ascetically, by correctly divining God's will and following his commands. Each of these mandates can be pursued, moreover, in either a this-worldly or an otherworldly direction.

While Durkheim and Weber generally limited the application of these cultural theories to premodern religious life, it is possible to extend them to secular phenomena. This possibility is clarified when we define religions as types of semiotic systems, as discourses that reveal how the psychological and social structuring of culture proceeds.^[13]

In this section I have briefly sketched a model for examining the cultural dimension of social life. I hope merely that this discussion provides an introduction to what follows. Before examining the construction of the computer as a cultural object in the postwar world, however, I look at a range of earlier sociological treatments of technology to sense the difficulties that a more culturally sensitive approach must overcome.

Sociological Accounts of Technology:
The Dead Hand of the Social System

Considered in its social system reference, technology is a thing that can be touched, observed, interacted with, and calculated in an objectively rational way. Analytically, however, technology is also part of the cultural system. It is a sign, both a signifier and a signified, in relation to which actors cannot entirely separate their subjective states of mind. Social scientists have not usually considered technology in this more subjective way. Indeed, they have not typically considered it as a cultural object at all. It has appeared as the material variable par excellence, not as a point of sacrality, but as the most routine of the routine, not a sign, but an antisign, the essence of a modernity that has undermined the very possibility for cultural understanding itself.

In the postmodern era, Marx has become infamous for his effusive

praise in The Communist Manifesto of technology as the embodiment of scientific rationality. Marx believed that modern industrial technique, as the harbinger of progress, was breaking down the barriers of primitive and magical thought. Stripped of its capitalist integument, Marx predicted, advanced technology would be the mainspring of industrial communism, which he defined as the administration of things rather than people .^[14] Despite the central role he gives to technology, for Marx it is not a form of knowledge, even of the most rational sort. It is a material variable, a "force of production" (Marx 1962). As an element of the base, technology is something actors relate to mechanistically. It is produced because the laws of the capitalist economy force factory owners to lower their costs. The effects of this incorporation are equally objective. As technology replaces human labor, the organic composition of capital changes and the rate of profit falls; barring mitigating factors, this falling rate causes the collapse of the capitalist system.

While neo-Marxism has revised the determining relationship Marx posits between economy and technology, it continues to accept Marx's view of technology as a purely material fact. In Rueschemeyer's recent work on the relation between power and the division of labor, for example, neither general symbolic patterns nor the internal trajectory of rational knowledge are conceived of as affecting technological growth. "It is the inexorability of interest and power constellations," Rueschemeyer (1986: 117–118) argues, "which shape even fundamental research and which determine translations of knowledge into new products and new ways of production." We would expect modern functionalism to view technology very differently, but this is true in an only limited sense. Of course, Parsons (1967) criticized Marx for putting technology into the base; functionalists have always been aware that technology belongs in a more intermediate position in the social system. They have, however, never looked at it as anything other than the product of rational knowledge, and they have often conceived of its efficient causes and specific effects in material terms.

In Science, Technology, and Society in Seventeenth-Century England , Merton emphasizes the role that puritanism played in inspiring scientific inventions. Within the context of this inventive climate, however, the immediate cause of technology was economic benefit. The "relation between a problem raised by economic development and technologic endeavor is clear-cut and definite," Merton argues (1970: 144), suggesting that "importance in the realm of technology is often concretely

allied with economic estimations." It was the "vigorous economic development" of the time that led to effective inventions, because it "posed the most imperative problems for solution" (146). In Smelser's (1959) later account of the industrial revolution, the perspective is exactly the same. Methodist values form a background input to technological innovation, but they are not involved in the creation or the effects of technology itself. Innovation is problem driven, not culture driven, and the immediate cause is economic demand. The effect of technology is also concrete and material. By resolving strain at the social system level, innovation allows collective behavior to leave the level of generalized behavior—wish fulfillment, fantasy, utopian aspirations—and return to the more mundane and rational attitudes of the everyday (Smelser 1959: 21–50).

Parsons himself is more sensitive to the subjective environment of technology. While acknowledging that it is "a product of productive processes," he insists (1960: 135) that it depends ultimately on cultural resources. In a characteristic move, he turns his discussion of technology from economic issues to a focus on the origins of "usable knowledge." He describes the latter as "produced by two processes which, though economic factors play a part, are clearly predominantly noneconomic, namely research and education" (135). In other words, while Parsons recognizes that technology is, in the most important sense, a product of subjective knowledge rather than material force, this recognition leads him, not to the analysis of symbolic processes, but to the study of institutional processes, namely research and education. When Parsons and Platt explore these processes in The American University (1973), they take the input from culture—the "rationality value"—as a given, focusing instead on how this value becomes institutionalized in the social system.

Critical theory, drawing from Weber's rationalization theme, differs from orthodox Marxism in its attention to the relation between technology and consciousness. But whereas Weber (for example, 1946b) viewed the machine as the objectification of discipline, calculation, and rational organization, critical theorists reverse the causal relation, asserting that it is technology that creates rationalized culture by virtue of its brute physical and economic power. "If we follow the path taken by labour in its development from handicraft [to] manufacture to machine industry," Lukács writes (1971: 88), "we can see a continuous trend toward greater rationalization [as] the process of labour is progressively broken down into abstract, rational, specialized opera-

tions." This technologically driven rationalization eventually spreads to all social spheres, leading to the objectification of society and the "reified mind" (93). Lukács insists that he is concerned "with the principle at work here" (88, original italics), but the principle is the result of technology conceived as a material force.

This shift toward the pivotal ideological role of technology, without giving up its materialist conceptualization or its economic cause, culminates in Marcuse's later work. To explain the reasons for "one-dimensional society," Marcuse actually focuses more on technological production per se than on its capitalist form. Again, that technology is a purely instrumental, rational phenomenon Marcuse takes completely for granted. Its "sweeping rationality," Marcuse writes (1963: xiii), "propels efficiency and growth." The problem, once again, is that this "technical progress [is] extended to a whole system of domination and coordination" (xii). When it is, it institutionalizes throughout the society a purely formal and abstract norm of rationality. This technological "culture" suppresses any ability to imagine social alternatives. As Marcuse states (xvi), "technological rationality has become political rationality."

New class and postindustrial theories make this critical theory more nuanced and sophisticated, but they do not overcome its fatal anticultural flaw. Gouldner accepts the notion that scientists, engineers, and government planners have a rational worldview because of the technical nature of their work. Technocratic competence depends on higher education, and the expansion of higher education depends in the last analysis on production driven by technology. Indeed, Gouldner finds no fault with technocratic competence in and of itself; he takes it as a paradigm of universalism, criticism, and rationality. When he attacks the technocrats' false consciousness, he does so because they extend this rationality beyond their sphere of technical competence: "The new ideology holds [that] the society's problems are solvable on a technological basis, with the use of educationally acquired technical competence" (1979: 24, italics added). By pretending to understand society at large, the new class can provide a patina of rationality for the entire society. Gouldner also emphasizes, of course, that this very expansion of technical rationality can create a new kind of class conflict and a "rational" source of social change. This notion, of course, is simply the old contradiction between (technological) forces and relations of production, dressed in postindustrial garb. When Szelenyi and Martin (1987) criticize Gouldner's theory as economistic, they have touched its theoretical core.

Using similar theoretical distinctions, conservative theorists have reached different ideological conclusions. In his postindustrial theory, Bell (1976) also emphasizes the growing cultural rationality of modern societies, a cultural pattern he, too, ties directly to technological and productive demands. In order to produce and maintain the advanced technologies that are at the basis of postindustrial economic and political institutions, scientific values and scientific education have become central to modern life. In the political and economic spheres of modern societies, therefore, sober, rational, and instrumental culture is the rule. It is only in reaction against this technological sphere that there develop, according to Bell (1976), irrational, postmodern values, which create the cultural contradictions of capitalist society. Here the contradiction between (technological) forces and relations is dressed in other garb. Because Ellul, the other, more conservative, theorist of "technological society," wrote before the 1960s, he views the social effects of technology as more thoroughly instrumental and rational than does Bell. Propelled by "the search for greater efficiency" (Ellul 1964: 19), technique "clarifies, arranges, and rationalizes" (5). It exists in "the domain of the abstract" (5) and has no relation to cultural values or to the real needs of human life.

It is fitting to close this section with Habermas, for the distinction between the world of technique (variously defined as work, organization, or system) and the world of humanity (communication, norms, or lifeworld) has marked a fateful contrast throughout his work. Habermas (1968a: 57) defines technology in what is by now a familiar way. He believes it to be the "scientifically rationalized control of objectified processes" and contrasts it with phenomena that are related to "the practical question of how men can and want to live." With the increasing centrality of technology, the meaningful organization of the world is displaced by purposive-rational organization. "To the extent that technology and science permeate social institutions and thus transform them," Habermas (1968b: 81) insists, "old legitimations are destroyed."

These old legitimations were based on tradition, "the older mythic, religious, and metaphysical worldviews" that addressed "the central questions of men's collective existence [for example] justice and freedom, violence and oppression, happiness and gratification . . . love and hate, salvation and damnation (96)." After technology has done its work, however, these questions can no longer be asked: "The culturally defined self-understanding of a social life-world is replaced by the self-reification of men under categories of purposive-rational action and

adaptive behavior" (105–6). There has ensued a "horizontal extension of subsystems of purposive-rational action," such that "traditional structures are increasingly subordinated to conditions of instrumental or strategic rationality" (98). In this particular sense, Habermas (111) argues, the ideology of technology has displaced all previous ideologies. Because it is so stubbornly rationalistic, this new ideology does not exhibit "the opaque force of a delusion" or a "wish-fulfilling fantasy," nor is it "based in the same way [as earlier ideologies] on the causality of dissociated symbols and unconscious motives." This ideology, Habermas believes, has abandoned any attempt to "express a projection of the 'good life.'"

In the discussion that follows, I will demonstrate that these suppositions about technological consciousness are false. Only because Habermas has accepted the possibility of a radical historicization of consciousness can he believe them to be true. My own discussion begins from quite the opposite understanding. It is impossible for a society to be dominated by technical rationality because the mental structures of humankind cannot be radically historicized; in crucial respects, they are unchanging. Human beings continue to experience the need to invest the world with metaphysical meaning and to experience solidarity with objects outside the self. Certainly, the ability to calculate objectively and impersonally is perhaps the clearest demarcation of modernity. But this remains one institutionalized complex (Parsons 1951) of motives, actions, and meanings among many others. Individuals can exercise scientifically rational orientations in certain situations, but even in these instances their actions are not scientifically rational as such. Objectivity is a cultural norm, a system of social sanctions and rewards, a motivational impulse of the personality. It remains nested, however, within deeply irrational systems of psychological defense and cultural systems of an enduringly primordial kind.

This is not to deny that technological production has become more central with the advent of postindustrial society. There has been a quickening in the substitution of information for physical energy, which Marx described as a shift in the organic composition of capital, with dramatic consequences. The shift from manual to mental labor has transformed the class structure and the typical strains of capitalist and socialist societies. The increased capacity for storing information has strengthened the control of bureaucracy over the information that it constantly needs. But the sociological approaches to technology, which we have examined in this section, extend much further than such empiri-

cal observations. The stronger version of Marxist and critical theory describes a technologically obsessed society whose consciousness is so narrowed that the meaningful concerns of traditional life are no longer possible. The weaker versions of functionalist and postindustrial theory describe technology as a variable that has a merely material status and orientations to technology as cognitively rational and routine. From my point of view, however, neither of these positions is correct. The ideas that inform even modern society are not cognitive repositories of verified facts; they are symbols that continue to be shaped by deep emotional impulses and molded by meaningful constraints.

Technological Discourse and Salvation

We must learn to see technology as a discourse, as a sign system that is subject to semiotic constraints and responsive to social and psychological demands. The first step to this alternative conception of modern technology is to reconceptualize its introduction so that it is open to metaphysical terms. Ironically, perhaps, Weber himself provided the best indication of how this can be done.

Weber argued that those who created modern industrial society did so in order to pursue salvation. The Puritan capitalists practiced what Weber (1958) called this-worldly asceticism . Through hard work and self-denial they produced wealth as proof that God had predestined them to be saved. Weber (1963) demonstrated, indeed, that salvation has been a central concern of humankind for millennia. Whether it be heaven or nirvana, the great religions have promised human beings an escape from toil and suffering and a release from earthly constraints—only if humans conceived of the world in certain terms and strove to act in certain ways. In order to historicize this conception of salvation and to allow comparative explanation of it, Weber developed the typology of this-worldly versus otherworldly paths to salvation, which he interwove with the distinction between ascetic and mystical. The disciplined, self-denying, and impersonal action upon which modernization depended, Weber argued, could be achieved only by acting in a this-worldly, ascetic way. Compared to Buddhist or Hindu holy men, the Puritan saints focused their attention much more completely on this world. Rather than allowing themselves the direct experience of God and striving to become vessels of his spirit, they believed that they would be saved by

becoming practical instruments for carrying out his will. This-worldly salvation was the cultural precursor for the impersonal rationality and objectivism that, in Weber's view (1958: 181–183), eventually dominated the world.

While Weber's religious theory is of fundamental importance, it has two substantial weaknesses. First, Weber conceived the modern style of salvation in a caricatured way. It has never been as one-sidedly ascetic as he suggests. This-worldly activity is permeated by desires to escape from the world, just as the ascetic self-denial of grace is punctuated by episodes of mystical intimacy. In an anomalous strain in his writing about modernity (Alexander 1986), Weber acknowledged that industrial society is shot through with "flights from the world," in which category he included things such as the surrender by moderns to religious belief or ideological fanaticism and the escape provided by eroticism or aestheticism. Although Weber condemned these flights as irresponsible, however, he was never able to incorporate them into his sociology of modern life. They represented a force with which his historicist and overly ideal-typical theory could not contend.

In truth, modern attempts to pursue salvation in purely ascetic ways have always short-circuited, not only in overtly escapist forms but also in the everyday world itself. We would never know from Weber's account, for example, that the Puritans conceived of their relationship to God in terms of the intimacies of holy matrimony (Morgan 1958); nor would we be aware that outbursts of mystical "antinomianism" were a constant, recurring danger in Puritan life. The post-Puritan tradition of evangelical Protestantism, which developed in Germany, England, and the United States in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, was distinguished by its significant opening to mystical experience. One of its cultural offshoots, the modern ideology of romantic love (Lewis 1983), reflected the continuing demand for immediate, transformative salvation in the very heart of the industrial age.

This last example points to the second major problem in Weber's religious theory, its historicism. Weber believed that a concern with salvation could permeate and organize worldly experience only so long as scientific understanding had not undermined the possibility of accepting an extramundane, divine telos for progress on earth. As I suggested previously, this mistaken effort to rationalize contemporary discourse can be corrected by incorporating the more structural understandings of Durkheim's religious sociology. Durkheim believed that human be-

ings continue to divide the world into sacred and profance and that even modern men and women need to experience mystical centers directly through ritual encounters with the sacred. In the modern context, then, Weber's salvation theory can be elaborated and sustained only by turning to Durkheim. The fit can be made even tighter if we make the alteration in Durkheim's theory suggested by Caillois (1959), who argued that alongside sacred and profane there was a third term, routine . Whereas routine life does not partake of ritual experience, sacred and profance experiences are both highly charged. Whereas the sacred provides an image of the good with which social actors seek community and strive to protect, the profane defines an image of evil from which human beings must be saved. This conception allows us to be more true to Weber's understanding of theodicy, even when we shift it onto the modern state. Secular salvation "religions" provide escape not only from earthly suffering in general but also more specifically from evil. Every salvation religion has conceived not only God and death, in other words, but also the devil.

It is in terms of these reconstructed arenas for symbolic discourse that our examination of the introduction of technology will proceed.

The Sacred and Profance Information Machine

Expectations for salvation were inseparable from the technological innovations of industrial capitalism. Major inventions like the steam engine, railroad, telegraph, and telephone (Pool 1983) were hailed by elites and masses as vehicles for secular transcendence. Their speed and power, it was widely proclaimed, would undermine the earthly constraints of time, space, and scarcity. In their early halcyon days, they became vessels for experiencing ecstatic release, instruments for bringing the glories of heaven down to earth. The technicians and engineers who understood this new technology were elevated to the status of worldly priests. In this technological discourse, however, the machine has been not only God but also the devil. In the early nineteenth century, Luddites lashed out at spinning machines as if they were the idols that the Hebrew fathers had condemned. William Blake decried "dark Satanic mills." Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, or, the Modern Prometheus , about the terrifying results of Victor Frankenstein's

effort to build the world's most "gigantic" machine. The Gothic genre presented a revolt against the Age of Reason and insisted that dark forces were still brewing, forces that were often embodied by the engine of technology itself. It was, ironically, from such forces that the modern age had to be saved. There is a direct line from that gothic revival to Steven Spielberg's wildly popular movie, Star Wars (Pynchon 1984). Today's science fiction mixes technology with medieval Gothic themes, pits evil against good, and promises salvation from space, from time, and even from mortality itself.

The computer is the newest and certainly one of the most potent technological innovations of the modern age, but its symbolization has been much the same. The culture structure of technological discourse has been firmly set. In theoretical terms, the introduction of the computer into Western society resembles the much more tumultuous entrance of Captain Cook into the Sandwich Islands: it was an event "given significance and effect by the system in place" (Sahlins 1981: 21).^[15]

While there were certainly "routine" assessments of the computer from 1944 to 1975—assessments that talked about it in rational, scientific, and "realistic" tones—they paled in comparison to the transcendental and mythical discourse that was filled with wish-fulfilling rhetoric of salvation and damnation. In a Time magazine report on the first encounter between computer and public in 1944, the machine was treated as a sacred and mysterious object. What was "unveiled" was a "bewildering 50-foot panel of knobs, wires, counters, gears and switches." The connection to higher, even cosmic, forces immediately suggested itself. Time described it as having been unveiled "in the presence of high officers in the Navy" and promised its readers that the new machine would solve problems "on earth as well as those posed by the celestial universe" (T8/44). This sacred status was elaborated in the years that followed. To be sacred, an object must be sharply separated from contact with the routine world. Popular literature continually recounted the distance that separated the computer from the lay public and the mystery attendant on this. In another report on the 1944 unveiling, for example, Popular Science , a leading lay technology magazine, described the first computer as an electrical brain whirring "behind its polished panels" secluded in "an air-conditioned basement" (PS10/44). Twenty years later the image had not changed. In 1965, a new and far more powerful computer was conceptualized in the same way, as an "isolated marvel" working in "the air-conditioned seclusion of the company's

data-programming room." In unmistakable terms, Time elaborated this discourse of the sacred technology.

Arranged row upon row in air-conditioned rooms, waited upon by crisp young white-shirted men who move softly among them like priests serving in a shrine, the computers go about their work quietly and, for the most part, unseen from the public (T4/65).

Objects are isolated because they are thought to possess mysterious power. The connection between computer and established centers of charismatic power is repeated constantly in the popular literature. Occasionally, an analogy is made between the computer and sacred things on earth. Reporting on the unveiling of a new and more sophisticated computer in 1949, Newsweek called it "the real hero" of the occasion and described it, like royalty, as "holding court in the computer lab upstairs" (11/49). Often, however, more direct references to the computer's cosmic powers and even to its extrahuman status were made. In an article about the first computer, Popular Science reported that "everybody's notion of the universe and everything in it will be upset by the columns of figures this monster will type out" (PS10/44). Fifteen years later, a famous technical expert asserted in a widely circulated feature magazine that "forces will be set in motion whose ultimate effects for good and evil are incalculable" (RD3/60).

As the machine became more sophisticated, and more awesome, references to godly powers were openly made. The new computers "render unto Caesar by sending out the monthly bills and . . . unto God by counting the ballots of the world's Catholic bishops" (T4/65). A joke circulated to the effect that a scientist tried to stump his computer with the question: Is there a God? "The computer was silent for a moment. Then it answered: 'Now there is'" (N1/66). After describing the computer in superhuman terms—"infallible in memory, incredibly swift in math [and] utterly impartial in judgment"—a mass weekly made the obvious deduction: "This transistorized prophet can help the church adapt to modern spiritual needs" (T3/68). A leader of one national church described the Bible as a "distillation of human experience" and asserted that computers are capable of correlating an even greater range "of experience about how people ought to behave." The conclusion that was drawn underscored the deeply established connection between the computer and cosmic power: "When we want to consult the deity, we go to the computer because it's the closest thing to God to come along" (T3/68).

If an object is sacred and sealed off from the profane world, gaining access to its powers becomes a problem in itself. Priests emerge as intermediaries between divinity and laity. As one leading expert suggested, while there were many who appreciated the computer, "only specialists yet realize how these elements will all be combined and [the] far-reaching social, economic, and political implications" (RD5/60). Typically, erroneous predictions about the computer were usually attributed to "nonspecialists" (BW3/65). To possess knowledge of computing, it was emphasized time and again, requires incredible training and seclusion. Difficult new procedures must be developed. To learn how to operate a new computer introduced in 1949, specialists "spent months literally studying day and night" (N8/49). The number of people capable of undergoing such rigorous training was highly restricted. The forging of "links between human society and the robot brain" (N9/49) called for "a new race of scientists." The "new breed of specialists [which] has grown up to tend the machines," Time wrote sixteen years later, "have formed themselves into a solemn priesthood of the computer, purposely separated from ordinary laymen [and] speak[ing] an esoteric language that some suspect is just their way of mystifying outsiders" (T4/65). The article predicted: "There will be a small, almost separate society of people in rapport with the advanced computer. They will have established a relationship with their machines that cannot be shared with the average man. Those with talent for the work will have to develop it from childhood and will be trained as intensively as the classical ballerina." Is it surprising that, reporting on computer news ten years later, Time (1/74) decided its readers would be interested in learning that among this esoteric group of programmers there had emerged a new and wildly popular computer game called "the game of life"? The identification of the computer with God and of computer operators with sacred intermediaries signifies culture structures that had not changed in forty years.

The contact with the cosmic computer that these technological priests provided would, then, certainly transform earthly life. Like the revolutionary technologies that preceded it, however, the computer embodied within itself both superhuman evil and superhuman good. As Lévi-Strauss (1963) emphasized, it is through naming that the cultural codes defining an object are first constructed. In the years immediately following the introduction of the computer, efforts to name this new thinking machine were intense, and they followed the binary pattern that Durkheim and Lévi-Strauss described. The result was a "similitude of signifi-

ers," an amplified series of sacred and profane associations that created for technological discourse a thick semantic field. One series revealed dreadful proportions and dire implications. The computer was called a "colossal gadget" (T8/44, N8/49), a "figure factory" (PS10/44), a "mountain of machinery" (PS10/44), a "monster" (PS10/44, SEP2/50), a "mathematical dreadnought" (PS10/44), a "portentous contrivance" (PS10/44), a "giant" (N8/49), a "math robot" (N8/49), a "wonder-working robot" (SEP2/50), the "Maniac" (SEP2/50), and the "Frankenstein-monster" (SEP2/50). In announcing a new and bigger computer in 1949, Time (9/49) hailed the "great machines that eat their way through oceans of figures like whale grazing on plankton" and described them as roaring like "a hive of mechanical insects."

In direct opposition to this profane realm, journalists and technicians also named the computer and its parts through analogies to the presumptively innocent and assuredly sacred human being. It was called a "super-brain" (PS10/44) and a "giant brain" (N8/49). Attached to an audio instrument, it was described as "a brain child with a temporary voice" and as "the only mechanical brain with a soft heart" (N10/49). Its "physiology" (SEP2/50) became a topic of debate. Computers were given an "inner memory" (T9/49), "eyes," a "nervous system" (SEP2/50), a "spinning heart" (T2/51), and a "female temperament" (SEP2/50) in addition to the brain with which they were already endowed. It was announced that they were to have "descendants" (N4/50), and in later years "families" and "generations" (T4/65) emerged. Finally, there were the developmental phrases. "Just out of its teens," Time announced (T4/65), the computer was about to enter a "formidable adulthood." It might do so, however, in a neurotic way, for its designers had "made a pampered and all but adored child" out of him (or her).^[16]

The period of compulsive naming quickly abated, but the awesome forces for good and evil that the names symbolized have been locked in deadly combat to this day. Salvation rhetoric overcomes this dualism in one direction, apocalyptic rhetoric in another. Both moves can be seen in structural terms as overcoming binary opposition by providing a third term. But more profound emotional and metaphysical issues are also at stake. Computer discourse was eschatological because the computer was seen as involving matters of life and death.

At first, salvation was defined in narrowly mathematical terms. The new computer would "solve in a flash" (T9/49) problems that had "baffled men for years" (PS10/44). By 1950, salvation had already become much more broadly defined. "Come the Revolution!" read the

headline to a story about these new predictions (T11/50). A broad and visionary ideal of progress was laid out: "Thinking machines will bring a healthier, happier civilization than any known heretofore" (SEP2/50). People would now be able to "solve their problems the painless electronic way" (N7/54). Airplanes, for example, would be able to reach their destinations "without one bit of help from the pilot" (PS1/55).

By 1960, public discourse about the computer had become truly millennial. "A new age in human relations has opened," a reigning expert announced (RD3/60). Like all eschatological rhetoric, the timing of this promised salvation is imprecise. It has not yet occurred, but it has already begun. It is coming in five years or ten, its effects will be felt soon, the transformation is imminent. Whatever the timing, the end result is certain. "There will be a social effect of unbelievable proportions" (RD3/60). "By surmounting the last great barrier of distance," the computer's effect on the natural world will be just as great (RD3/60). Most human labor will be eliminated, and people will finally be set "free to undertake completely new tasks, most of them directed toward perfecting ourselves, creating beauty, and understanding one another" (Mc5/65).^[17]

The convictions were confirmed in still more sweeping tones in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The new computers had such "awesome power" (RD5/71) that, as God was recorded in the book of Genesis, they would bring "order out of chaos" (BW7/71). That "the computer age is dawning" is certain. One sign of this millennium will be that "the common way of thinking in terms of cause and effect [will be] replaced by a new awareness" (RD5/71). That this was the stuff of which "dreams are made" (USN6/67) cannot be denied. Computers would transform all natural forces. They would cure diseases and guarantee long life. They would allow everyone to know everything at all times. They would allow all students to learn easily and the best to learn perfectly. They would produce a world community and end war. They would overturn stratification and allow equality to reign. They would make government responsible and efficient, business productive and profitable, work creative, and leisure endlessly satisfying.

As for apocalypse, there was also much to say. The machine has always embodied not only the transcendental hopes but also the fear and loathing generated by industrial society. Time once articulated this deep ambiguity in a truly Gothic way. Viewed from the front, computers exhibit a "clean, serene dignity." This is deceptive, however, for

"behind there hides a nightmare of pulsing, twitching, flashing complexity" (9/49).

Whereas contact with the sacred side of the computer is the vehicle for salvation, the profane side threatens destruction. It is something from which human beings must be saved. First, the computer creates the fear of degradation. "People are scared" (N8/68) because the computer has the power to "blot or diminish man" (RD3/60). People feel "rage and helpless frustration" (N9/69). The computer degrades because it objectifies; this is the second great fear. It will "lead to mechanical men who replace humans' (T11/50). Students will be "treated as impersonal machines" (RD1/71). Computers are inseparable from "the image of slavery" (USN11/67). It is because they are seen as objectifying human beings that computers present a concrete danger. In 1975, one popular author described his personal computer as a "humming thing poised to rip me apart" (RD11/75). More typically the danger is not mutilation but manipulation. With computers "markets can be scientifically rigged . . . with an efficiency that would make dictators blush" (SEP2/50). Their intelligence can turn them into "instruments for massive subversion" (RD3/60). They could "lead us to that ultimate horror—chains of plastic tape" (N8/66).

Finally there is the cataclysm, the final judgment on earthly technological folly that has been predicted from 1944 until the present day. Computers are "Frankenstein (monsters) which can . . . wreck the very foundations of our society" (T11/50). They can lead to "disorders [that may] pass beyond control" (RD4/60). There is a "storm brewing" (BW1/68). There are "nightmarish stories" about the "light that failed" (BW7/71). "Incapable of making allowances for error," the "Christian notion of redemption is incomprehensible to the computer" (N8/66). The computer has become the Antichrist.

I have taken the computer story to 1975. This was the eve of the "personal computer," the very name of which demonstrates how the battle between human and antihuman continued to fuel the discourse that surrounded the computer's birth. In the decade of discussion that followed, utopian and antiutopian themes remained prominent (for example, Turkle 1984: 165–196). Disappointment and "realism," however, also became more frequently expressed. In the present day, computer news has passed from the cover of Time to advertisements in the sports pages of daily newspapers. This is routinization. We may, indeed, be watching this latest episode in the history of technological discourse pass into history.

Conclusion

Social scientists have looked at the computer through the framework of their rationalizing discourse on modernity. For Ellul (1964: 89), it represented a phase of "technical progress" that "seems limitless" because it "consists primarily in the efficient systematization of society and the conquest of the human being." In the analysis of Lyotard, who proposes a postmodern theory, the same kind of extravagant modernizing claims are made. "It is common knowledge," according to Lyotard (1984: 4), "that the miniaturization and commercialization of machines is already changing the way in which learning is acquired, classified, made available, and exploited." With the advent of computerization, learning that cannot be "translated into quantities of information" will be abandoned. In contrast to the opacity of traditional culture, computerization produces "the ideology of communicational 'transparency'" (5), which signals the decline of the "grand narrative" and will lead to a crisis of legitimation (66–67).

I have tried to refute such rationalistic theorizing, first by developing a framework for cultural sociology and second by applying it to the technological domain. In theoretical terms, I have shown that technology is never in the social system alone. It is also a sign and possesses an internal subjective referent. Technology, in other words, is an element in the culture and the personality systems as well; it is both meaningful and motivated. In my examination of the popular literature about the computer, I have shown that this ideology is rarely factual, rational, or abstract. It is concrete, imagistic, utopian, and satanic—a discourse that is filled, indeed, with the grand narratives of life.

Let us return, in conclusion, to the sociological understandings of technology I have recounted above. Far from being empirical accounts based on objective observations and interpretations, they represent simply another version of technocratic discourse itself. The apocalyptic strain of that discourse fears degradation, objectification, slavery, and manipulation. Has not critical theory merely translated this evaluation into the empirical language of social science? The same goes for those sociological analyses that take a more benign form: they provide social scientific translations of the discourse about salvation.^[18]

At stake is more than the accuracy or the distortion of social scientific statements. That the rationalization hypothesis is wrong does not make technology a benign force. The great danger that technology poses to

modern life is neither the flattening out of human consciousness nor its enslavement to economic or political reality. To the contrary, it is because technology is lodged in the unreal fantasies of salvation and apocalypse that the dangers are real.

For Freud, psychoanalysis was a rational theory of the irrational, even while it did not promise an ultimate escape from unconscious life. Psychoanalysis aimed to provide a distance from irrationality, if not the high ground of conscious rationality itself. Cultural sociology can provide a similar distance and some of the same cure. Only by understanding the omnipresent shaping of technological consciousness by discourse can we hope to gain control over technology in its material form. To do so, we must gain some distance from the visions of salvation and apocalypse in which technology is so deeply embedded.^[19]

References

Alexander, Jeffrey C. 1982-1983. Theoretical Logic in Sociology. 4 Vols. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

———. 1983. The Modern Reconstruction of Classical Thought: Talcott Parsons. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

———. 1986. "The Dialectic of Individuation and Domination: Max Weber's Rationalization Theory and Beyond." In Max Weber and Rationality , edited by Sam Whipster and Scott Lash. London: Allen and Unwin.

———. 1987. Twenty Lectures: Sociological Theory Since World War II. New York: Columbia University Press.

———. 1988a. "Action and Its Environments." In Action and Its Environments: Toward a New Synthesis , edited by J. Alexander, 301-333. New York: Columbia University Press.

———. 1988b. "Culture and Political Crisis: 'Watergate' and Durkheimian Sociology." In Durkheimian Sociology: Cultural Studies , edited by J. Alexander, 187-224. New York: Cambridge University Press.

———, ed. 1988c. Durkheimian Sociology: Cultural Studies. New York: Cambridge University Press.

———. 1990. "Analytic Debates: Understanding the Autonomy of Culture." In Culture and Society: Contemporary Debates , edited by J. Alexander and Steven Seidman. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Alexander, Jeffrey C., and Paul Colomy. 1985. "Towards Neofunctionalism: Eisenstadt's Change Theory and Symbolic Interaction." Sociological Theory 3 (2): 11-23.

Barthes, Roland. 1983. The Fashion System. New York: Hill and Wang.

Bell, Daniel. 1973. The Coming of Post-Industrial Society. New York: Basic Books.

———. 1976. The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. New York: Basic Books.

Bellah, Robert. 1970a. "Civil Religion in America." In Bellah, Beyond Belief , 168-189. New York: Harper and Row.

———. 1970b. "Values and Social Change in Modern Japan." In Bellah, Beyond Belief , 114-145. New York: Harper and Row.

Bohr, Niels. 1985 [1945]. "Energy from the Atom: An Opportunity and a Challenge." In Niels Bohr: A Centenary Volume , edited by A. P. French and P. J. Kennedy, 261-265. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Caillois, Roger. 1959 [1939]. Man and the Sacred. New York: Free Press.

Dilthey, Wilhelm. 1976. "The Construction of the Historical World in the Human Studies." In Selected Writings , 168-245. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Douglas, Mary. 1966. Purity and Danger. London: Penguin.

Durkheim, Emile. 1933. The Division of Labor in Society. New York: Free Press.

———. 1951. Suicide. New York: Free Press.

———. 1963. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York: Free Press.

———. 1973. "Individualism and the Intellectuals." In Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society , edited by Robert N. Bellah, 48-56. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Eco, Umberto. 1979. "The Semantics of Metaphor." In The Role of the Reader , edited by U. Eco. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Edles, Laura. 1990. "Political Culture and the Transition to Democracy in Spain." Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Sociology, UCLA.

Eisenstadt, S. N. 1987. "Macrosociology and Sociological Theory: Some New Directions." Contemporary Sociology 16: 602-610.

———. 1987. International Sociology.

Eliade, Mircea. 1959. The Sacred and the Profane. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World.

Fllul, Jacques. 1964. The Technological Society. New York: Vintage.

Fine, Gary Alan. 1987. With the Boys: Little League and Preadolescent Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Foucault, Michel. 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge. New York: Pantheon Books.

Geertz, Clifford. 1973. "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory

of Culture." In Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 3-32. New York: Basic Books.

Gouldner, Alvin. 1979. The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class. New York: Seabury.

Greenfeld, Liah. 1987. "Sociology of Culture: Perspective Not Speciality." Newsletter of the Culture Section of the American Sociological Association 2 (1): 2.

Habermas, Jürgen. 1968a. "Technical Progress and the Social Life-World." In Habermas, Toward a Rational Society, 50-61. Boston: Beacon.

———. 1968b. "Technology and Science as 'Ideology.'" In Habermas, Toward a Rational Society, 31-122. Boston: Beacon.

———. 1981. The Theory of Communicative Action. Vol. 1, Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Boston: Beacon.

Hunt, Lynn. 1984. Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Kane, Anne. 1991. "Cultural Analysis in Historical Sociology: The Analytic and Concrete Forms of the Autonomy of Culture." Sociological Theory 9:1 (spring): 53-69.

Lamont, Michele. 1988. "The Power-Culture Link in a Comparative Perspective." Paper prepared for the Third German-American Theory Conference in Bremen, West Germany.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1963. Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books.

———. 1967. The Savage Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lewis, Jan. 1983. The Pursuit of Happiness: Family and Values in Jefferson's Virginia. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Lukács, Georg. 1971. "Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat." In Lukács, History and Class Consciousness, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Lyotard, Jean-François. 1984. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Mann, Michael. 1985. The Origins of Social Power. Vol. 1. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Marcuse, Herbert. 1963. One-Dimensional Man. Boston: Beacon.

Marx, Karl. 1962. "Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy." In Selected Works, Vol. 1, K. Marx and F. Engels, 361-365. Moscow: International Publishing House.

Merton, Robert K. 1970. Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England. New York: Harper and Row.

Morgan, Edmund. 1958. The Puritan Dilemma. Boston: Little, Brown.

Parsons, Talcott. 1937. The Structure of Social Action. New York: Free Press.

———. 1951. The Social System. New York: Free Press.

———. 1960. "Some Principal Characteristics of Industrial Societies." In Structure and Process in Modern Societies, edited by T. Parsons, 132-168. New York: Free Press.

———. 1966. Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.

———. 1967. "Some Comments on the Sociology of Karl Marx." In Socio -

logical Theory and Modern Society, edited by T. Parsons. New York: Free Press.

Parsons, Talcott, and Gerald Platt. 1973. The American University. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Parsons, Talcott, and Edward Shils. 1951. "Values, Motives, and Systems of Action." In Towards a General Theory of Action, edited by T. Parsons and E. Shils. New York: Harper and Row.

Peirce, Charles. 1985. "Logic as Semiotic: The Theory of Signs." In Semiotics, edited by Robert E. Innis, 1-23. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Pool, Ithiel de Sola. 1983. Forecasting the Telephone. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex.

Pynchon, Thomas. 1984. "Is It O.K. to Be a Luddite?" New York Times Book Review, 23 October, 1.

Rambo, Eric, and Elaine Chan. 1990. "Text, Structure, and Action in Cultural Sociology: A Commentary on 'Positive Objectivity' in Wuthnow and Archer." Theory and Society 19 (1990): 635-648.

Rhoades, Richard. 1987. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Ricoeur, Paul. 1984. Time and Narrative, Vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

———. 1971. "The Model of a Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text." Social Research 38: 529-562.

Rochberg-Halton, E. 1986. Meaning and Modernity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Rueschemeyer, Dietrich. 1986. Power and the Division of Labor. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Sahlins, Marshall. 1976. Culture and Practical Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

———. 1981. Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure in the Early History of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1964. A Course in General Linguistics. London: Owen.

Schluchter, Wolfgang. 1979. "The Paradoxes of Rationalization." In Max Weber's Vision of History, edited by Guenther Roth and W. Schluchter, 11-64. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Sewell, William, Jr. 1980. Work and Revolution in France. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Shils, Edward. 1975. Center and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Smelser, Neil. 1959. Social Change in the Industrial Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Smith, Henry Nash. 1950. Virgin Land. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Swidler, Ann. 1986. "Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies." American Sociological Review 51: 273-286.

Szelenyi, Ivan, and Bill Martin. 1987. "Theories of Cultural Capital and Be-

yond." In Intellectuals, Universities, and the State in Western Modern Societies, edited by Ron Eyerman, L. G. Svensson, and T. Soderquist, 16-49. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Turkle, Sherry. 1984. The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Turner, Victor. 1969. The Ritual Process. Chicago: Aldine.

Weber, Max. 1946a. "Religious Rejections of the World and Their Directions." In From Max Weber, edited by Hans Berth and C. Wright Mills, 323-359. New York: Oxford University Press.

———. 1946b. "The Meaning of Discipline." In From Max Weber, edited by H. Gerth and C. W. Mills, 253-264. New York: Oxford University Press.

———. 1958. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Scribners.

———. 1963. The Sociology of Religion. Boston: Beacon Press.

Wuthnow, Robert. 1987. Meaning and Moral Order. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

12—
Culture and the Locus of Work in Contemporary Western Germany:
A Weberian Configurational Analysis

Stephen Kalberg

An intense discussion in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in the past fifteen years has crystallized around the theme of "the crisis of working society" (Krise der Arbeitsgesellschaft ). Although the debate has offered various unorthodox proposals to combat unemployment (for example, Benseler, Heinze, and Klönne 1982; Bonß and Heinze 1984; Matthes 1983; Offe 1984), a far more fundamental issue has been central: the proper place of work in the postindustrial society. The pivotal concept of de-coupling stands at its center.

In this discussion, work in the postindustrial epoch is understood as constituting only one in a series of activities significant in the formation of a stable sense of self-worth. A de-coupling of work from social status is argued for, indeed to such an extent that occupational life is denied the capacity to monopolize the formation of meaning and self-esteem. Amidst this decline in the hegemonic position of work and the drifting apart, or de-coupling, of meaning and work, other aspects of modern life—leisure, the family, personal relationships, and hobbies—are viewed as significant arenas in reference to which the formation of a sense of self-worth and adequate life-styles can, and should, take place. Thus, the traditionally close relationship among work, income, meaning, and social status is radically called

I would like to thank Hans-Jürgen Giegel, Elliott Krause, Renate Mayntz, Hans-Peter Müller, Richard Münch, Joachim Savelsberg, Neil Smelser, Willfried Spohn, Johannes Weiss, Ansgar Weymann, and Claudia Wies-Kalberg for helpful comments.

into question as work becomes simply one important realm of activity among others (Bahrdt 1983; Dahrendorf 1980, 1983; Guggenberger 1982; Benseler, Heinze, and Klönne 1982). Despite high levels of unemployment throughout Europe, only the German debate has addressed in a sustained manner the fundamental issue of the place of work in principle in postindustrial society. Why, despite high levels of unemployment throughout Europe, has this question arisen in only one postindustrial nation?

This singular debate may unveil aspects of German society of great sociological interest. It may point to the manner in which work is situated in Western Germany^[1] ; that is, it may constitute evidence for the existence of a unique locus for occupational life. Is occupational life in the FRG in fact somehow less elevated than, for example, in the United States and less central for the formation of satisfactory personal identities? Might the radical de-coupling notion that work must be viewed as one sphere among many, all of which should equally contribute to meaning, self-worth, and social status, point indeed to a particular configuration of sociological factors prominent only in contemporary Western Germany?

Does the prestige and centrality of work vary in different postindustrial societies within a dynamic web of past and present cultural and structural forces? The de-coupling debate poses in particular the question of the precise locus for work in present-day German society.^[2] Moreover, it as well raises the question of whether motivation to work in occupational life may vary decisively.

The locus for work in Western German society can be established only in reference to a theoretical framework that inventories not only diverse structural and cultural macrosociological variables but also an analytic typology that surveys the varying possible motivations that stand behind work. Construction of such a theoretical framework constitutes our first task. In reference to this heuristic construct, the precise locus for work in contemporary Western Germany can be established. Procedures in this investigation are highly indebted to those used by Max Weber in his comparative historical writings.^[3] The power of the Weberian framework to capture the significance of cultural variables constitutes one of the major reasons for its use here. Indeed, Weber's configurational strategy of research, as employed here, examines the roles of both structural and cultural forces and the impact of their synchronic and diachronic interaction. In addition, it links macro forces systematically to the intensity of motives to work.

A Weberian Theoretical Framework

Motives for Work

An analytic framework used by Weber, which stands at the foundation of his analysis of the origins of the "spirit" of capitalism (1930), illustrates the ways in which individuals work for different reasons. He distinguishes four analytically distinct motivations behind work.^[4]

The traditional economic ethic sanctifies customary means to satisfy needs. Age-old practices are viewed as fully legitimate simply as a result of their familiarity, proven effectiveness since time immemorial, and enduring usefulness. Workers imbued with this traditional spirit tend to view labor as a necessary evil. For this reason, once the minimum requirements for subsistence are fulfilled, no further incentive exists to work. Because less work is valued more than increased earnings, an increase in wages or piecework rates cannot alter this situation. Indeed, even a doubling of wages will not accelerate production; on the contrary, workers realize that the subsistence wage can be earned in half the time, leaving more time for leisure (Weber 1930, 51, 65–68).

Weber contrasts the traditional economic ethic to the charismatic ethic of "economic supermen" and "adventure capitalists." Whether a Rockefeller, a Fugger, or a Cecil Rhodes, the extraordinary capitalist can be found in an entire array of epochs and civilizations. These "heroic entrepreneurs" work harder than anyone else, systematically run their own businesses, and reinvest profit, which they seek for its own sake and, very often, by whatever means necessary (Weber 1968, 613, 1118, 1930, 51). Means-end rational (zweckrational ) action characterizes this ethic.

Weber also discovered a practical rational ethic . Although devoid of the heroic element, an orientation to sheer means-end rational calculations of advantage prevails here as well. This type of action appears, even in the natural economy, wherever exchange takes place. Wherever the bonds of the traditional economic ethic are loosened or, on the other hand, the "spirit" of capitalism loses its grip upon modern workers and entrepreneurs, this utilitarian ethos of self-interest often arises (Weber 1930, 48–54).

The rational economic ethic, or "spirit" of capitalism, diverges radically in its unequivocal orientation to values (wertrationales Handeln ) and its

understanding of methodical labor as a duty—an internally felt obligation positively valued as an end in itself. As carried by members of Calvinist sects and churches, this economic ethic understands labor as a calling, with punctuality, reliability, industry, self-control, discipline, and frugality as virtues. Neither leisure nor a comfortable life prevails over diligence and systematic labor by entrepreneurs and workers alike, all of whom pursue the goal of continuously increasing wealth. Similarly, honesty is expected in all transactions, and the unscrupulous as well as the ruthless means of acquisition universally present in trade relationships are rejected absolutely. Action in reference to all these values is viewed as part of the individual's moral obligation to his or her calling. Indeed, the specifically ethical character of this rational ethos is evident in its prohibition against using the riches acquired as a result of systematic work, particularly in an ostentatious manner, as well as against the acquisition of luxuries (Weber 1930, 47–58, 62–73; Kalberg 1983).

Due to its great resilience, the traditional work ethic, Weber argues, could be shattered only by orientations to work much stronger than those founded in the calculation of advantage and the sheer pursuit of worldly self-interests. Weber discovered the requisite methodical element only in the rational economic ethic anchored in value-rational action. This anchoring infuses the motivation to work with a greater intensity and stability (Weber 1968, 31, 1930, 75–77, 1951, 226–49). Weber argues that, under certain circumstances, distinctions at the level of motives may well be significant with respect to social change and even to long-range developments, such as the unfolding of modern capitalism.

Thus, his analysis stresses the macrosociological significance of motives. Weber's most salient distinction for a discussion of work in the postindustrial epoch is that between means-end rational—or utilitarian/instrumental—action (the practical rational economic ethic) and valuerational action (the rational economic ethic). A wide variety of instrumental considerations may lie at the base of work motivations, such as the understanding of hard labor as constituting a viable means toward higher status, wealth and increased consumption power, and "the better life" in general. In these cases, purely utilitarian considerations dominate, as occurs whenever individuals view work and the workplace simply as an efficient and even indispensable means toward full social integration. Of course, social integration may be perceived by some persons as a value in itself, as may high social status, the better life, and even the

acquisition of wealth. If this occurs empirically and work is perceived as the valid means toward these values, then work itself becomes endowed with a value premium. Other persons may award a high value premium to a notion of self-realization; if work is perceived as the valid means toward such self-fulfillment, then work again becomes imbued with a value premium. Finally, this occurs as well when individuals believe in the values of disciplined, reliable, and honest work not simply as utilitarian virtues but also as ideals and valid ends and orient their actions accordingly (see Weber 1968, 31, 36).

In these ways, an orientation to values may serve as a significant motivating force. In all these examples work is viewed primarily neither in terms of accustomed modes of life nor in reference to means-end rational calculations of advantage. Frequently, cultural factors (for example, religion and status ethics) bear the responsibility for such a sublimation of work-oriented action from traditional and means-end rational to value-rational motives. Conversely, if the Weberian framework is used, a "decline of the work ethic" can be conceptualized as involving a routinization from predominantly value-rational to utilitarian orientations to work.

This analytic discussion of the diverse possible motivations that underlie work provides a conceptual foundation for this study. Yet this typology of work motives is acontextual. If the locus for work in Western German society is to be identified, it must be supplemented by a macrosociological theoretical framework. Moreover, this framework must be capable of furnishing a configurational component that identifies the manner in which, and despite certain structural tendencies toward homogeneity, the locus of occupational life in postindustrial societies may vary . Just in this respect, as will be noted, cultural forces come to the fore. Only after such an orientational framework has been constructed can an analysis of the sociological location of work in a particular society—the Western German—proceed. Because it is underpinned by the typology of motives just discussed, this analysis will allow as well an assessment of likelihoods regarding the prevalence and intensity of different motives.

Weber's Practiced Methodology:
A Configurational Macrosociology

An assessment of the manner in which the locus of occupational life varies in the different postindustrial societies turns us away

from the traditional structural-functional theories of modernization (Almond and Coleman 1960; Almond and Powell 1966) as well as from the structuralism of Moore (1966) and Skocpol (1979). These schools fail to offer a theoretical framework that assists precise conceptualization of the ways in which significant sociological developments—for example, of citizenship (Kalberg 1992a), public trust, public ethics (Kalberg 1987a), and motivations toward work—diverge in the separate industrial and postindustrial nations. This results in part from an omission of methodologies that conceptualize and identify precisely the interaction of cultural and institutional factors and, particularly in the case of structural functionalism, from an underlying proclivity to see a convergence and fundamental homogeneity across industrial societies. A less linear and more configurational analytic framework is required. Modes of procedures and the methodology Weber employs in his comparative historical sociology provide such a framework. His basic view of society must first be scrutinized. His emphasis upon the interation of historical forces with the present will next be examined and, then, his allocation of a central role, in all macrosociological analysis, to social carriers .

Social Domains: Weber's View of Society. Weber sees fragmentation, tension, rulership, power, and conflict and rejects at the outset the notion of societies as constituting unified entities; he focuses instead upon a broad array of delimited "domains of action" (Bereiche ). For him, because patterned action orientations of individuals—his fundamental unit of analysis in his comparative historical sociology—occur in reference to analytically identifiable spheres of life (the rulership, religious, legal, and economic), universal organizations (the family, the sibling group, and the traditional neighborhood), and status groups rather than in "society," these domains and the subtypes within them constitute the important level of analysis.^[5] Continuous fluctuation, rather than lawfulness of any sort or the priority of a particular domain, characterizes the analytic relationships of these domains to one another, and the patterned —that is, sociologically significant—action orientations of individuals within them captures his attention. He kept the question continuously in mind of whether domain-specific opportunities and constraints —typical social conditions, routine everyday experiences, pragmatic life chances, all of which can be charted as ideal types—could conceivably, and with an identifiable likelihood, call forth analytically specifiable regularities of action.

Economy and Society (Weber 1968) comprises the bountiful yield of his effort to do so. On a truly universal scale, this analytic treatise examines in great detail all sociologically significant domains within which patterned action occurs. To Weber, persons are "placed into various life-spheres, each of which is governed by different laws" (Weber 1946, 123). Moreover, he (1968) investigates thoroughly the analytic interaction of action regularities that occur between the various arenas. Weber maps these hypothetical interactions—such as those between legal and rulership organizations, diverse paths to salvation and types of law, the family and the types of rulership, law and universal organizations, and the status ethics of various status groups and the realms of religion, law, and rulership—in terms of elective affinity and antagonism relationships.

This focus upon a pluralistic array of delimited social domains, the constraints and opportunities that call forth various patterned action orientations within them, and the interactions across realms provides a differentiated theoretical framework that is capable of defining, when employed as a matrix, the distinct and unique contours of the postindustrial society under investigation. Although some combinations of the regular action indigenous to each domain are empirically unlikely, all are analytically possible. Weber attaches a modest purpose to this analytic framework: it offers only a differentiated means of orientation for sociological investigation rather than either a closed conceptual scheme or a knowledge of a particular postindustrial society.

When employed as a theoretical framework, this heuristic matrix is empowered to isolate, inventory, and clearly define sociologically significant empirical variation across postindustrial societies. When used as a means of orientation, it identifies the unique weightings of the various domains, the diverse delimited factors in the particular society under investigation, and the prevalent interactions between the various domains on the one hand and between the various domains and demarcated historical forces on the other. In doing so, this broad-ranging grid locates delineated features, such as citizenship, public trust, or work motivation, in a given postindustrial society. In addition, through comparisons to other postindustrial societies, this analytic framework enables assessments of the extent to which the location of citizenship, public trust, and motivations toward work diverge across societies. As will become apparent, the locus of work can be conceptualized as standing at the intersection of a variety of domains, such as religion, state, prominent status ethics, and family, and society-specific historical fac-

tors. This locus varies in each postindustrial society depending upon the dominant patterns of action typical in these domains, the relationship of the domains to one another, and demarcated past and present factors.

Before undertaking an analysis in reference to contemporary Western German society, a further overriding aspect of Weber's practiced methodology must be explained if the locus of work is to be more precisely ascertained. He attends systematically not only to the synchronic interaction of domains with one another and with delineated historical factors but also to the manner in which the past influences the present.

Past and Present Interaction: The Fundamental Importance of Legacies. Weber's understanding of societies as only loosely held together and as constituted from numerous and diverse competing and reciprocally interacting social domains and demarcated events naturally convinces him of the pivotal significance of the past for any examination of the present. Established domain-specific patterns of action permeate regularly and in multiple, often clandestine, ways into the present. For this reason, he dismisses all dichotomies, such as Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft , particularism/universalism, and tradition/modernity, as far too global, and he opposes as well the view that the impact of the past upon the present remains circumscribed and of little sociological consequence.

Although their sources can be located in a particular epoch, certain regular action orientations always endure and cast legacies across subsequent epochs. Even drastic metamorphoses and the abrupt advent of the "new" never fully rupture ties to the past (Weber 1968, 29). Should a cluster of forces undergo just a slight shift as a result of a discrete event or even a charismatic individual, a reverberating effect may be set into motion and developments that were presumed to have disappeared entirely "may come to light in an entirely new context" (Weber 1976, 366). History, for Weber, is far from banished; it frames the present and interacts repeatedly and significantly with it, indeed to such a degree that any attempt to explain the uniqueness of the present without acknowledgment of historical legacies remains a hopeless task. Even the monumental structural transformations called forth by industrialization failed to sweep away the past. Viable legacies remain.^[6]

Weber's examination of the influence of legacies emphasizes not only the impact of the past upon the present but also the dynamic interaction of past and present. For him—and not surprisingly in light of his view of societies as loosely connected and often conflicting social domains—the interaction itself may introduce an independent, significant, and even

autonomous causal thrust, one capable of reorienting patterned action in unexpected ways.

Social Carriers: The Anchoring of Patterned Action. The practiced methodology of Weber's comparative historical sociology also stresses the importance of social carriers. Patterned action orientations of every imaginable variety have arisen in every epoch and civilization. Yet, if the regular action indigenous to any domain is to become influential and sociologically significant, cohesive and powerful carriers (Träger ) for it must crystallize. In every society, only certain traditional, affectual, value-rational, and means-end rational patterns of action acquire strong exponents and become institutionalized in the social fabric.

Status groups, classes, and organizations with articulated boundaries serve, in Weber's substantive sociology, as the most prominent bearers of action. Each "carries" a configuration of delineated action orientations. Weber notes, for example, the ideal-typical status ethic of the civil servant stratum (duty, punctuality, the orderly performance of tasks, disciplined work habits) (Weber 1968, 956–1003), the ethos of the neighborhood organization (mutual assistance and a "sombre economic 'brotherhood' practised in case of need" [363]), and the class ethos of the bourgeoisie (opposition to privileges based upon birth and status and a favoring of formal legal equality [477–80; see Kalberg 1985]). Attention to such carriers is characteristic of Weber's substantive sociology. It leads him to investigate, for example, whether a powerful bourgeois class arose in China to promote an ethic of formal equality (Weber 1951, 137, 142) and whether such a class could crystallize to "serve as a political force and promote a 'civic' development in the occidental sense" (Weber 1958, 273) in a pre-Meiji Japan dominated by an antagonistic status group: the samurai. If the institutionalization of regular action orientations is to be ascertained, a focus upon carriers is indispensable.

These central postulates and procedures of Weber's comparative historical sociology—an understanding of societies as constituted primarily from delimited social domains, a charting of the manner in which action orientations of varying intensity occur in reference to these domains, an emphasis upon the interaction of action orientations (including those with their sources in the past), and an assessment of the extent to which patterned action becomes institutionalized in strong social carriers—establish a macrosociological framework for examining the diverse possible motives that underlie work. Moreover, these fundamental features of Weber's methodology provide a differentiated means of

orientation that assists identification of the locus of work in the western states of contemporary Germany.

This theoretical framework directs our analysis toward a pluralistic array of social domains and the question of which domains played particularly prominent roles in German society. It points as well to the necessity for an acknowledgment of the configurational dynamic that results from interdomain interaction and the interaction of domain-specific action orientations with delimited events. In addition, it advises that systematic attention to the diverse ways in which prominent historical legacies interact with and influence the present is necessary. Finally, in arguing for an assessment of whether strong social carriers appeared, it evaluates the extent to which regular action orientations become anchored in firm status groups, classes, and organizations. Far from attending simply to structural factors or the present, Weber's configurational analysis perpetually interweaves culture and structure as well as past and present. Only such a mode of analysis is empowered to establish the distinct locus of work in contemporary Western Germany.

Establishing the Locus of Work in Contemporary Western Germany:
A Weberian Configurational Analysis

An identification of the major social domains that influenced work motivations in German history constitutes the first task. Religion and its carriers—churches and sects—are central in this respect. The manner in which action orientations indigenous to this cultural realm interacted with the dominant status groups—the civil servants, or Beamtentum , and the university based literati, or Bildungsbürgertum —in German society on the one hand and the state on the other next captures our attention. The way in which present configurational interactions containing clear historical legacies established a particular locus for work in German society is then addressed in reference to two periods: the end of the nineteenth century and the post-World War II era. By taking special note of the diverse ways in which the rise of a large middle class, postwar affluence, and the various legacies of National Socialism created a unique and dynamic juxtaposition of past and present, in comparison to the early twentieth-century period, the latter discussion establishes the locus of occupational life in the FRG.

The major features of the religious realm in Germany, prominent social carriers, the state, and the singular "weighting" and configurational interactions of domains with one another and historical forces, cannot be defined precisely without a comparative case. The particularity of a given social context cannot be established in isolation; rather, its boundaries and distinctive features become isolated and visible only through comparisons. If uniqueness is to be established, a comparative case is indispensable. Comparisons to the United States at every step of this analysis enable a more exact definition of the locus of work in contemporary Western Germany.^[7] Just such comparisons will illuminate the great importance of cultural factors for the establishment of the locus of work in all postindustrial societies.

Prominent Social Domains and Social Carriers:
Religion, Social Strata, and the State

The Sublimation of Work Motives through the Cultural Sphere of Religion: Lutheranism Versus Ascetic Protestantism. Motivations behind work in both Germany and the American colonies were sublimated from traditional and means-end rational motives and infused with values. Religious beliefs were instrumental in this process. Both in respect to the intensity of the regular action orientations they called forth among believers and the content of the values they articulated, the religious traditions in these countries diverged distinctly. The premiums they placed upon work constitute our exclusive concern here.

What values typically motivated the Lutheran to work? This salvation religion adopted feudalism's respect for craftsmanship and endowed it with systematic qualities. Every believer required a vocation (Beruf ), and the disciplined and reliable performance of tasks in accord with the given standards of one's vocation became a religious duty. Only faith was necessary, in addition, for salvation (Weber 1930, 63–73; Troeltsch 1931; Dillenberger 1961).

Although Luther's notion of Beruf made for clear differences between the Lutheran and the Catholic economic ethics, both churches strongly opposed the impersonality of modern economic relationships and both were designated by Weber as traditional. Weber also notes that the position of Lutheranism with respect to the two classes that grew out of modern capitalism, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, does not in principle vary from the Catholic attitude (Weber 1968,

1197–1198). From the beginning, Luther's concept of worldly vocation stressed that work in the world was itself the factor of utmost importance for salvation. No consequence could be attributed to the particular vocation taken up by a believer, if only because the "pilgrimage of life" was a short one (Weber 1930, 84, 212n.). Thus, no "psychological premiums" adhered to occupational mobility. On the contrary, as Luther's theological thinking developed, he increasingly viewed the particular calling pursued by individuals as the result of a divinely ordered special decree. After the Peasant War, he understood even the entire historical order of things within which each person is placed as a direct manifestation of God's will. As this providential element penetrated more deeply into even the particular events of daily life, the traditional conception of the vocation as well as of social status came to prevail (see Weber 1930, 85).

Because the calling was given by divine ordinance, believers could contemplate the best manner in which to be obedient to God and adapt themselves to their vocations, but they could never entertain the idea of changing their calling or ponder how they could either increase productivity or, through achievement, ensure upward mobility. Unlike Calvinism, Lutheran doctrine placed no strong premium on "success" in the calling; instead, it emphasized the reliable, punctual, and efficient performance of the tasks and duties given by the vocation itself. Nor did religious rewards adhere either to work outside the vocation or to an intensification of labor beyond the standards set by each calling. Moreover, God firmly set the needs for each station in life (Stand ), and Luther saw the acquisition of goods beyond this level as morally suspect and sinful (Weber 1930, 216n., 82n., 213n.). For all these reasons, the Lutheran believer had also to cultivate a certain "distance from the world" and an introspection (Innerlichkeit ); indeed, even a latent mysticism is found in Lutheranism.^[8]

Diligent work habits, for the ascetic Protestant, were not simply a matter of religious duty that served as a supplement to faith, as for the Lutheran; rather, they constituted the pathway to the acquisition of that elusive sense of inner certainty of being among the saved (Weber 1930, 98–128). Among the ethical salvation religions, only the vocational ethic of ascetic Protestantism succeeded, in a principled manner, in systematically unifying an inner-worldly calling with an acquisition of the certitudo salutis . Worldly work in a vocation was awarded with the potential to serve as the appropriate means for believers to convince themselves of their grace and to ameliorate their religious anxiety (We-

ber 1968, 587–588). Moreover, the Calvinist concept of a calling explicitly recognized legal profit from capitalist enterprises as justified and, as Calvinist doctrine developed, "such profit and the rational means of its realization received an ever more positive evaluation" (Weber 1968, 1199). To Weber, the awarding of religious "psychological premiums" of the highest intensity to economic activity in a vocation meant that the Calvinist's search for profit had to be clearly distinguished from mere business astuteness (Geschäftsklugheit ), or the clever making of an individual's way in the world (Lebenstechnik ), both of which lacked an infusion of values and were comprised primarily of means-end rational action alone.

Because it involved a rigid patterning of action on behalf of purely religious goals, asceticism comprehensively uprooted the devout from the status naturalis . This uprooting meant an emancipation from the random flux of daily life and the replacement of action oriented to the world's given morality by the Calvinist ethic of conviction (Gesinnungsethik ), in which ethical action rationally integrated with respect to "meaning, end, and means . . . governed by principles and rules" (Weber 1968, 549) predominated. Weber notes that, because a psychological certainty of salvation could be found only in such a surpassing of everyday routines and not merely in intellectual consistency, "a more intensive form of the religious valuation of ethical action than that which Calvinism produced in its followers has perhaps never existed" (Weber 1930, 115–116, translation altered, original italics; see also 118, 121, 1968, 498, 619). In a radical manner, the entire existence of the devout became penetrated by religious values, and a "'meaningful' total relationship of the pattern of life to the goal of religious salvation" took place (Weber 1968, 578, see also 424, 1951, 247–248, 1946, 357). Thus, the labor demanded by God of the Calvinist devout—disciplined, methodical work in a calling—existed only as an expression of his or her desire for otherworldly salvation and did not originate out of a striving for terrestrial success. On the contrary, systematic labor was viewed as the single means to prove membership among the predestined elect. This fact alone endowed the Calvinist's work ethic with its internalized and obligatory—or ethical —quality. To Weber, the methodical rational way of life of the inner-worldly ascetic was centrally determined "from the inside" (von innen heraus ) by deeply internalized religious values (see Weber 1951, 243–244).

The Lutheran attitude toward work, like the medieval Catholic, provided the basis for a less hectic and more comfortable, or gemütlich , style

of life. The ascetic component, above all, infused ascetic Protestantism with its unusually strong capacity to defend ethical action against all heretical challenges and to transform difficulty and extreme stress into virtues. Although German Lutheranism and Catholicism also firmly upheld action in reference to ethical values, no inner-worldly asceticism existed in these religions. Believers here were provided with institutionalized means of redeeming themselves from sin: the exercise of faith for the Lutheran and good works and the confession for the Catholic. Such modes of acknowledging creaturely weakness were not offered to Calvinists; they stood alone before their God and without the help of a church, priests, or the sacraments to intercede for them. Moreover, Lutheranism's traditional economic ethic prevented it from attempting to dominate or transform the world, as did Calvinism, in the name of comprehensive ethical goals. Even though the Protestantism of Luther represented a distinct break from medieval Catholicism, it failed to introduce asceticism. Even though it cultivated a craftsmanship ideal and understood methodical labor as a religious duty, it never managed to sever traditional economic dualism (Weber 1930, 79–92).

Thus, with respect to both the content of religious values and the intensity of religious belief as they relate to attitudes and motives regarding work, Catholicism and Lutheranism significantly differ from ascetic Protestantism. The doctrines of Lutheranism and ascetic Protestantism, in particular, articulated clear, though varying , values with respect to work. Despite secularization in both Germany and the United States, each religion left distinct legacies. These legacies in Germany, anchored in strong churches and sect carriers, interacted with prominent status groups in the nineteenth century: the civil service stratum (Beamtentum ) and the intellectuals (Bildungsbürgertum ).

The Stratification and Cultural Configuration: The Beamtentum and Bildungsbürgertum as Prominent Carriers in Nineteenth-Century Germany . The French Enlightenment and classical liberalism, which were embraced unequivocably on American soil and provided very optimistic assessments of individuals as strong and as capable of shaping (in reference to worldly activity) their own destinies, met with ambivalence and reaction in nineteenth-century Germany (Mosse 1964, 148; Löwenthal 1970, 14–22). It was widely believed, particularly among the German romantics and the cultivated intellectuals of the Bildungsbürgertum , that both of these schools of thought conceived the individual as too isolated, too detached from the Gemeinschaft , and too

separated from social ties. Moreover, because German liberalism lacked a carrier bourgeoisie strong enough to stand effectively against the social privileges and particularism of the feudal aristocracy and the Beamtentum caste of state civil servants, it remained weak. As a consequence, the state, to avoid a position of extreme inferiority vis-à-vis the Anglo-Saxon powers, became an unusually consistent and powerful advocate of industrialization. This took place to such an extent that the German bourgeoisie, far from asserting its independence from the Prussian state and opposing it, adapted broadly to its bureaucratic and military hierarchical structures (Bendix 1978, 378–430; Veblen 1966; Dahrendorf 1967, 3–206; Bussman 1958; Mann 1975, 193–233).

The weakness of the German bourgeoisie and its failure to develop an independent posture hindered the development, as Germany industrialized, of a legitimizing ideology of equal opportunity and a "rags-to-riches" optimism that praised unabashedly a steady ascendance to the peaks of wealth and success. This vacuum allowed romanticism, in various forms, to flourish. Unusually strong variants permeated nineteenth-century Germany and established, on the one hand, a strong anticapitalism and antimodernity tradition and, on the other hand, a protective boundary around the private sphere. This firm boundary served to insulate the family and the socialization of children from the corrupting influence of industrialization (see Craig 1982; Walker 1971; Brunschwig 1975; Kalberg 1987a). Nor could Germans, hampered by their elaborate apprenticeship system and the enduring strength of the old feudal craftsmanship ideal, easily become upwardly mobile. On the contrary, a traditionalist economic ethic prevailed that viewed a change of occupation as suspect, especially in light of a prominent legacy left by Luther—his enduring admonition to the believer to "stay in your vocation."

Given this particular stratification and cultural configuration, the aggrandizement of authoritarian state power throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century had fateful consequences, not least for work motivations and occupational life in general in Germany. A cohesive and powerful civil service stratum became the predominant status group, and its status ethic—duty, service, obedience, loyalty to the state, reliability, objectivity, and discipline—reinvigorated the fading legacy of the Lutheran economic ethic and notion of Beruf . Its values, consequently, acquired a new viability and retarded its routinization to means-end rational action. Moreover, a Bildungsbürgertum of cultivated literati set the standards of the idealized German Kulturnation until the

1930s. This stratum, as well as the Beamtentum , stigmatized rugged competition and upward mobility in general. As Germany industrialized, the attainment of the lifelong security offered by the civil service position prevailed as an ideal among members of its central social strata, the Bildungsbürgertum and the Beamtentum , rather than risk taking on behalf of a hope for wealth (Ringer 1969; Conze and Kocka 1985; Engelhardt 1986; Kocka 1981).

Thus, work motivation in Germany remained, in the nineteenth century, clearly infused with values. However, unlike the individualism of extreme self-reliance that arose from the ascetic protestant sects and churches and the "small state" tradition in America, these values did not place high premiums upon a heroic notion of work; they did not view work as the single means toward world mastery and the shaping of individual destinies. Nor were they located within a stratification and cultural context that viewed upward mobility without ambivalence. Americans were better able to see social mobility as wholly positive.

Lacking the enduring tradition of romanticism that emphasized the organicism of the Gemeinschaft and the integration of the individual into an organic Volk^[9] and embracing modern capitalism as promising emancipation from the past and even rags-to-riches success, Americans placed work on a pedestal. Americans in the nineteenth century, as had their Calvinist ancestors, widely viewed work as the single means to attain "the good life" and allowed an aggrandizing, all-consuming, and heroic notion of it to penetrate even into the family's socialization practices. By the turn of the century, a social Darwinism of "opportunity" and "survival of the fittest," carried by a powerful bourgeoisie, had crystallized as a legitimizing ideology (Sumner 1906; Hofstadter 1944; Konwitz and Kennedy 1960).

Because opportunities in the industrializing United States to acquire riches were now pronounced as available to all and individuals were believed to be strong and capable of mastering worldly adversity and shaping their own destinies, hard work alone separated the poor from the wealthy. Concomitantly, the old Calvinist stigmatization of the poor was revived; the impoverished were believed to be not only lazy but also of poor moral character. Moreover, those who labored intensely were promised not only material gain and high social status but access to political power as well, for no cohesive upper class or caste of civil servants existed to block the route toward political office and power. In the American stratification and cultural context, a pragmatic, world-oriented notion of work had become again imbued in a manifold manner

with values, indeed values inseparable from an American understanding of itself as the "land of opportunity." Once again, methodical work had been awarded a special place: endowed earlier with a central role in one's salvation, work, as well as entrepreneurial activity and upward mobility, became infused with a wide array of secular values. This occurred just when the possibility loomed that the prevalent American work motivation might become routinized back to purely utilitarian and means-end rational action.

The strong emphasis in the particular American stratification and cultural configuration upon world mastery through entrepreneurial activity tended to overwhelm all countervailing forces. The juxtaposition of an ascetic Protestant heritage with a strong bourgeoisie, a Horatio Alger and social Darwinist ideology, a prevalent conception of modern capitalism as offering opportunities, and a weak state bestowed—especially in a comparative perspective—an unusually high social status upon particular strata: businessmen and entrepreneurs.^[10]

The German stratification and cultural configuration not only implied far greater ambivalence in regard to the capitalist entrepreneur but also articulated competing prestigious strata: the Bildungsbürgertum and the Beamtentum . After the middle of the nineteenth century, the Bismarckian state tradition itself tended to bestow unusually high social status upon the civil servant. While the functionary generally, in the name of a larger aim of securing German state power, supported the economic ends of the capitalist class and its preference for a cartellization of German industry, this fact, as well as Germany's rapid industrialization, failed to endow entrepreneurs with a social standing equal to that of the Beamtentum (Conze and Kocka 1985; Engelhardt 1986; Kocka 1981). The traditions of this status group and a reverence for its institution, the state, were too firmly established for this to occur. Furthermore, the other great pillar of high prestige in German society, the literati Bildungsbürgertum , placed German Kultur on a pedestal and expressed scorn for capitalist activity as well as, very frequently, modernity, Anglo-Saxon Zivilisation , and the "mass society" in general (Ringer 1969; Stern 1965; Elias 1969; Epstein 1977; Kalberg 1987a).

Thus, at the turn of the century, a tripartite occupational prestige structure could be found in German society, one characterized by competition between state civil servants, professors and academics, and capitalists. The bourgeoisie constituted clearly the weaker link in this structure. Moreover, the more prestigious groups—the Bildungsbürgertum and the Beamtentum —idealized contemplative values, learning, job se-

curity, and the dutiful execution of tasks, rather than risk taking and the activity-oriented heroic individualism of the "self-made man." The prevalence of such ideals, as well as an image of systematic work in the world as the means to shape personal destiny and to acquire the fruits offered by a "land of opportunity," confronted in the United States no countervailing force capable of moderating the prestige of entrepreneurial activity. Least of all, neither American academics, who confronted widespread populism, nor civil servants, who stood within a small state tradition, could challenge the high social status of the entrepreneur.

Another social domain arose to prominence in the nineteenth century in Germany, indeed one that, as a powerful social carrier, tended further to institutionalize legacies of the classical Lutheran notion of work in German society: the state. Again, comparisons to the United States will facilitate isolation of the distinct contours of the German development.

The Strong State. In the United States, political freedoms and personal liberties have always been understood as involving freedom from state interference. Early on, the strong Enlightenment, liberal, and ascetic Protestant traditions effectively opposed the development of a strong state. Moreover, given the widespread ascetic Protestant and Jeffersonian populist trust in the common man—his virtuousness, good character, self-reliance, independence, and capacity to use wisely his political freedom—and, as Tocqueville emphasized, the ubiquitous presence of civil associations and churches, no necessity arose for protective and strong government. As a result of this unique configuration of factors, and in addition to the historical fact that the original immigrants arrived on American shores with hopes of exercising their rights to religious expression free from arbitrary state intervention, the state became viewed as a danger to all individual freedom and as correctly empowered to exercise only minimal functions. Furthermore, the firm embrace of capitalism and entrepreneurship, which was rooted deeply in the dominant religious tradition, assisted the development of a powerful bourgeoisie. This class then directly opposed the aggrandizement of state power, articulated an ideology that emphasized the beneficent side of capitalism, and perceived a compatibility between this economic system and justice and democracy.

There prevailed in Germany, not a small-state tradition, but, as noted, a view of the state as correctly playing a powerful advocacy role in behalf of industrialization. The uniquely German configuration—a

powerful state and civil servant stratum, a comparatively weak bourgeoisie and civil society, a bestowing of high social prestige upon a literati status group, and a skepticism regarding the individual's capacity, as espoused by liberalism and the Enlightenment, to transform worldly evils—not only restricted the power of capitalism to stand against the state but also oriented Germans directly to the state. They viewed the state and its civil servants as responsible for employment and as "protectors" of the public's welfare against an economic system widely perceived as disruptive of the Gemeinschaft and inherently unjust and exploitative. By 1889, this Vaterstaat offered an array of measures to insulate its citizens against the burdens imposed by urbanization and industrialization, such as unemployment insurance, health insurance, accident insurance, and social security (Born 1975, 149).

The crystallization in the latter half of the nineteenth century of these differing views of the state and the proper role it should play in respect to the capitalist economy and the welfare of citizens strengthened and institutionalized core values in the respective German and American religious traditions and cultural and stratification configurations, thereby ensuring their continued capacity to orient action. Thus, for example, unemployment in the United States was understood as an individual concern and explained in terms of personality traits (laziness, lack of initiative, poor moral character, and so on). As a consequence of the American tradition of heroic individualism founded in ascetic Protestantism and reinforced throughout the nineteenth century, a proclivity to oppose all structural views of unemployment was set into motion.^[11] The German industrializing experience in this respect stood at nearly the opposite end of the spectrum. The state, not the individual, was generally held responsible for unemployment, and capitalism was widely assumed to be a flawed economic system that inherently required, for the maintenance of economic stability, the regular interference by and assistance of the state (Plessner 1974). Thus, not exhortation to greater effort, more initiative taking by individuals, or upward mobility, but an alteration of state economic policy in behalf of a more effective protection of the population against capitalism, was deemed appropriate whenever economic problems persisted. These different views of the proper role of the state regarding unemployment had congealed clearly by the end of the nineteenth century.

In playing a paternal role, the strong German state sought to insulate its citizens against not only the irregular swings of the modernizing capitalist economy but also the disorder brought about by rapid urban-

ization and the new civil society. The bestowing of high prestige upon the German state and its Beamtentum and a strong protective function allowed the legal regulation, in behalf of order and social harmony, of the many institutions of this society (Kocka 1981; Kocka and Ritter 1974; Craig 1978). These institutions, such as the schools, the universities, and the economy, were viewed in the United States as fundamentally belonging to the private sphere and beyond the legitimate grasp of centralized state control.

Perhaps the argument could be made that the locus of work in the contemporary FRG must be understood in reference to a putative general ambivalence toward work among the Germans. This ambivalence could be surmised to result, most importantly, from the strong social welfare state tradition, the comparative weakness of the German bourgeoisie and its failure to articulate a rags-to-riches legitimating ideology of opportunity, the strength of German romanticism's introspection and antimodernism, and the awarding of paramount social status to two strata, each of which articulated quasicontemplative status ethics: the Bildungsbürgertum and Beamtentum . Such a conclusion, however, would be premature.^[12] Only a more configurational analysis, one that acknowledges the interaction of the past with the present, will enable an accurate location of work and occupational life in the FRG.

The particular turn-of-the-century dynamic that resulted from the German juxtaposition of a strong state and civil servant stratum with a weak civil society and parliamentary democracy must be first examined. While reinvigorating further the values of the Lutheran notion of Beruf , this dynamic, because it called forth a revival of German romanticism, also sustained the private sphere. This development became manifest among some social groups in the form of a withdrawal from occupational life and an alienation from modern office and factory work as such. The unique locus of work in contemporary Western Germany cannot be established without noting the strong legacies left by this configuration.

Past and Present I:
The Turn-of-the-Century Configuration in Germany and the Establishment of Public Trust

An array of values that strongly legitimated parliamentary democracy failed to permeate the developing civil society of nineteenth-

century Germany. This fact, however, neither implied the hegemony of means-end rational calculations and power in the civic realm nor led to societal breakdown and chaos. Rather, public trust, carried by the Beamtentum and the state, crystallized. While the status ethic of this stratum and the constellation of values that justified the strong state provided neither a firm foundation for the unfolding of democratic political institutions nor social egalitarianism, they did strongly uphold and nourish the values of the Lutheran notion of Beruf . A clear definition of the German "strong state-weak civil society" configuration and an assessment of its consequences with respect to the locus of occupational life can be best undertaken after another brief comparison to the United States.

The Contrast Case: The Establishment of Public Trust through a Strong Civil Society in the United States . Americans believe strongly that the common good is best served whenever individuals are left free from state interference to pursue their self-interests. Formulated most succinctly by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations as well as by English utilitarianism and liberalism, this notion has always appeared unrealistic and even dangerous to German philosophers and social thinkers. It became, however, broadly based in nineteenth-century American society. More than any other nation, the United States accepted the French Enlightenment's optimism regarding the capacity of individuals to shape their own destinies and its conception of the "common man" as inherently virtuous. It also embraced wholeheartedly the social Darwinist belief, as formulated by Spencer and Sumner, in the inevitability of evolutionary progress. An indigenous social carrier of the trust of others that permeated American public life, however, also existed in early American history: the inner-worldly asceticism of the Protestant sects and churches.

Membership alone in a sect or church established the ascetic Protestant's reputation as an honest merchant who offered a just price in all business transactions. Indeed, because believers' reputation for fair play and truthfulness in all financial matters was widespread, even nonbelievers preferred to conduct business with them. With the Protestant sects and churches as its carrier, trust extended beyond the intimate bonds of the family and became awarded to others—as long as they were members of a Protestant sect or church (Weber 1930, 98–128, 155–185, 1946, 302–322).

Although great differences existed by region, Protestant asceticism's

successful introduction of trust into economic relationships carried over into the domain of politics and formulated a strong national ideal of truthfulness, good will, and fair play for public life. These religious values resonated well with the optimistic views of the individual as virtuous that were prevalent in both English liberalism and the French Enlightenment and facilitated their broad reception. In addition, this American religious tradition tended to support social egalitarianism and democratic self-rule. Uncontested by a feudal tradition of hierarchical social relations and authoritarian rulership, these values could spread relatively easily in America. The ascetic Protestant believed that the earthly ruler, like all men, was obligated to uphold God's commandments. As his servant and as merely an instrument for the realization of his Divine Plan, the earthly ruler stood "below" his divinity. Should the ruler act otherwise, believers were dutifully bound to rebel against the kingdom. Thus, through their religious beliefs, subjects were endowed with both the right to judge the acts of rulers and the obligation to overthrow all who failed to follow God's laws (Hill 1964; Miller 1961; Herr 1981; Weber 1930, 98–128).

These values of social egalitarianism and an optimism regarding the capacities of individuals not only established a firm foundation for public trust but also legitimated a constellation of values antagonistic to all "strong" government. This brief overview provides a comparative case in reference to which the mode of establishing trust in German civil society can be isolated.

Germany: The Dominance of the Beamtentum and Strong State, the Weakness of Civil Society, and the Withdrawal into the Private Sphere . Lutheranism failed to sever the traditional economic dualism: trust toward blood relations and distrust of others (Weber 1930, 79–92; Dillenberger 1961; Troeltsch 1931). Thus, a generalization of trust beyond the family and sibling group and into business transactions could not take place, with this religion as its carrier, as industrialization proceeded in the nineteenth century. As with medieval Catholic e entrepreneurs, financial dealings with Lutherans occurred in reference to the old motto—caveat emptor —rather than to the ascetic Protestant axiom of trust and fair play. Furthermore, because it was not a strong class in Germany and it lacked a firm sense of itself as independent, the bourgeoisie, like Lutheranism, was unable to carry effectively a notion of social trust that embraced functional relationships in the rapidly expanding economic sphere. Nor was the bourgeoisie a strong carrier of legal

equality and an effective opponent, as it had been in Holland, England, and France, of the social privileges and particularism of the feudal aristocracy (Veblen 1966; Dahrendorf 1967, 3–206; Bussman 1958; Mann 1975, 193–233; Kocka and Ritter 1974; Walker 1971).

Moreover, no strong religious organization served as a carrier of parliamentary democracy and social egalitarianism in Germany. Lutheranism, in denying the right of believers to revolt against the prince and in rejecting the position that rulers could be held accountable before God by their subjects, failed to challenge a rigid class structure and authoritarian divisions between rulers and ruled. The impulse toward social egalitarianism introduced by ascetic Protestantism was lacking in Luther's teachings. For him, no equality before God reigned; rather, even if rulers were exploitative and in violation of God's commandments, religious duty required obedience to the state (Dillenberger 1961, 363–402; Troeltsch 1931). Furthermore, feudal rulership, which remained widespread until the mid-nineteenth century, constituted direct domination. Finally, the French Enlightenment, an ideology of equality and open opportunity, met with a strong German reaction and also failed to legitimize a civil society of egalitarianism (Mosse 1964, 13–148; Löwenthal 1970, 14–22; Brunschwig 1975).

Thus, not a trust in the virtue and good judgment of the "common man" and a belief in social egalitarianism, but a widespread suspicion of democracy, political parties, and modernity, particularly among members of the Bildungsbürgertum and the Beamtentum , permeated the political arena in late nineteenth-century Germany. Yet, although it lacked strong carriers of egalitarianism and democracy, public trust was not absent; rather, it was carried by the Beamtentum and the state. A Lutheran respect for and obedience to the state and its laws established public trust in German civil society, as did the values of the Beamtentum: duty, service, obedience, order, loyalty to the state, and discipline in the performance of tasks.^[13]

In confirming Lutheran and Prussian legacies, which viewed the state as possessing an inherent dignity as well as legitimacy above and beyond its citizens' wishes, these accomplishments enhanced the power and prestige of the state and its civil servants. In the process, public trust became tied even more closely to the values of this stratum and this institution. The old Lutheran notion of Beruf thus acquired a new and more widespread viability, to the extent that the values carried by civil servants and the state expanded beyond their respective boundaries (Elias

1989). The weakness of parliamentary democracy and social egalitarianism created a vacuum that allowed this development, yet it was carried by an entrenched institution, one that conveyed and cultivated the Lutheran values of Beruf: the elaborate and state-supported apprenticeship system of training workers. The values associated with the status ethic of civil servants and the authority of the state, rather than social egalitarianism, populism, and individual liberties on the one hand or avarice, wealth, and ostentatious consumption on the other, became the dominant value constellation in German civil society (Rosenberg 1931, 1–33; Sell 1953; Holborn 1981, 227–407; Greiffenhagen 1981, 54–129; Kocka 1981; Weber 1968, 1381–1469).

Thus, as industrialization and urbanization proceeded rapidly, individuals became linked with occupational life and the German nation not simply through means-end rational action in behalf of economic survival and the desire to accumulate wealth, or only through an emotional attachment to the munificent social welfare state, but also as a consequence of an array of values that bestowed trust upon the expanding civil society. Although these Lutheran values found major social carriers in the Beamtentum and the Prussian state, they constituted at the turn of the century, as a result of the high prestige and vast power of this stratum and the state, values respected across broad sectors of German society. These values were challenged repeatedly by the aspirations of the working class for social egalitarianism, viable parliamentary democracy, and economic justice, as well as by sheer means-end rational action in behalf of survival. Nonetheless, the apprenticeship system, the Lutheran churches, and the paternal ethos of the manifold and powerful German social welfare state carried the values of the Beamtentum and the Prussian state far and wide throughout German society.

While the Lutheran notion of Beruf and a high respect for the authority of the state left very strong legacies, a particular consequence of the German mode of formulating public trust became, for an establishment of the locus of work, just as important. Because the values dominant in German civil society—duty, obedience, respect for authority, order, and so on—were widely perceived as antagonistic to the person-oriented values of compassion indigenous to the family, they failed to foster a bridging and thorough intertwining of the two domains as took place in Colonial America and the United States. Instead, these civil values set into motion a dynamic that articulated and then solidified a severe division between all "public sphere" social relationships outside the

home and the private sphere of family and Freunde .^[14] How did this occur?

The specific values carried by the German state and the status ethic of civil servants stood opposed to an array of modern values endowed with far greater potential to bridge public and private spheres: individual rights and personal freedoms, populism, and social egalitarianism. Moreover, and although in Germany widely deemed appropriate as well as indispensable to the stability of occupational and even political life, the values carried by the state and the Beamtentum stood severely in opposition to the private sphere of deep intimacy and compassion, all the more so because this domain had been distinctly strengthened first by the Innerlichkeit of Lutheranism and then by nineteenth-century romanticist movements.

Thus, the family stood in stark contrast to the "impersonal" values carried by the German state and the status ethic of its civil servants and to the purely conventional and functional (sachlich ) relationships, power, and domination that characterized the occupational, political, and economic domains. This polarization became so severe by the early twentieth century that the formal and hierarchical character of social relationships in all public spheres called forth a reaccentuation of the private sphere. In the process, the old romanticism that idealized the values of intimacy and the organic harmony of the Gemeinschaft was further rejuvenated as was the latent mysticism and introspection in Lutheranism. Clear barriers arose against industrialized society's impersonal and merely functional relationships, which were characterized by great social distance. Germans cherished the private sphere's intimacy, defined it as at the foundation of "the good life," and elevated further their idealization of the family^[15] and of the spiritual and emotional dimensions of the deep friendship, or Freundschaft , relationship. By the turn of the century, a deprecation of the Gesellschaft had become widespread and the family had become widely viewed as a refuge against the "anonymity" and "homogeneity" of the German civil society (Kalberg 1987a). This period constituted "the golden age of privacy" (Kruse 1980, 39): "There are epochs in which every conviction flees into the family. . . . Hearth and home is now and will remain the secure refuge of the sincere life, a general union of humanity" (Gutzkow 1963, 7).

To the extent that the private sphere stood effectively against the values of the Beamtentum and the state, the prestige of occupation life and its legitimating constellation of values declined. Wherever this occurred, a routinization of the civil servant's status ethic back to instru-

mental orientations in respect to work and to civil society in general threatened to become widespread. Moreover, a withdrawal and alienation from these domains spread more easily. Although this latter course of action was available only to a few, particularly youth and students (see Becker 1946), the instrumental view of occupational life increasingly challenged the Lutheran notion of Beruf and the values of the Beamtentum . To the same degree, work became understood as simply necessary for economic survival. It was also viewed, as urbanization and industrialization advanced, as an indispensable and purely functional means of integrating individuals socially and psychologically into the "impersonal" industrial society.^[16]

This German configuration contrasts sharply with the American. The values of the American economic and political domains deeply permeated, virtually unobstructed, the private sphere. Social egalitarianism, individual liberties, and parliamentary democracy were evaluated extremely positively as were those legitimating values of a strong bourgeois class: competition, achievement, upward mobility, opportunity, and the striving for worldly abstract goals. Indeed, a consensus surrounded these values and, in combination, they reinvigorated social trust. They, moreover, were taught in the family as ideals, were reinforced in friendship relations, and, under the rubric of "good citizenship," became central in the curriculum of the public schools (Cleveland 1927). Securely anchored in American society by a singular configuration—a particular religious tradition, a strong bourgeoisie, and a weak state—these values remained favorably evaluated. Even as industrialization advanced, their thrust remained unchallenged by, for example, a strong romanticism that would extoll the organic harmony of the Gemeinschaft and would mistrust strong, activity-oriented individualism. Patterned action in reference to the values dominant in American civil society was believed to ensure progress on the path to worldly success and the good life, and thus a maximum penetration of the private realm by the public sphere could take place. In turn, socialization processes in the family reinforced the public sphere, indeed to such an extent that the boundary between these two domains became porous and difficult to define (Kalberg 1987a).^[17]

In Germany, on the other hand, amid rapid structural change, the state and its legitimating ethos as well as the status ethic of the Beamtentum called forth social trust. The values of these social carriers, however, were not capable of supporting incipient movements toward social egalitarianism and parliamentary democracy coming from the left and left-center.

On the contrary, the impersonal and functional values prevalent in the occupational, economic, and political domains in Germany facilitated the unfolding of a severe polarization: the private life of the family was increasingly in opposition to the social conventions and social distance characteristic of the formalized and hierarchical relationships prevalent in German civil society.^[18] A dynamic crystallized, one that would, in reaffirming the boundaries placed originally by Lutheranism around the private sphere, cast a long shadow into twentieth-century Germany. Just this division and the prominence it bestowed upon the private sphere resulted in a widespread ambivalence toward competition and functional relationships, the establishment of a delineated countervailing force in opposition to occupational life and its aggrandizement, and a high salience of private sphere relationships. Among some groups, withdrawal from modern occupational life seemed the only appropriate and honorable course.^[19]

This configuration—a polarization of public and private spheres and the establishment of public trust by a strong stratum and institution that did not carry the values of parliamentary democracy or social egalitarianism—left prominent legacies. Tripartite orientations toward work resulted from it at the turn of the century: (1) a predominant orientation characterized by motivations in reference to the constellation of values implied by the status ethic of the Beamtentum and the Prussian state; (2) the means-end rational orientations of large segments of the new, urban working class that, despite the success of the apprenticeship system in institutionalizing central features of this status ethic and the Lutheran notion of Beruf, assessed work in terms of economic survival and as simply a means of securing a social and psychological integration into the "impersonal" industrial society; and (3) an alienation from the patterns of action expected in the workplace and a withdrawal from occupational life.

However deeply entrenched, this early twentieth-century pluralism of orientations to work did not simply endure unchanged to the present-day. Rather, significant historical events and developments called forth patterned action orientations in reference to new values, and these interacted dynamically with early twentieth-century legacies. As a consequence, the weighting of the factors in the turn-of-the-century tripartite pluralism became altered. Scrutiny of just this transformation constitutes the final stage in this Weberian configurational analysis of the locus of work in present-day Western Germany.

Past and Present II:
The Decline of the Beamtentum and the Equal Competition of Work Motivations in the Frg

Whereas action orientations to the array of values associated with the status ethic of the civil servant stratum tended at the end of the nineteenth century in Germany to remain dominant over purely instrumental motivations and alienation and withdrawal from occupational life, a more open and equal competition between those orientations of action characterizes work motivations in the FRG. National Socialism and its legacies and the advent of affluence and a broad middle class in the 1960s were pivotal in bringing about this important shift. The resulting changes challenged the predominant orientation of work to the values of the status ethic of the Beamtentum and the Prussian state. How did this metamorphosis occur?

The concern to reconstruct a devastated economy united citizens of the young FRG in the immediate postwar years. Economic survival, for most, was the only issue. Later on, fueled by memories of the Weimar period and both wartime and immediate postwar chaos, an obsession with economic security took its place (Sontheimer 1971, 25–39). While reconstruction and the "economic miracle" in the fifties had given new sustenance to the disciplined performance of tasks and a dutiful execution of one's vocation, three developments in the sixties and seventies combined to call into question and even undermine the resurgence of these traditional values, particularly in the younger generation.

First, with the end of the economic reconstruction era, the growth of a large middle class, the advent of widespread affluence, and the establishment of a comprehensive social welfare state by the mid-sixties, direct necessity no longer served to strengthen the traditional notion of Beruf and the status ethic of the Beamtentum . As occurred in the United States in the late sixties, the entire work ethic was overtly challenged by values espoused by a younger generation. However, this work ethic had been carried in German history above all by a particular stratum: the civil servants. This status group became widely discredited because of its association with National Socialist authoritarianism and a posture of loyalty and subservience to the state.

The resulting decline in the prestige of the state and the Beamtentum was accelerated and intensified in the late seventies and early eighties by

a second development. An investigation and acknowledgment of the horrors of the Holocaust could take place only at a distance. The second and even third generations, not the war generation, initiated the discussion (Herf 1980). As the questioning continued, the Lutheran and Prussian values of duty, order, obedience, and unquestioned allegiance to the state that were central to the status ethic of the Beamtentum and the authority of the state were further indicted among the younger generations. Now perceived as responsible for horrendous evils committed under National Socialism, these values became suspect.

Third, the decline of the prestige that had traditionally surrounded civil servants and the state was particularly marked in German society simply because of its customary mode of formulating social trust—through the values of just this stratum and a respect for the state. Now, in the sixties, trust could no longer be established in this manner. The resulting vacuum, however, did not prove irredeemable. Rather, postwar stability under a new form of government gradually called forth new values and these provided social trust—those values of the democratic political culture that were previously absent.

By the late seventies, a distinct trend away from the low levels of "civic competence" that traditionally characterized German political culture had been documented. Higher levels of social trust appeared and ideological differences and hostility between the major parties declined. More open elites now governed. Nonvoting participation and activism, from grass-roots initiatives (Bürgerinitiativen ) to demonstrations, became common; they were, moreover, viewed as legitimate by a high percentage of the population. Loyalty and pride in their democratic form of government increased continuously among German citizens.^[20] Concomitantly, cynicism toward political institutions and the percentage of individuals reporting a sense of powerlessness declined significantly. Support for the cornerstone values of representative democracy—freedom of expression, civil liberties, trust in government—increased. A politics devoid of broad economic and social policy shifts and rooted in a basic consensus came to dominate the FRG.^[21]

In sum, a distinct and general democratization of German society and political culture occurred in the sixties and seventies. A social egalitarianism opposed to the authoritarian demeanor arose. No longer bound closely and exclusively to the state and the Beamtentum as its carrier, social trust in German society became increasingly anchored in a sense of pride in a stable political system and the values of parliamentary democracy (Schoonmaker 1989; Baldwin 1989).

As at the turn of the century, Germany's mode of anchoring public trust would have great consequences, not least of all in respect to work motivations and the locus of work. This time, however, the establishment of public trust was not linked closely to a constellation of values—the status ethic of the Beamtentum —that placed premiums directly upon disciplined, reliable, and systematic work in a vocation. Rather, while establishing social trust, the values of the FRG's democratic political institutions failed to reinvigorate and carry the old Lutheran notion of Beruf; on the contrary, these traditional values engendered suspicion and even disdain.

The American situation offers a distinct contrast in this regard. A continuity of development is characteristic, and, despite the turmoil of the sixties, the very array of values that define the American ideology—opportunity, individual achievement, social egalitarianism, upward mobility, individual liberties, freedom from government interference—were not discredited by their association with abhorrent events. American values not only continued to offer a foundation for a strong ideal of public trust but also continued to place work on a pedestal: hard work constituted the single most appropriate means for Americans to overcome obstacles and shape their own destinies. Thus, the workplace became bound intimately to America's view of itself. Wherever American ideals empirically infused occupational life, work motivations were sublimated away from mere means-end rational calculations.

No such constellation of values arose in the FRG to challenge and displace instrumental orientations toward work. No Horatio Alger rags-to-riches ideology of opportunity and upward mobility ethos underpins the view Germans hold of themselves (Craig 1982). On the contrary, all these factors—the advent of affluence, the association of the status ethic of civil servants with authoritarianism on the one hand and the Holocaust on the other, and the formation of public trust on the basis of a new, democratic political culture—pointed in the same direction: they opposed a bestowal of values explicitly upon work motivations. These factors tended to weaken the old notion of Beruf, the values associated with the status ethic of the Beamtentum, and the paternal ethos of the Prussian state, indeed to such an extent that these values increasingly lost their turn-of-the-century salience and capacity to legitimate action—that is, to sublimate action away from sheer means-end rational calculations—in the workplace. These values had become weakened and even discredited by the 1970s, especially among large segments of the younger generation. Thus, a clear impediment to the

routinization of value-rational action in occupational life back to means-end rational action no longer existed. Self-interest and instrumental orientations of action toward personal advantage could more easily prevail. Work became viewed on the one hand as necessary for survival and economic security and, as German society became wealthier, as indispensable for the accumulation of consumer goods and the securing of high social status and on the other hand as an effective mode of integrating individuals socially and psychologically into the industrial society.

Now less thoroughly imbued with values, work motivations themselves failed to place strong obstacles to—and perhaps even facilitated—another development, one that would further oppose any attempts to endow occupational life with either an array of supportive values or an elevated status above other social domains: the revival in the seventies of the private sphere. This strong legacy was latent in the period of reconstruction in the fifties, and it could now, in a context of skepticism regarding the status ethic of civil servants and the authority of the state and catalyzed by a younger generation's disenchantment with the crass materialism of the consumer society and capitalism, become manifest. Moreover, even while providing a measure of social trust, the new political culture of democracy remained too underdeveloped to stand effectively against the reinvigoration of private life. Rooted deeply in Lutheran introspection and nineteenth-century German romanticism and accentuated at the end of the last century by the youth movement and antimodernism, this prominent orientation in German society did not simply fade away. As before, it carried a posture of distance and the withdrawal of emotional involvement from occupational life.

Another factor facilitated the revival of the private sphere in the seventies. The contemporary German social welfare state confirms—and in doing so, institutionalizes—a perpetual articulation of the boundaries between the private sphere and occupational life. The belief that the state should play a comprehensive role in guaranteeing the social welfare of all, in sponsoring cultural events, in organizing and financing higher education, and in maintaining the competitiveness of German industry, retains strong support. High legitimacy is granted to the German state to serve as a central mechanism to distribute resources, with the aim of ensuring the social welfare of all. In directly bolstering the integrity of the family through various explicit policies^[22] and in fulfilling its designated task of "protecting" individuals against

the rugged competition of modern capitalism and an intensification of the free market, the paternalistic German state assists the defense of the private sphere.

Whereas the accentuation of the private sphere at the turn of the century gave birth to social movements that espoused a return to the Gemeinschaft, this possibility, because of the advanced character of German industrialism and urbanism and the advent of widespread affluence in the post-1960 era, is no longer viable. Any thrust toward a cultivation of the family and personal relationships can become manifest only in a strengthened emphasis upon enduring and deep individual ties. The importance of private sphere concerns in Western Germany is visible in the resurgence of writing on private themes in the neue Innerlichkeit literary genre (see Struck 1986; Moser 1984; Muschg 1986); the flood of popular literature on the psychology of personal relationships (Richter 1976); the frequent choice by even professional women to interrupt their careers and spend up to five years as full-time mothers; and the unwillingness of the unemployed, even when offered a new position elsewhere, with a full moving subsidy, and a "transition allowance," to uproot themselves from family and friends.^[23]

The new viability of private concerns further contests the weakened, though still enduring, values of the Beamtentum . As a withdrawal of emotional involvement from the workplace occurs, purely instrumental motivations move increasingly to the fore. Whereas the constellation of values linked to the status ethic of civil servants were dominant at the end of the last century, an equal competition of pluralistic work motives characterizes occupational life in the FRG: even while participating in the work force, some may be alienated from it; others may view work as a means to acquire material goods or to ensure social and psychological integration into their society; still others may continue to be motivated by the values that constitute the status ethic of the Beamtentum . The locus of work in the FRG can be established only by clear acknowledgment of this open and equal competition of action orientations in occupational life. This situation must be examined more closely.

The Locus of Work in the FRG:
the Occupational, Private, and Leisure Spheres

The precise locus of work in the contemporary FRG can now be identified. In comparison to other spheres of life, what is the

relative weight of the occupational realm? Has it acquired an elevated status in Western German society in relation to other social domains?

The equal competition of diverse motives predominant in occupational life allows Germans to place clear boundaries around this sphere, far more so than would be the case if the value-rational action orientations dominant at the turn of the century that linked the realms of work and civil society continued to hold sway. Moreover, in recent years, a realm capable of erecting a clear resistance to occupational life has been revived and reaccentuated: the private sphere. More often than in the United States, which has not experienced such a reinvigoration of private life, personal well-being is viewed as dependent upon a concerted cultivation of intimate relationships. More time is allocated to the family and the cultivation of friendships. While important for the individual's sense of personal well-being, career goals and the occupational realm are kept separate from personal life, to such an extent that even German professionals can avoid immersion in vocational life. A firm boundary insulates and protects the private sphere of intimate relationships against an aggrandizement of occupational life far more effectively than in the United States. Indeed, this situation of viable competition between the occupational and private spheres creates a dynamic interaction that continuously articulates and reaffirms the boundaries of each sphere.

Widespread affluence and the social movements of the sixties failed in the United States, in spite of high inflation and unemployment in the seventies, to upset the hegemony of the occupational sphere. This sphere remains uncontested as the major realm within which men and women articulate personal identities. It is widely viewed as worthy of a high emotional investment and as the domain within which "self-realization" can take place, especially among middle-class professionals.^[24] Moreover, rather than there being an overwhelming desire for lifelong economic security as the prevalent attitude in the middle class, as in the FRG, there is a high evaluation of the more risky path: occupational mobility and advancement.^[25] Concomitantly, this unambivalent evaluation of the workplace renders unlikely a withdrawal from the occupational realm on a broad scale as well as a cultivation of private sphere relations and values,^[26] particularly because no comprehensive social welfare state "protects" the private sphere in the United States. In addition, as noted previously, American romanticism was unable to establish itself as a strong cultural tradition, let alone to lend unequivocal support to the private sphere.

A simple polarization of the occupational and private realms fails, however, to portray adequately the locus of work in the FRG. The equal competition of pluralistic motives within the work sphere and its effective challenging by the private domain created a vacuum. In particular, as a consequence of affluence and the rise of a large middle class, further patterns of action formed to fill this vacuum and to create a distinct domain: the sphere of leisure.^[27] A withdrawal from occupational life has involved not simply a retreat into the family, as often occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century, but also a cultivation of leisure pursuits. Indeed, hobbies and vacations now play a very pivotal part in daily life, far more than in the United States. The vacation, which is normally a legally mandated^[28] five- or six-week period, is in many social circles the central subject of conversation. Because it weakens value-rational action in the occupational realm, the great emphasis now placed upon leisure challenges this realm directly, as does the high salience of the private sphere.

Whereas in the United States the occupational sphere clearly dominates the leisure and private spheres,^[29] in the FRG these three domains compete equally. Characterized by a tempering of the hegemony of occupational life, a "decentralization" of social domains has taken place, even though the prestige of one's occupation still tends to determine social status. The locus of work in the FRG resides at the intersection of the private, leisure, and occupational realms.^[30]

The data from the General Social Survey (Allgemeine Bevölkerungsumfrage der Sozialwissenschaften )^[31] lend striking empirical support to this conclusion. These surveys indicate that Germans choose jobs with high security 52 percent more often than Americans, and 12 percent more Germans than Americans rate jobs highly that allow for extended periods of leisure time. Conversely, 32 percent more Americans than Germans choose jobs with good chances for advancement, and 25 percent more Americans than Germans rate highly jobs that are meaningful (Peterson 1985, questions 6B, 6D, 6E).

Conclusion

"The proper place of work" may differ in postindustrial societies. Using the firm theoretical framework and procedures of a Weberian configurational analysis, these differences can be isolated and de-

fined clearly. The locus of work in the FRG was established in this study through a nonlinear analysis that, in focusing on dynamic interactions among various societal sectors and on the past and the present, ascertained the relative salience of occupational life vis-à-vis the private and leisure spheres. Underlying patterns of motivation toward work were first charted by reference to a unique configuration of past and present stratification and political and historical factors. Cultural forces—religion and the status ethics of carrier strata—were found to interweave perpetually throughout this configuration. Far from dying out amidst the massive structural transformations introduced by industrialization, action orientations to cultural forces cast strong legacies once they were anchored in powerful social carriers. As this investigation has sought to demonstrate, these cultural legacies even interacted with patterns of action orientations in the present and became manifest in sociologically significant ways in the FRG.

The Weberian mode of analysis used in this case study has sought to reveal the singular manner in which this transformation occurred. Indeed, the contemporary Western German configuration, because unique, should not lead policymakers and social scientists in the FRG to generalize their debates regarding de-coupling and to articulate them in reference to a putative "crisis of working society" as such.^[32] Rather, the present "crisis" discussion must be acknowledged as rooted firmly within the constraints of the German cultural, political, and historical milieu.

References

Almond, G. A., and J. S. Coleman, eds. 1960. The Politics of Developing Areas. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Almond, G. A., and B. Powell, Jr. 1966. Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach. Boston: Little, Brown.

Bahrdt, H. P. 1983. "Arbeit als Inhalt des Lebens." In Krise der Arbeitsgesellschaft?, edited by J. Matthes, 120-137. Frankfurt: Campus.

Baldwin, P. 1989. "Postwar Germany in the Longue Durée." German Politics and Society 16 (1): 1-9.

Becker, H. 1946. German Youth: Bond or Free. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co.

Bellah, R. et al. 1985. Habits of the Heart. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Bendix, R. 1978. Kings or Peoples. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Benseler, F. et al., eds. 1982. Zukunft der Arbeit. Hamburg: VSA.

Bonß, W., and R. G. Heinze, eds. 1984. Arbeitslosigkeit in der Arbeitsgesellschaft. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Born, K. E. 1975. Von der Reichsgründung bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg. Munich: dtv.

Brunschwig, H. 1975. Gesellschaft und Romantik in Preussen im 18. Jahrhundert. Translated by M. Schultheis. Frankfurt: Ullstein.

Bussman, W. 1958. "Zur Geschichte des deutschen Liberalismus im 19. Jahrhundert." Historische Zeitschrift 186 (4): 527-557.

Caplow, T. et al. 1982. Middletown Families. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Cleveland, F. A. 1927. American Citizenship. New York: Ronald Press.

Conradt, D. P. 1980. "Changing German Political Culture." In The Civic Culture Revisited, edited by G. A. Almond and S. Verba, 212-272. Boston: Little, Brown.

Conze, W., and J. Kocka, eds. 1985. Bildungsbürgertum im 19. Jahrhundert. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.

Craig, G. 1978. Germany: 1866-1945. New York: Oxford.

———. 1982. The Germans. New York: Putnam.

Dahrendorf, R. 1967. Society and Democracy in Germany. New York: Anchor.

———. 1980. "Im Entschwinden der Arbeitsgesellschaft." Merkur 34 (4): 749-760.

———. 1983. "Wenn der Arbeitsgesellschaft die Arbeit ausgeht." In Krise der Arbeitsgesellschaft?, edited by J. Matthes, 25-37. Frankfurt: Campus.

Dillenberger, J., ed. 1961. Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings. New York: Doubleday.

Elias, N. 1969. Über den Prozess der Zivilisation. Bern: Francke Verlag.

———. 1989. Studien über die Deutschen. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Engelhardt, U. 1986. Bildungsbürgertum. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.

Epstein, K. 1977. The Genesis of German Conservatism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Greiffenhagen, M. 1981. Die Aktualität Preussens. Frankfurt: Fischer Verlag.

Guggenberger, B. 1982. "Am Ende der Arbeitsgesellschaft--Arbeitsgesellschaft ohne Ende?" In Zukunft der Arbeit, edited by F. Benseler, R. G. Heinze, and A. Klönne, 63-83. Hamburg: VSA.

Gutzkow, K. 1963. "Unterhaltungen am häuslichen Kamin." In Facsimile. Querschnitt durch die Gartenlaube, edited by H. D. Müller, 184-197. Munich: Scherz Verlag.

Hall, E. T., and M. R. Hall. 1983. Hidden Differences. Hamburg: Stern Verlag.

Herf, J. 1980. "The 'Holocaust' Reception in West Germany." New German Critique 22 (1): 30-52.

Herr, D. 1981. Religion and Political Culture: Ascetic Rationalism and Political Modernization in the Thought of Max Weber. Unpublished dissertation, New School for Social Research.

Hill, C. 1964. Puritanism and Revolution. New York: Schocken.

Hofstadter, R. 1955 [1944]. Social Darwinism in American Thought. Boston: Beacon.

Holborn, H. 1981. Deutsche Geschichte in der Neuzeit. Frankfurt: Fischer Verlag.

Kalberg, S. 1983. "Max Weber's Universal-Historical Architectonic of Economically Oriented Action: A Preliminary Reconstruction." In Current Perspectives in Social Theory , edited by S. G. McNall, 253-288. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press.

———. 1985. "The Role of Ideal Interests in Max Weber's Comparative Historical Sociology." In A Marx-Weber Dialogue , edited by R. J. Antonio and R. M. Glassman, 46-67. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.

———. 1987a. "The Origin and Expansion of Kulturpessimismus: The Relationship between Public and Private Spheres in Early Twentieth-Century Germany." Sociological Theory 5 (2): 150-164.

———. 1987b. "West German and American Interaction Forms: One Level of Structured Misunderstanding." Theory, Culture and Society 4 (3): 603-618.

———. 1989. "Max Webers historisch-vergleichende Untersuchungen und das 'Webersche Bild der Neuzeit': eine Gegenüberstellung." In Max Weber heute , edited by J. Weiss, 425-444. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

———. 1992. Max Weber's Comparative Historical Sociology: A Comparison to Recent Schools. London: Polity Press.

———. 1992a. "Cultural Foundations of Modern Citizenship." In The Nature of Citizenship: Theoretical Issues , edited by B. S. Turner. London: Sage Publications.

Kocka, J. 1981. Die Angestellten in der deutschen Geschichte. 1850-1980. Göttingen: Vandenhöck & Ruprecht.

Kocka, J., and G. Ritter, eds. 1974. Deutsche Sozialgeschichte. Vol. 2. Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck.

Konwitz, M. R., and G. Kennedy. 1960. The American Pragmatists. Cleveland: World Publishing.

Kruse, L. 1980. Privatheit als Problem und Gegenstand der Psychologie. Frankfurt: Campus Verlag.

Lidtke, V. 1982. "Social Class and Secularization in Imperial Germany." Yearbook of the Leo Baeck Institute 25: 21-40.

Lipset, S. M. 1979 [1963]. The First New Nation. New York: W. W. Norton.

Löwenthal, R. 1970. Der romantische Rückfall. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.

Lowie, R. H. 1945. The German People: A Social Portrait to 1914. New York: Farrar & Rinehart.

Lynd, R. S., and H. M. Lynd. 1937. Middletown in Transition. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World.

Mann, G. 1975. Deutsche Geschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. Frankfurt: Fischer Verlag.

Maslow, A. 1962. Toward a Psychology of Being. Princeton: Von Nostrand.

Matthes, J., ed. 1983. Krise der Arbeitsgesellschaft? Frankfurt: Campus.

McLeod, H. 1982. "Protestantism and the Working Class in Imperial Germany." European Studies Review 12 (3): 323-344.

Miller, P. 1961. The New England Mind. Boston: Beacon Press.

Moore, B. 1966. The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Boston: Beacon.

Moser, T. 1984. Lehrjahre auf der Couch. Frankfurt: Insel.

Mosse, G. 1964. The Crisis of German Ideology. New York: Grosset & Dunlap.

Münch, R. 1986. "The American Creed in Sociological Theory: Exchange, Negotiated Order, Accommodated Individualism, and Contingency." Sociological Theory 4 (1): 41-60.

Muschg, A. 1986. Literatur als Therapie? Neuwied: Luchterhand.

Offe, C. 1984. "Arbeitsgesellschaft." Strukturprobleme und Zukunftsperspektiven. Frankfurt: Campus.

Peterson, B. L. 1985. Codebook for the Combined 1982 General Social Survey and Allgemeine Bevölkerungsumfrage der Sozialwissenschaften (ALLBUS). Chicago: NORC.

Plessner, H. 1974. Die verspätete Nation. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Richter, H. 1976. Flüchten oder Standhalten. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt.

Ringer, F. 1969. The Decline of the German Mandarins. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Rosenberg, A. 1931. Imperial Germany. New York: Oxford University Press.

Schoonmaker, D. 1989. "The Second Bonn Republic at Forty Years." German Politics and Society 16 (1): 10-21.

Sell, F. 1953. Die Tragödie des deutschen Liberalismus. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt.

Skocpol, T. 1979. States and Social Revolutions. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Sontheimer, K. 1971. Grundzüge des politischen Systems der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Munich: Piper Verlag.

Stern, F. 1965. The Politics of Cultural Despair. New York: Anchor Books.

Struck, K. 1986. Klassenliebe. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Sumner, G. 1906. Folkways. Boston: Ginn.

Tenbruck, F. H. 1987. "On the German Reception of Role Theory." In Modern German Sociology , edited by V. Meja and N. Stehr and translated by S. Kalberg and C. Wies-Kalberg, 410-445. New York: Columbia University Press.

Troeltsch, E. 1931 [1911]. The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches. 2 vols. New York: Harper Torchbook.

Veblen, T. 1966. Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Walker, M. 1971. German Home Towns. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Weber, M. 1930 [1958]. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by T. Parsons. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

———. 1946. From Max Weber. Edited and translated by H. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills. New York: Oxford University Press.

———. 1951. The Religion of China. Edited and translated by H. H. Gerth. New York: Free Press.

———. 1958. The Religion of India. Edited and translated by H. H. Gerth and D. Martindale. New York: Free Press.

———. 1968. Economy and Society. Edited by G. Roth and C. Wittich. New York: Bedminster Press.

———. 1972. Die protestantische Ethik: Kritiken und Antikritiken. Edited by J. Winckelmann. Hamburg: Siebenstern.

———. 1976. The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations. Translated by R. I. Frank. London: New Left Books.

———. 1978. Weber: Selections in Translation. Edited by W. G. Runciman and translated by E. Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Weiss, J. 1986. "Wiederverzauberung der Welt? Bemerkungen zur Widerkehr der Romantik in der gegenwärtigen Kulturkritik." In Kultur und Gesellschaft , edited by F. Neidhardt, M. R. Lepsius, and J. Weiss, 286-301. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.

13—
Culture and Crisis:
Making Sense of the Crisis of the Work Society

Klaus Eder

Social Analysis Beyond Cultural Pessimism

Whether there is a crisis in advanced industrial societies is open to debate. But there is undeniably a discourse on crisis. It focuses politically on the crisis of the welfare state, economically on the ecological limits of growth, and culturally on the loss of meaning in modern life. Even the social sciences, whose job it is to identify and monitor such discourses, are sometimes thought to be affected. Whether or not the crisis exists, there is a strong cultural pessimism in intellectual and everyday life that fuels the discourse. But there is no consensus as to its extent or its character, nor even a consensus as to what is meant by a crisis. This lack of consensus makes it difficult to transcend cultural pessimism and to turn to social analysis, to an "objectifying" account of the supposed crisis.

We will try to clarify the notion of crisis using the German discussion of the Krise der Arbeitsgesellschaft or "crisis of the work society" (Matthes 1983). This social science discourse on crisis, we claim, is a new version of the never-ending discourse on crisis in modern society. It puts crisis into perspective as the result of an accumulation of either changes in the objective structural conditions of work (for example, the labor market) or changes in the cultural conditions of work (for example, the work ethic). But these changes are not sufficient in themselves to explain the supposed crisis. We need an additional argument that distinguishes between situations of crisis and noncrisis. Crisis, we suggest, ensues

when social changes lead to a block in the capacity of society to control its course and direction of change.

This analysis of crisis must take into account two elements: the cultural orientation of social actors and the objective location of social actors within a social structure that determines the relations between them. To determine the capacity of society to reproduce its structure and culture, we have to analyze the social usage of culture by groups within the system of social relations that define the place and status of these groups (Bourdieu 1984). We have to consider the socially stratified adoption of cultural traditions as the mediating process between culture and social structure in order to analyze how culture influences the course of the social development of a concrete society within the constraints set by social structure. The mediating concept is that of social groups (or classes) defined by their capacity to act upon society. The hypothesis is as follows: The conditions for the cultural effectiveness of social groups in a social structure change to the degree that their place and status change.^[1] When, however, social groups within a specific societal context develop competing and even irreconcilable cultural models of society, we are faced with what we can call a "crisis of society."

An emphasis upon agency offers a new look at the role that culture plays in the reproduction of advanced industrial societies. One example is in the sphere of work. In accordance with their social placement and replacement in recent social developments, social groups have redefined the modern work ethic (once thought to be identical with the Protestant ethic) to produce competing versions of it. The outcome is what German sociologists have called the Krise der Arbeitsgesellschaft,^[2] a crisis that cannot be understood adequately as either a structural or a cultural crisis (but certainly has to do with problems of the structural and cultural reproduction of work). We will examine the two processes that are used here as empirical proof of a crisis of work society: in structural terms, the de-coupling of work from status and, in cultural terms, the decoupling of work from self-realization. To understand how both processes interact we will analyze class-specific work cultures that enable or prevent social groups from acting upon the structural changes of the work they experience. The hypothesis advanced is as follows: The crisis of the work society is, in the last instance, the crisis of the working class. The main idea that has provoked this discourse is that the work culture of the working class has lost its determining influence upon society. The working class has lost the capacity to determine how the work society will act upon itself and direct its development,^[3] as the analysis of the

processes of structural and cultural change in the sphere of work and their interaction will make clear. We are at present observing the rise of new social groups and of ultimately one new social class that will defend a different type of work culture. The frame of reference within which structural and cultural changes are perceived and interpreted changes—and with it what we experience as crisis. We have to find out, not whether there really is a crisis, but what are the frames of reference within which society interprets its own structural and cultural change as crisis. And the frame work society is only one among others, itself tied to a specific social class and a specific sociocultural environment.

Accounting for the Crisis of the Work Society

The Work Society in Crisis?

The German discussion about the crisis of the work society is a good example of the specific effects of culture on the constitution of a crisis. The crisis of the work society has become jargon in the program statements of political parties, especially the Social Democrats, which can be taken as an indicator of the relevance of this concept for public communication. This way of communicating a problem has been fostered, if not generated, by the sociological discourse that invented this jargon. It carries with it a cultural model oriented toward a specific type of collective action.

The concept suggests social processes that go beyond the emergence and relief of structural strains. They implicate a cultural evolution within the development of industrial society. The concept of industry in "industrial society" (Offe 1983) has lost the connotation of industriousness . It has been replaced by the value-laden concept of work in "work society." This substitution points to the fact that not only the systemic reproduction of society but also its cultural basis are now in fact vulnerable.

Thus the theory of the crisis of the work society has two complementary aspects. The first deals with changes in the labor market and in the relation between education and occupation (the system of status distribution). Different theories of postindustrial society from Bell to Touraine, industrial sociology research and stratification research, provide arguments to describe the crisis of the work society.^[4] The second aspect of the theory is subsumed under the decline of the Protestant work ethic. This description has led to several misleading explanations, espe-

cially within the rescarch on value change.^[5] They have been misleading, first, because what we call Protestant ethic is itself a combination of different cultural elements that emerged at the beginning of capitalism and, second, because the Protestant ethic is only one among other cultural traditions that can generate possible orientations toward work in modern society.

These two parts of the theory of a crisis of the work society, the structuralist and the culturalist, are in themselves insufficient to explain the crisis. Even an attempt to use them thus would be an odd undertaking because the two contradict each other. The structural part claims that the labor market has become significantly more competitive (if unevenly so), that status no longer guarantees work, and that work is being de-coupled from status. It even claims that work has become scarce and the object of intensifying struggles between status groups. The cultural part says that there is a de-coupling of work from self-realization and that people are retreating from work. Thus the crisis of the work society is seen to result from work's increasing importance on the structural level and from its decreasing importance on the cultural level. Such a contradictory relationship cannot be reduced to a structural and a cultural crisis. I will argue that the crisis of the work society consists precisely in this contradictory relationship, a relationship that could not be understood if we did not account for the specific contributions of structure and culture.

In developing the argument let us first look briefly at the developmental processes in the social organization of work that are held to be responsible for changes in the work ethic. These explanations are shown to be short circuits because they assume deterministic relationships between structure and culture (mostly in the direction of culture). Second, we will see how changes in the modern work ethic open new possibilities for social actors to invent and defend specific versions and adaptations. The emergence of antagonistic groups defined in terms of structural location and cultural orientation points to a social crisis that will have far-reaching effects upon the course and intensity of structural and cultural changes that accompany the transformation of advanced modern societies into postindustrial societies.

Structural Changes of Work:
The De-Coupling of Work from Status

From a structural perspective, we must examine some assumptions and research findings about changes in the sphere of work

that are supposed, in turn, to be changing how work is experienced and perceived. Four of the main ones are as follows: (1) the emergence of new forms of nonmanual labor (Kopfarbeit ), (2) the reduction of working time and its implications for the lives of workers, (3) the division of the labor market into well-alimented and poorly alimented sectors, and (4) the de-coupling of work from status and their resulting realignment.

The Emergence of Nonmanual Labor. The hypothesis of an increase in and a structural dominance by nonmanual labor lies at the bases of the different theories about the course of postindustrial society.^[6] These theories start with the assumption that organization and information technologies have led to the primacy of cognitive (nonmanual) work over productive (manual) work. Cognitively skilled work (Kopfarbeit ) defines the postindustrial paradigm of work. Knowledge becomes the central means for the economic reproduction of society.

The usual conclusion, from the point of view of industrial society, is that this development is a liberation of labor. But one important implication is normally overlooked: the control of the new workers by the information technologies themselves. A more adequate conclusion, then, is that the substitution of nonmanual for manual work implies a further increase in the social control of work. Thus, although relief from work as toil is experienced as "liberation," workers are also placed in an increasingly instrumental relation to work that leads to a diminution of it as a central life interest.

The qualifications required for entry into the job market have also changed. The expansion of nonmanual work is accompanied simultaneously by an upgrading and a downgrading of skills. The significance of the expansion of nonmanual work, due mainly to the growth of the service sector, is therefore a subject of great controversy (Mutz 1987). The theory of polarization (Kern & Schumann 1984) suggested that this change leads to a minority of highly qualified workers and a majority of unqualified workers. But this polarization seems to have been a transitional phenomenon of the late 1960s and 1970s. Recent research shows that less qualified work is either eliminated or substituted for new forms of control. For those workers retained, the elimination of their competitors through unemployment is the structural solution.^[7]

This new social differentiation of work is thought to be changing the distribution of cultural orientations across the working population. This hypothesis assumes that occupations within the service sector generate a different cultural orientation than that which is typical for occu-

pations in the production sector. If this is true, the service occupations will dissolve traditional class cultures and give rise to cultural cleavages that could become the nucleus for new class formations.^[8] The discussion about the emerging postindustrial society then can be transferred to more empirical levels: the levels of class differences and the related level of cultural differences. Empirical data on such cultural differences can be found in a new line of research on class: the research on differences in life-style. This research begins theoretically by taking a fresh look at Weber's famous distinction between status and class, with status as a cultural indicator of class (Bourdieu 1984). Within the emerging differences in life-style fostered by the expansion of nonmanual work, we may find some of the reasons that point to an end of the Protestant ethic.

This analysis is a first step toward a sociological theory of culture beyond culturalism. There is no change in class structure without parallel cultural changes. But such cultural changes open nothing more than an "objective possibility" for changes in the work culture. Whether the possibility has been or will be used remains to be seen.

The Shortening of Working Hours. Since 1960 the amount of time a worker works (wage labor) has steadily diminished—by any measure. A 1981 study by Emnid shows an average of 39.2 hours per worker per week. In the 1950s, the ratio of hours of work to hours of nonwork was 1 to 2.9; in 1980 it was 1 to 4.1 (Kern & Schumann 1983:355). The total period of life spent at work has also decreased.^[9] From this overall shrinkage some have concluded that the relevance of work to life and the value attributed to it for a meaningful life have diminished.^[10] Such a conclusion is unwarranted. For even if more time is spent outside work, we do not necessarily de-emphasize the value of work in our lives. We can conclude only that it has become objectively possible to change the relative meaning of work for life.

The theory of the devaluation of work and the corresponding theory of a rise in the valuation of nonwork, defined as leisure, has been defended in different studies using opinion polls. Such an inverse relationship is assumed, for example, by Noelle-Neumann (1980; Noelle-Neumann & Strümpel 1984) in survey data studies that interpret the ascending valuation of leisure over work as a sign of Germans' increasing laziness and antipathy to work.^[11] The increasing number of people who no longer accept an eight-hour work day is taken as yet another sign. There are speculations that in the coming years an increasing

portion of the working population in advanced industrial societies will have abandoned the regular full working day.

But to conclude that there is an increase in nonproductive activities such as laziness, sleeping, window shopping, and so on is unwarranted. Qualitative studies suggest instead that what we call leisure time is being used instead for another type of work. A substitution of do-it-yourself labor for wage labor can be observed. This type of work, hobby work, is holistic bricolage in Lévi-Strauss's sense. It is no longer ponos, but ergon . It is nonwage labor that—unlike much wage labor—offers intrinsic rewards to the worker.

If this observation is generally correct, then the reduction in time spent on wage labor has a quite different meaning: it points up the increasing relevance of nonwage labor. If this other form of work becomes the integrative experience of a population, it will foster a new work ethic, one beyond the Protestant work ethic. In that case, we would have to conclude that it is the type of work, whether wage labor or nonwage labor, that is decisive for people's cultural orientation to work. Instead of a devaluation, there is a revaluation of work going on in advanced industrial societies.^[12] Thus the direction of cultural change in the sphere of work is an open question. If the data claiming a value change in the sphere of work allows for interpretations quite contrary to that of Noelle-Neumann, then we need even more data about the actors.

The New Polarization between Work and Nonwork. The new valuation of nonwage labor gains yet another meaning when nonwork and leisure are involuntary because of, for example, forced early retirement, forced periods in the educational system, or the forced status of being officially unemployed. Such forced reductions of the wage labor pool have increased in recent years because of pressures from the labor market. Yet those who are excluded from the labor market do not escape being forced to define their lives in terms of wage labor.^[13]

The consequence of this shrinking labor market is a new form of polarization of work into stable wage labor (most of it highly qualified) and wage labor with a high risk of unemployment. Brandt (1981) has called this the "extended polarization of work." The structural implication of this polarization is a dual economy, separating a saturated formal economy from an informal economy. This structural separation will certainly change how the world of work is perceived and experienced. Thus a polarization of the work culture is also to be expected. Qualita-

tive research on evaluative and cognitive attitudes toward work has detected new types of orientations toward work (Giegel et al. 1988). But whether the "reflexive," the "hedonistic," or the "traditional" type will predominate in shaping the work culture remains an open question. What we can observe is a differentiation of work-related (sub)cultures.

The De-coupling of Work from Status and Their Realignment. That the relationship between work and status has never corresponded to the ideal of "everyone according to his achievement" has often been analyzed and discussed in sociological literature. One of the reasons for this is the politics of income distribution. Redistribution by the modern welfare state has led to a relative de-coupling of work from status without destroying most people's belief in a relationship between the two. On the contrary, the educational revolution, striving to guarantee an equality of opportunity, has confirmed anew (at least for some time) a positive relationship between achievement and status and has thus strengthened this ideology.^[14]

The realization of this ideal relationship is however again being frustrated because an increasing number of highly educated young people cannot be processed into employment. Employment opportunities do not correspond to the supply of qualified would-be workers. Bourdieu speaks of a "cheated generation" (Bourdieu 1984), whose aspirations to a social status corresponding to its qualifications have to be (and have been) disappointed. An educational status no longer guarantees a corresponding social status in the labor market.^[15]

This phenomenon is reinforced by unemployment policies. In order to decrease unemployment figures, the unemployed are placed in programs for further education financed by state institutions. This tactic raises their educational status even further without expanding the labor market, although their competitive chances to get one of the scarce jobs are redistributed. These contradictory processes necessarily produce cognitive dissonances. How these dissonances are resolved (whether they lead to a distancing from the culture of work or to an even more rigid adherence to it) is an empirical question.

It has been claimed that such de-coupling undermines the desire for and the belief in achievement in such a way that this motivator, one of the basic engines of the modern work ethic, will vanish. But this is not a necessary consequence. The opposite can sometimes occur (a phenomenon that is related to the unpleasant experience of unemployment). Thus, in regard to the achievement principle, we are again forced to

look more closely for the meaning and direction given by different social groups and social actors.

The de-coupling debate is interesting in itself as a description of structural strains within the system of status allocation. It shows that the relation of work and social status is mediated by social processes that leave it in a constant flux. There is no one legitimate relationship; the shape of the relationship is itself the outcome of social struggles. Such strains can potentially change the work culture. But not necessarily. Thus we are again left with the need to look at the changes on the cultural level and at the de-coupling on this cultural level.^[16]

Cultural Changes of Work:
The De-Coupling of Work from Self-Realization

The sociostructural changes described so far have already altered work as a collective experience for nearly all groups engaged in wage labor. This is connected with a value change social scientists believe to have occurred in advanced industrial societies since World War II. The empirically based discussion concerning the relevance of competing interpretations of the crisis of the work culture has revolved around the decline of the work ethic in Germany (Noelle-Neumann & Strümpel 1984; Pawlowsky & Strümpel 1986; Reuband 1985, 1987) and the decline of the German virtues of achievement and diligence. This cultural explanation of the crisis of the Arbeitsgesellschaft is ultimately based on a deep feeling that the morality implicitly expected of even a modern work ethic is beyond recall.^[17]

The message of this discourse on the decline of the work ethic is that, in comparison to the Japanese (a comparison made repeatedly, for example, in the influential liberal weekly journal Die Zeit ), the Germans have become lazy people. This explanation is shortsighted and overlooks the following: (1) the emergence of new and more demanding orientations toward work, (2) changing relationships between work and leisure, (3) a new polarization of work-related life-styles due to the experience of a continuous or discontinuous biography, and (4) a de-coupling of work from self-realization.

New Demands upon Work. Research shows that the Protestant ethic is not dead yet. But new values for and demands on work seem to be gaining importance. Beyond the classic puritan virtues and

the secondary ones as codified, for example, by Benjamin Franklin (Maccoby & Terzi 1981:22f.), new virtues have emerged. Flexibility, communicative competence, open-mindedness, humor, and related qualities are treated as "communicative virtues," as opposed to the classic Prussian virtues (Schmidtchen 1984b). Some researchers perceive the new virtues to be most widespread among the young and those of higher status, whereas others point to the service sector as the principal locus.

These new virtues are tied to new expectations of what work should be like. Work should above all contribute more to self-realization. But these new expectations are—as Strümpel argues—frustrated by a lag in structural changes in the workplace (Noelle-Neumann & Strümpel 1984). Because there is actually no chance for their realization in the workplace, a new type of work dissatisfaction emerges. Survey data show that satisfaction with work has declined, but not because work has been devaluated. On the contrary, aspirations associated with work have increased; the decline in satisfaction is related to the fact that rising aspirations cannot be met given the social organization of work. Thus the rise in work dissatisfaction does not necessarily imply a decline in the relevance of work, but can result from the contrary.^[18]

Work, Leisure, and Achievement Orientation. Another change in the work ethic is the supposed decline of the centrality of work. It has become a secondary life interest. Survey research does show a change in the centrality of work, but its meaning is quite controversial. Against the claim that leisure has been substituted for work, some argue that investments in work, family, and leisure have all become stronger (Hondrich et al. 1988). Thus there is no substitution effect.

For many people, though, the significance of work has changed in comparison to other life interests. We know of the "instrumentalism" of the workers in the Goldthorpe/Lockwood studies on the affluent worker and of the rise of leisure as a central life interest. But this instrumentalism seems to be part of a more complex attitude toward work. Work is seen less as a means to gaining income than as a means to investing in leisure. The Protestant work ethic seems to have spread from wage labor to other areas of modern life, to those areas we describe as part of a life-world, that is, public and private life. Working hard to organize and spend leisure time has become a virtue, as has working hard on a political engagement.^[19]

Thus we cannot accept the proposition, offered in the literature on

value change in the sphere of work, that hedonism is growing.^[20] An achievement orientation still exists, and it is becoming generalized, no longer restricted to the sphere of work.

The New Polarization of Work-related Life-styles. Within the cultural background generally associated with the Protestant ethic several changes must be distinguished. One can be described as a movement toward an ethicization of work and the other toward a de-ethicization of work. The tendency toward ethicization is not uniform. It can lead toward a traditionalist emphasis on material values deriving from work or toward a postmaterialistic emphasis upon values of self-realization either in or outside work. The tendency toward de-ethicization can also follow contradictory paths, leading either toward a cynical distancing from work or to an instrumental attitude toward work (work conceived as mere ponos ). These contradictory and crosscutting developments force us to relinquish the idea of a monolithic culture of work (assumed in much reasoning and research that uses the Protestant ethic as a theoretical reference point). Instead we have to deal wtih many different and even contradictory cultures. On the empirical level we are confronted with different work ethics at variance or even in direct conflict.^[21] The common lament over the end of the Protestant work ethic thus is not empirically justified by survey data.

The weakness in this conclusion will become more apparent when we disaggregate the data. Analysis on the aggregate level is not thwarted by findings of contradictory processes of change in the work ethic. Initial sampling has been taken to differentiate among generations (Meulemann 1987). One of the surprising results of a long and controversial discussion among German social scientists is that the assumed secular value change toward a decline of the Protestant ethic is bound to one specific generation. In younger generations the achievement orientation is again on the rise.^[22]

The most important differentiating factor is social class. We still lack studies that disaggregate with regard to class differences. That is not surprising because social differentiations presuppose theoretical ideas about new class lines between groups of social actors. And such differentiations force us to retreat from the idea of an autonomous cultural change (as analyzed in the sequence of generational differences) to a structural change: to the idea of changes in the class structures that provoke the differentiating usage of this culture and its elements. This implies connections between culture and structure within, not outside,

the social space. And it opens alternatives to the prevalent developmental views on changes in the work ethic.^[23]

The De-coupling of Work from Self-realization. The decoupling of work from self-realization seems to be the most radical hypothesis within the discussion of changes in the modern work ethic (Illich 1978, 1979). If it occurs, meaning will increasingly be found outside the sphere of work, and work will become a sphere of life empty of any ethical content. This outcome could even be interpreted as confirming Max Weber's speculation that work in formally rationalized contexts would no longer need any ethical motivation.

The possibility of de-coupling work from self-realization engages a hypothesis advanced by Weber and radicalized by Habermas: that work is becoming something that will be done beyond any motivational demand. Weber (1956) is clear about this: To be a Berufsmensch (someone whose identity is rooted in work) means to act according to the constraints of the formal rationality of the economy and ultimately leads one into an "iron cage." Habermas, distinguishing between work and interaction, claims that the economy (taken as the social field of work) has become part of the systemic world. Work is instrumental action and as such opposed to communicative action constitutive for the life-world (Habermas 1984, 1987). For both, the idea of a morally grounded work culture must appear as a transitory problem or even as a regression.

But we could also, unlike Weber and Habermas, conclude that this discussion of de-coupling is evidence of a return of the life-world into work. The sphere of work turns out to be much more a part of the life-world than the postindustrial utopians thought. Even Marx can be seen as a contributor to such an idea. By reintroducing culture into the world of work we gain a more adequate understanding of what is going on in modern society. It helps us to narrow down what the crisis of the work society is all about. The crisis of the work society is simultaneously the result of changes in the objective structures that organize work in different dimensions. This crisis is also a result of new cultural patterns changing the motivations of those engaged in wage labor. But the two perspectives cannot be related to each other in a satisfactory way. We can state some plausible relationships between structural and cultural processes (Furnham 1982; Prescott-Clarke 1982; Krappmann 1983). We lack, however, the data on how these cultural processes affect in turn the sphere of work and thus lend a meaning to structural changes that engages social groups and social actors.

To understand these effects we will start with the assumption that the structural changes in the sphere of work have produced a cultural evolution in it. The interpretative scheme of the Protestant ethic will be reconstructed and extended so that we can discuss social groups that set the Protestant ethic in action. We can thus specify the carriers of the crisis of the work society. Ultimately we will see that this crisis is the crisis of the traditional working class.

The Protestant Ethic in Action

The Cultural Model of the Protestant Work Ethic

The Three Sources of the Modern Work Ethic. To reinterpret the supposed decline of the work ethic as a change in the Protestant ethic, we first have to reconstruct the basic assumptions of this model, tailoring them to our analysis of the crisis of the work society. The standard model of the Protestant ethic consists of a series of values and the motivational forces that compel adherence to these values. This has been called the Calvinist model and contains values such as achievement for its own sake, the virtue of work over nonwork, and the quest for excellence. Its motivational forces are even more important. The belief in the culture of possessive individualism (the secular version of not being sure about one's own election by God) and the related permanent proof of one's own competitiveness in the market (the secular version of finding evidence of one's own election by God) are the motivational forces that have together so advanced the capitalist spirit that it has become (at least ideologically) the dominant (and dominating) model of the modern work ethic.

Within the German tradition another work ethic model can be identified, namely Lutheranism .^[24] This ethic can be seen as the inner-worldly variant of the Protestant ethic. It radicalizes the permanent self-observation necessary to decipher God's will. One has to examine one's day-to-day conduct to see whether one has really established a personal relation to God. The dread of failure becomes the motivational engine of one's life. Such a person is no longer part of a collectivity that gives security and warmth but is a highly individualized self-observing and self-controlling social being. In family life a system emerges in which

the persons living together observe themselves and each other. The family becomes a community of disciplined persons, a disciplining institution. Concentrating on the self makes work a secondary, devaluated concern. The primary concern is one's inner life, one's motives and intentions. This predominance of the inner-worldly forced Luther to distinguish sharply between the sphere of work and the sphere of inner conviction. Self-realization through struggling with one's own self is life's main activity. The outer world is nothing but a necessary background to this drama.

This explanation clarifies the difference between Calvinism and Lutheranism. A Calvinist cultivates success in the outside world as evidence of being elected by God. A Lutheran looks within at his or her faith to discover God's will and intentions. The Calvinists therefore have become virtuosi of outer-worldly activity; the Lutherans have become virtuosi of self-observation and self-interpretation. Both patterns have contributed to the modern work ethic. The first produced the work ethic based on rational motivation. The second produced a mere instrumentalist work ethic, in which work is treated as a sphere of mere necessity to which we are subject. Work is amoral. This demoralized work ethic, resting upon the acceptance of social necessities, is not an adequate means to self-realization. As soon as the religious foundations of inner-worldly orientation are eroded any motivation can enter. Such a substitution took place in the rise of the Prussian work ethic. The Prussian functionary works as hard as the world demands and seeks self-realization by identifying, not with God, but with the state. Historically this substitution allowed for the rationalization of the state. Thus within the German tradition both traditions contribute to the rationalization of modern society. The work ethic of the capitalist entrepreneurs is no different from that of their Calvinist counterparts. And the work ethic of the state officials representing the Prussian virtues is characteristic of modern German work culture as such.

The values that lie at the heart of an emerging work culture today point simultaneously to the possible end and the possible revival of the Protestant ethic. They signal the end of the Calvinist heritage and the renaissance of the Lutheran heritage. The new values, emphasizing self-realization outside work, can be traced to the corresponding Lutheran conception of work. This historical conjuncture might explain the German bias and intensity of the discussion about the change in modern work culture.

But there remains a problem generally overlooked in the discussion

of the Protestant ethic. Neither variant of the Protestant work ethic has ever become part of the work culture of plebeian and rural groups. Where then does their work ethic come from? What distinguishes it from the Protestant ethic that led highly motivated individuals to practice rational economic conduct? The answer lies in the general "Catholic" tradition that is oriented toward the collectivity, as opposed to the individual orientation of the Protestant tradition. This Catholic tradition, first embodied in the discipline of monastic life, is important in the development of a modern work ethic. Its specificity is found in a collectivistic ethic applied from the outset to productive manual labor. It has helped to "civilize" and "rationalize" the traditional "moral economy" of the lower classes. The collectivist model of disciplined labor characteristic of the monastery allowed for the inculcation of a disciplined work ethic into those groups forced into wage labor (Treiber & Steinert 1980). The rational timing of the working day and the rational control of bodily movements in modern industrial work emulates the model established in the monastery and then generalized in institutions such as hospitals, jails, and asylums.

We have identified at least three different traditions that have influenced and shaped the modern work ethic. Now we must differentiate between the contradictory elements contained in the model of the Protestant ethic and take the Catholic element into account. Then we must identify the groups that are carriers of these elements. While some groups may be acting out a disaffection with their Calvinist roots, other occupational groups might be acting out an intensification of the Calvinist element of the Protestant ethic. The same duality holds for the Lutheran version of the Protestant ethic.

We are still unable to interpret the aggregate data of survey research analyzing changes in attitudes toward work. Survey data show only the net result of contradictory changes of the work ethic in different social groups. We have to consider that the average net result may mask a trend toward wide social and cultural differentiation and even stratification. Without a precise idea of the differentiation and stratification of the work conditions and the work ethic, we risk producing nothing but fantasies.

From the Model Work Ethic to Its Practical Use. Weber himself is ambivalent about the general validity of the Protestant ethic.^[25] On one hand he thinks that this ethic will be generalized throughout modern society. The Puritan, he says, wanted to be Berufs-

mensch , and we have to be Berufsmenschen (Weber 1965:188). On the other hand Weber states that the Protestant ethic has become part of the bourgeois life-style. This implies a different social interpretation of the modern work ethic. It assumes that it can be seen as an exclusive work ethic, typical only for some strata or classes in modern society. One can even claim that this work ethic establishes a cultural distinction between the ascetic elites and the joyous masses. From this perspective the work ethic symbolizes the cultural authority of one class over others. We who have to be Berufsmenschen , according to Weber, are not the people. We in fact are a specific social group, contrary to the supposed universalism of the Berufsmenschen .

On the theoretical level the difference between the two interpretations can be resolved by distinguishing between a model and its social usage. The Calvinist variant of the Protestant ethic is a model of a modern work ethic that has been adapted by specific social groups. But we have to go further because the Calvinist tradition can also be blended with other traditions. The blend of the Catholic ethic with Lutheranism, of a collectivist ethos of discipline with the Lutheran ethos of self-realization in and by work, the work ethic is sometimes said to constitute a specifically German work ethic. But this supposed ethic is—as we shall see—the work ethic of the skilled worker (the Facharbeiterethos ), developed by a very specific group of workers in nineteenth-century Germany. Because the practices using and reproducing these different models are ongoing, the work culture of a society is necessarily in flux. Thus our theoretical application of the model of the Protestant ethic has to take into account changes in its usage to keep the model theoretically useful.

On the empirical level I would like to suggest that there is a close relationship between the pure model of Calvinism and its social use by the dominant class in modern societies. The class of capitalist entrepreneurs and managers is a social group that uses the Calvinist model of the Protestant ethic to reproduce its symbolic power over other social classes. The symbolic power built into this ethic is based on the fact that it serves as a touchstone to higher positions. It becomes cultural capital in the hands of these social groups inasmuch as it becomes the selective mechanism in all those social institutions that regulate access to social status and power. Research analyzing the "informal" criteria of access to higher educational institutions and to employment in better jobs shows that this work ethic is the touchstone conferring better chances (Windolf 1984; Windolf & Hohn 1984). But this selective mechanism

works differentially in different sectors of the economy: banking, the steel industry, or different hierarchical levels in these branches. Informal qualifications that indicate a "Protestant" life-style (for example, dress and choice of discipline) have also become increasingly instrumental in the selection for higher social status in the sphere of work.

There have been some attempts at classifying class-specific adaptations of the Protestant ethic. Hinrichs and Wiesenthal (1982) distinguish among several groups: (1) workers with a traditional consciousness based upon an unquestioned achievement orientation, (2) overall maximizers (those in privileged positions who push the achievement principle), (3) opportunistic hedonists who work only as much as necessary to live a joyous life, and (4) those who abandon totally or partially the normal working day in order to organize their life-world in another form. Another classification by Kern and Schumann (1984:157) distinguishes among the following: (1) winners of rationalization, (2) losers of rationalization, (3) workers in unstable branches, and (4) the unemployed. These classifications differ in the perspective they adopt to grasp the increasing differentiation of work culture. The former takes the perspective of the middle classes, the latter that of the working classes. They do have one element in common: they point to a differentiation of work cultures that cuts across traditional class differences.

The Model in Action I:
The Working Class

Such a cultural analysis can be applied to fractions of the working class in advanced modern societies. We can contrast two distinct types of the social usage of culture in the working class by using their specific work ethic as the central parameter. The empirical references are taken from survey research on value orientations toward work and from qualitative research on work culture.

The Skilled Worker. Industrial workers—in spite of their spending substantially more time outside work—are not impressed or influenced by what we call value change toward postmaterialism. They continue to see the workplace as the central life experience and still adhere to the traditional industrial culture. They are proud of their skills and invest their social energy in work. These skilled workers derive their self-image from traditional craftsmanship and thus manifest a specific version of the Protestant ethic. Although they accept the inner-worldly

(Lutheran) principle of achievement through hard work, they do not follow the ascetic practice, characteristic of the capitalist entrepreneur, of saving the money they earn. Members of this social class combine an ethic of hard work with a consumer attitude; they do not wait for future remuneration, they spend immediately. In this respect they maintain, alongside their Lutheranism, the strong Catholic tradition of identifying with the collectivity of the consumer.

The more the present developments in the sphere of work foster cognitive skills, the more the traditional ethic of the skilled worker is revitalized. The so-called Arbeiterstolz (being proud of being a worker) is extended to a Technikerstolz (being proud of manipulating new work technologies). Both are based on special experiences and qualifications accumulated in daily practice at the workplace (Rammert & Wehrsig 1988). But this type of the social usage of the Lutheran ethic is characteristic only for those who, thanks to their social location, can afford to defend this classical form of worker pride inherent in the German model of Facharbeit (skilled work) (Härtel, Matthiesen & Neuendorff 1985, 1986). They can be considered the beneficiaries of rationalization in the sphere of work. They have never de-coupled work from self-realization.

The Unskilled Worker. Unskilled or semi-skilled workers, on the contrary, adapt to the work situation without referring to either the Calvinist or the Lutheran aspect of the Protestant ethic. Their sociostructural location makes them the losers of the game. They know that they have to work where others can choose not to. They are forced into a type of work without motivation as such. The social groups making up this class include marginal industrial workers as well as workers in the low service jobs typically held by women. Even housework can be subsumed under this heading. What these "bad jobs" have in common is that they produce fatigue (Clausen 1981:27f.). This experience of work produces a work ethic that tries to avoid any moral significance. The Protestant ethic is not rejected as such but simply not accepted for the type of work that has to be done. The social usage of the Protestant ethic here is an attempt to neutralize its implications in the workplace.

These social groups are forced to instrumentalize work. Work becomes the means to another end, to a culture of consumption that emulates the principles of the Catholic ethic. Consumption becomes a collective activity that substitutes for the experience of a religious community. Work is seen as means to consumption, this heaven on earth.

Inasmuch as low income forces these groups to engage in intensive consumption work (looking for the cheapest goods, intensifying the do-it-yourself orientation), they are part of the "achieving society." But the achievement-oriented activities in the sphere of consumption remain separate from the sphere of work. These groups have succeeded not only in separating work from self-realization but also in ignoring the aspect of self-realization. The Protestant ethic has no relevance whatsoever. But this situation is not culture-free, as the instrumentalism hypothesis would imply. It is simply another culture derived from the Catholic tradition, that is used to give meaning to work. There is no need within this tradition for individual motivation like the achievement motivation in the sphere of work. Being part of a collectivity of workers suffices to produce the minimum of motivation. The strength of control, but not the internalized motivation, can change the investment in work.

An especially revealing group to observe within this subclass is the unemployed. In order to get state subsidies, these workers, excluded from work, are classified as "seeking work." This definition produces the image of somebody who upholds a normal work ethic. Such classification practices underscore the problem connected with living up to the Protestant ethic. The "Protestantism" of the unemployed is reduced to the proper bureaucratic behavior of showing up at administrative institutions that register those without work. The Protestant ethic is converted into rigid adherence to the requirements of state institutions. Here, enforced Protestantism loses all meaning, becoming a borrowed ethic that acts against all the life experiences of this group. The problems produced by this situation of having to simulate an occupational career and construct a consistent occupational biography are enormous.^[26]

These examples show again that the effects of the Protestant ethic do not necessarily conform rigidly to the pure model. The specific adaptations have to be explained sociologically. And only these practical adaptations can explain which cultural effects a given system of social classes is mediating.

The Model in Action II:
The Middle Class

The different fractions of the middle class have generally been considered the best representatives of the Protestant work ethic. This view is only partially correct. The reasons are found both in the

historical roots of the middle-class work ethic and in the internal differences within the middle class. The changes in the class structure of advanced modern societies will make the middle class and the cultural struggles within it the keys to an explanation of the crisis of modern work society and to an understanding of possible solutions.

The Old Middle Class. The old middle class, comprising small craftsmen and small shopkeepers (Haupt 1985), has become the symbol of a rigid and ascetic work ethic. The groups within this culture are viewed as representing the virtues of industry and parsimony par excellence. Their work ethic is considered an expression of a petit-bourgeois mentality.

This mentality can be seen as a specific adaptation of the Protestant ethic, sharing its emphasis on ascetic virtues. It differs with respect to the substantive values tied to this ethic. For it lacks the specific rationalization that distances these virtues from their religious background and remains instead bound to a substantive religious feeling. The old petit bourgeois still works out of a belief in God, whereas the modern work ethic motivates work without recourse to God. The petit bourgeoisie still needs God, is conservative, and retains the old virtues. This gives to their work ethic the social rigidity typical of traditional life-forms and life-styles. The traditional petit bourgeoisie leads an ambivalent life, with an outlook both materialistic and moralistic. Not having really internalized the Protestant ethic, they are prone to a moral crusade; they think that others should behave as they do. Their work ethic thus constitutes a culture that adapts the model of the Protestant ethic to the life experiences of petit-bourgeois existence (Münch 1984).

The central social experience of this old middle class was being threatened by industrialization and capitalist development. Unable to compete with big industry, yet dependent upon big money, craftsmen and shopkeepers were in permanent danger of slipping into the proletariat class. Fear might explain why they preferred to defend the old world, for it guaranteed their social (and emotional) security. They were for the state as long as it defended them against big industry and big money (as the fascists promised them after a decade of turmoil in the early twentieth century).

The petit bourgeoisie is not dying out. On the contrary, it is coming to life in those economies that have encountered problems with big industry and large labor forces. Recourse to the old virtues increases as such problems pervade advanced industrial societies. Independence has

become fashionable. New craftspeople and new shopkeepers have emerged to join the ranks of the old ones. To what extent these new groups will change the outlook of the classic groups making up the old middle class is an open question. These new groups combine the idea of independence with a rigid ideology concerning the type of work that can satisfy strong moral standards. The "alternative" entrepreneurs (Vonderach 1980)—most of them small shopkeepers or craftspeople—seem unable to escape the structural constraints typical of this social location. They tend to become a new petit bourgeoisie living at the edge of the formal economy (Schlegelmilch 1983). Some even say that they are the constitutive part of an informal economy. This claim can be misunderstood because the new small entrepreneurs have to behave as members, though minor ones, of the formal economy if they want to survive (Tacke 1988). What distinguishes them from the traditional petit bourgeois, the old small entrepreneur, is their moral style. They are postmaterialists looking for psychological well-being. But this may be a minor difference, compared to the similarities in structural location and moral rigidity. Both invest in use-value, as against exchange-value, and this common interest is the decisive marker of their work culture (Eder 1989a, 1989c).

The New Middle Class. A new type of middle class has also emerged since the beginning of the century (Kocka 1981a, 1989b). This class comprises the new white-collar workers required by the expansion of the service sector. Their increase during the 1960s, especially in social service occupations (teachers, journalists, medical professionals, etc.) was fostered by an expansion of the public sector (Gershuny 1983). The members of the new middle class are not independent. On the contrary, they are often state functionaries (Staatsbeamter ).

This class embodies the Lutheran version of the Protestant ethic par excellence. The social usage of this ethic emphasizes an individual's concern with the world and translates it into a social concern. For members of this class no problem exists that cannot be psychologized. Psychological work even becomes the organizational principle of the work ethic. "Working on myself" is the key—and this seems very close to the logic of the Lutheran variant of the Protestant work ethic. The concern with self constitutes a new form of the social usage of this Lutheran tradition. The concern with self is transformed—contrary to the logic of the Calvinist model ethic—into the duty to work upon oneself. At the same time this new class integrates into its work ethic an

element formerly alien to it. An internalized duty to work is accompanied by an internalized duty to enjoy it (Bourdieu 1984). The upshot is a hedonistic attitude toward work.

The members of this class therefore become prone to conspicuous consumption as a means of realizing their individuality—that is, becoming socially distinct from their fellows—and this is precisely what cultural industry needs to expand and boom. An unstable work history among these groups reinforces this self-tinkering. It generates a work ethic of contingency that could produce the strongest obstacles in further accommodating the Lutheran (although less the Calvinist!) element of the Protestant ethic to its existence as a class. Whether the model itself will be queried is open to doubt.

The new middle class seems increasingly to dominate the cultural mood of advanced industrial societies. Its relative distance from the Protestant ethic, as it is customarily understood, makes it a possible carrier for changes in the work ethic, an agent for the construction of a new work culture. The structural change favoring the emergence of new groups (the extension of the service sector) has probably ended. But the continuing effect of this change will act as a starting point for cultural struggles. The new middle class is probably at the center of the cultural struggles that we are facing today. Its evolution will decisively shape the outcome of the crisis of the work society.

Conclusions

Culture in Action:
A Bridge to Social Structure

The distinction between model and practice allows for a more complete answer to the question: What are the effects of the modern work ethic that is modeled on the Protestant ethic upon structural change in the work society? The answer: It depends on the social usage that social groups, or classes of social groups, make of this model.

This leads us to a genuinely sociological conception of culture. The analysis of the effects of culture on structure in modern work society accounts for the cultural practices of social groups that are explained by the model they refer to. But to analyze the social effects of culture we must also analyze the sociostructural location of a social group and how

this location structures the social usage of culture. The analysis of the Protestant ethic in action helps us abandon the reification of Weber's model of a Protestant ethic as applied to the crisis of work society (a reification Weber himself provoked). It helps us to understand better the possible cultural effects upon those people whose life-worlds extend beyond the private and public spheres, that is, family or political life, into the sphere of work. And these people seem increasingly to be reintroducing the idea of self-realization into the sphere of work. The Protestant ethic, whose Calvinist element was dissolved in the process of formal rationalization (as Weber rightly saw it), still contains the Lutheran element. What we need to determine is how the distance between work and self-realization will be bridged, how Lutheranism will be acted out. There is no a priori reason to believe that it will be either all good or all bad.

A preliminary theoretical conclusion can be drawn. The Protestant ethic is a theoretical construction. It describes a model culture, not a real one. What is real is the social usage of this model—and the usages have changed and increasingly produced conflicting (and even confusing) versions of this model culture. To show this culture in action, we have analyzed its social usages. Such social usages are themselves an effect of structural developments that shape and reshape the perception and experience of social groups, thus producing cultural effects beyond changes in social structure. Thus, we have done the groundwork for a constructivist notion of the crisis of the work society.

The Crisis of the Work Society as a Social Construct

We began with the intention of taking the phenomenon of structural and cultural change seriously. Research on changes in the work ethic, we argued, must be tied more closely to research on structural developments in society, above all to changes in the class structure. The effects of culture are always mediated by social groups and therefore by a given social structure. But we should not reduce the explanation of change to sociostructural effects. For these changes take effect only because they have found some carrier in society. To really measure the effects of cultural change, we have to analyze the symbolic struggles between social groups that will generate the new cultural orientation of society. The German example of cultural change in the sphere of work,

discussed above, was thought to provide a general pattern of how this could be done.

But we have seen that the objectivist idea of a structural or a cultural crisis is misleading. Both the structural strains and the restrictive cultural heritage can be and have been overcome by adaptation and differentiation. The crisis of modern work society is due neither to the iron laws of a structural crisis endemic to capitalism or welfare nor to an exhaustion of symbolic resources. There is, we know, an "ecological crisis" that provokes political, social, and even cultural conflicts. But its intensity depends on the capacity of social actors to work on ecological problems. There is a "cultural crisis" in the sense that a fashionable ideological system, postmodernism, has questioned the very basis of modernity. But this phenomenon is itself merely proof of the capacity of culture to produce images of crises these fashionable ideas claim to have discovered.

But where is the real crisis? It is ultimately the crisis of the working class, the class that defines the dominant model of the work culture and is located at the center of the present processes of structural adaptation. The crisis of the work society is the crisis of the working class. Work has been reorganized to such an extent that the type of work represented by the working class has lost its critical place. The withholding of this type of work no longer shatters modern society. The strikes that really matter today are organized by middle-class groups, by those regulating the administration of social life, its traffic, its financial processes, its educational reproduction. The work ethic that has started to predominate in modern life is also shaped to an increasing extent by middle-class groups. The decline of the Protestant ethic as embodied in the biography of the traditional skilled worker is part of the decline of this class and its work culture. Thus the crisis of the working society is the crisis of a class that has lost its function and role as a historical actor. And it is with the crisis of the working class that the crisis of its opponent, the bourgeois class, is inextricably connected.

References

Baethge, M. 1983. Wandel betrieblicher Strukturen von Angestelltentätigkeiten. In Krise der Arbeitsgesellschaft? , edited by J. Matthes, 175-188. Frankfurt: Campus.

Bahrdt, H. P. 1983. Arbeit als Inhalt des Lebens. In Krise der arbeitsgesellschaft? , edited by J. Matthes, 120-137. Frankfurt: Campus.

Bell, D. 1973. The Coming of Postindustrial Society. New York: Basic Books.

Benseler, F., R. G. Heinze, & A. Klönne, eds. 1982. Die Zukunft der Arbeit. Hamburg: VSA Verlag.

Blossfeld, H. P. 1983. Höherqualifizierung und Verdrängung. In Beschäftigungssystem im qesellschaftlichen Wandel , edited by M. Haller & W. Müller, 284ff. Frankfurt: Campus.

Blossfeld, H. P. 1985a. Berufseintritt und Berufsverlauf. MittAB 18: 177-197.

Blossfeld, H. P. 1985b. Bildungsexpansion und Berufschancen. Empirische Analysen zur Lage der Berufsanfänger in der Bundesrepublik. Frankfurt: Campus.

Bonß, W., & R. Heinze. 1984. Arbeit, Lohnarbeit, ohne Arbeit. Zur Soziologie der Arbeitslosigkeit. In Arbeitslosigkeit in der Arbeitsgesellschaft , edited by W. Bonß & R. Heinze. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Bonß, W., & R. G. Heinze, eds. 1984. Arbeitslosigkeit in der Arbeitsgesellschaft. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Bourdieu, P. 1984. The Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Brandt, G. 1981. Die Zukunft der Arbeit in der "nachindustriellen" Gesellschaft. IHS-Journal 5:109-123.

Braverman, H. 1974. Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work on the Twentieth Century. London: Monthly Review Press.

Brock, D., & E. Otto-Brock. 1988. Hat sich die Einstellung der Jugendlichen zu Beruf und Arbeit verändert? Zeitschrift für Soziologie 17:436-450.

Brose, H. G. 1983. Die Erfahrung der Arbeit. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.

Brose, H. G. 1984. Arbeit auf Zeit--Biographie auf Zeit? In Biographie und soziale Wirklichkeit , edited by M. Kohli & G. Robert, 48-69. Stuttgart: Metzler.

Brose, H. G., ed. 1986. Berufsbiographien im Wandel. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.

Bühl, W. L. 1984. Gibt es eine soziale Evolution? Zeitschrift für Politik 31:302-331.

Bürklin, W. P. 1988. Wertwandel oder zyklische Wertaktualisierung? In Wertwandel--Faktum oder Fiktion? Bestandsaufnahmen und Diagnosen aus kultursoziologischer Sicht , edited by H. O. Luthe & H. Meulemann, 193-216. Frankfurt: Campus.

Cherns, A. 1980. Works and Values: Shifting Patterns in Industrial Society. International Social Science Journal 32:427-441.

Clausen, L. 1981. Die Wiederkehr der Arbeit. In Ankunft bei Tönnies, edited by L. Clausen & F. U. Pappi, 17-30. Kiel: Mühlau.

Dahrendorf, R. 1983. Wenn der Arbeitsgesellschaft die Arbeit ausgeht. In Krise der Arbeitsgesellschaft?, edited by J. Mattes, 25-37. Frankfurt: Campus.

Dubin, R. 1955. Industrial Worker's Worlds: A Study of the "Central Life Interests" of Industrial Workers. Social Problems 3:131-141.

Eder, K. 1985. Geschichte als Lernprozeß? Zur Pathogenese politischer Modernität in Deutschland. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Eder, K. 1989a. Jenseits der nivellierten Mittelstandsgesellschaft. Das Kleinbürgertum als Schlüssel zu einer Klassenanalyse fortgeschrittener Industriegesellschaften. In Klassenlage, Lebensstil und kulturelle Praxis, edited by K. Eder, 341-393. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Eder, K., ed. 1989b. Klassenlage, Lebensstil und kulturelle Praxis. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Eder, K. 1989c. Social Inequality and the Discourse on Equality: The Cultural Foundations of Modern Class Society. In Culture and Social Structure, edited by H. Haferkamp, 83-100. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Furnham, A. 1982. The Protestant Work Ethic and Attitudes towards Unemployment. Journal of Occupational Psychology 55:277ff.

Garfinkel, H., ed. 1986. Ethnomethodological Studies of Work. London: Routledge.

Gehrmann, F., ed. 1986. Arbeitsmoral und Technikerfeindlichkeit: Über demoskopische Fehlschlüsse. Frankfurt: Campus.

Gershuny, J. I. 1983. Goods, Services and the Future of Work. In Krise der Arbeitsgesellschaft?, edited by J. Matthes, 82-94. Frankfurt: Campus.

Giegel, H. J., G. Frank, & U. Billerbeck. 1988. Industriearbeit und Selbstbehauptung. Berufsbiographische Orientierung und Gesundheitsverhalten in gefährdeten Lebensverhältnissen. Opladen: Leske & Budrich.

Gorz, A. 1983. Wege ins Paradies. Berlin: Rotbuch.

Habermas, J. 1968. Arbeit und Interaktion. In Technik und Wissenschaft als "Ideologie," edited by J. Habermas, 9-47. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Habermas, J. 1984. The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Vol. 1. Boston: Beacon Press.

Habermas, J. 1987. The Theory of Communicative Action: Lifeworld and System. A Critique of Functionalist Reason. Vol. 2. Boston: Beacon Press.

Harding, S., D. Philips, & M. Fogarty. 1986. Contrasting Values in Western Europe. London: Macmillan.

Härtel, U., U. Matthiesen, & H. Neuendorff. 1985. Kontrastierende Fallanalysen zum Wandel von arbeitsbezogenen Deutungsmustern und Lebensentwürfen in einer Stahlstadt. Manuskript Universität Dortmund.

Härtel, U., U. Matthiesen, & H. Neuendorff. 1986. Kontinuität und Wandel arbeitsbezogener Deutungsmuster und Lebensentwürfe--Überlegungen zum Programm einer kultursoziologischen Analyse von Berufsbiographien. In Berufsbiographien im Wandel, edited by H. G. Brose, 264-290. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.

Haupt, H. G., ed. 1985. Die radikale Mitte. Lebensweise und Politik von Handwerkern und Kleinhändlern in Deutschland seit 1848. München: Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag.

Hermann, K., & E. Teschner. 1980. Taylorisierung geistiger Arbeit? Entwicklungstendenzen der Arbeits--und Berufssituation der Angestellten in der Industrie. In Bildungsexpansion und betriebliche Beschäftigungspolitik, edited by U. Beck, K. H. Hörning, & W. Thomssen, 202-209. Frankfurt: Campus.

Hinrichs, K., & H. Wiesenthal. 1982. Arbeitswerte und Arbeitszeit. Zur Pluralisierung von Wertemustern und Zeitverwendungswünschen in der modernen Industriegesellschaft. In Arbeitszeitpolitik. Formen und Folgen einer Neuverteilung der Arbeit, edited by C. Offe, K. Hinrichs, & H. Wiesenthal, 116-136. Frankfurt: Campus.

Hoffmann-Nowotny, H. J., & F. Gehrmann, eds. 1984. Ansprüche an die Arbeit. Soziale Indikatoren 11. Frankfurt: Campus.

Hondrich, K. O., J. Schumacher, K. Arzberger, F. Schile, & C. Stegbauer. 1988. Krise der Leistungsgesellschaft? Empirische Analysen zum Engagement in Arbeit, Familie und Politik. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.

Honneth, A. 1982. Work and Instrumental Action. New German Critique 26:31-54.

Hostede, G. 1980. Culture's Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values. Beverly Hills: Sage.

Illich, I. 1978. Fortschrittsmythen. Schöpferische Arbeitslosigkeit oder Die Grenzen der Vermarktung. Reinbek: Rowohlt.

Illich, I. 1979. Das Recht auf schöpferische Arbeitslosigkeit. In Anders arbeiten--anders wirtschaften, edited by J. Huber, 79-81. Frankfurt: Fischer.

Jahoda, M. 1983. Wieviel Arbeit braucht der Mensch? Arbeit und Arbeitslosigkeit im 20. Jahrhundert. Basel: Beltz.

Kern, H., & M. Schumann. 1980. Industriearbeit und Arbeiterbewußtsein. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Kern, H., & M. Schumann. 1983. Arbeit und Sozialcharakter: Alte und neue Konturen. In Krise der Arbeitsgesellschaft?, edited by J. Matthes, 353-365. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Kern, H., & M. Schumann. 1984. Das Ende der Arbeitsteilung. Rationalisierung in der industriellen Produktion. München: Beck.

Klipstein, M. von, & B. Strümpel, eds. 1985. Gewandelte Werte--Erstarrte Strukturen. Wie die Bürger Wirtschaft und Arbeit erleben. Bonn: Verlag Neue Gesellschaft.

Knapp, G. A. 1981. Industriearbeit und Instrumentalismus. Zur Geschichte eines Vor-Urteils. Bonn: Verlag Neue Gesellschaft.

Kocka, J., ed. 1981a. Angestellte im europäischen Vergleich. Die Herausbildung angestellter Mittelschichten seit dem späten 19. Jahrhundert. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Kocka, J. 1981b. Die Angestellten in der deutschen Geschichte 1850-1980. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Krappmann, L. 1983. Identität in diskontinuierlichen Berufslaufbahnen. BeitrAB 77:179-187.

Maccoby, M., & K. A. Terzi. 1981. What Happened to the Work Ethic? In The Work Ethic in Business, edited by W. M. Hoffman & T. J. Wyly, 19-58. Cambridge, Mass.: Oelgeschlager, Gunn & Hain.

Matthes, J., ed. 1983. Krise der Arbeitsgesellschaft? Verhandlungen des 21. Deutschen Soziologentages in Bamberg 1982. Frankfurt: Campus.

Meulemann, H. 1987. Bildung, Generationen und die Konjunktur des Wertes Leistung. Zeitschrift für Soziologie 16:272-287.

Mickler, O. 1981. Facharbeit im Wandel. Rationalisierung im industriellen Produktionsprozeß. Frankfurt: Campus.

Münch, P., ed. 1984. Ordnung, Fleiß und Sparsamkeit. Texte und Dokumente zur Entstehung der "bürgerlichen Tugenden." München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag.

Mutz, G. 1987. Arbeitslosigkeit in der Dienstleistungsgesellschaft. Soziale Welt 3:255-281.

Namenwirth, Z. J., & R. P. Weber. 1987. Dynamics of Culture. Winchester, Mass.: Allen & Unwin.

Noelle-Neumann, E. 1980. Werden wir alle Proletarier? Zürich: Edition Interfrom.

Noelle-Neumann, E., & B. Strümpel. 1984. Macht Arbeit krank? Macht Arbeit glücklich? Eine aktuelle Kontroverse. München: Piper.

Oevermann, U. 1985. Versozialwissenschaftlichung der Indentitätsformation und Verweigerung der Lebenspraxis. Eine aktuelle Variante der Dialektik der Aufklärung. In Soziologie und gesellschaftliche Entwicklung. 22 Deutscher Soziologentag in Dortmund, edited by B. Lutz, 463-475. Frankfurt: Campus.

Oevermann, U. 1988. Eine exemplarische Fallanalyse zum Typus versozialwissenschaftlichter Identitätsformation. In Vom Ende des Individuums zur Individualität ohne Ende, edited by H. G. Brose & B. Hildenbrand, 243-286. Opladen: Leske & Budrich.

Offe, C. 1983. Arbeit als soziologische Schlüsselkategorie? In Krise der Arbeitsgesellschaft?, edited by J. Matthes, 38-65. Frankfurt: Campus.

Offe, C., K. Hinrichs, & H. Wiesenthal, eds. 1982. Arbeitszeitpolitik: Formen und Folgen einer Neuverteilung der Arbeitszeit. Frankfurt: Campus.

Pahl, R. E. 1988. On Work: Historical, Comparative and Theoretical Perspectives. Oxford: Blackwell.

Pawlowsky, P. 1986. Arbeitseinstellungen im Wandel. Zur theoretischen Grundlage und empirischen Analyse subjektiver Indikatoren der Arbeitswelt. München: Minerva Publikation.

Pawlowsky, P., & B. Strümpel. 1986. Arbeit und Wertewandel: Replik. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 38:772-784.

Pellicani, L. 1988. Weber and the Myth of Calvinism. Telos 75:57-85.

Pialoux, M. 1979. Jeunes sans avenir et travail interimaire. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 5:19-48.

Prescott-Clarke, P. 1982. Public Attitudes towards Industrial, Work-related and Other Risks. London: Social and Community Planning Research.

Rammert, W., & C. Wehrsig. 1988. Neue Technologien im Betrieb: Politiken und Strategien betrieblicher Akteure. In Regulierung—

Deregulierung. Steuerungsprobleme der Arbeitsgesellschaft, edited by J. Feldhoff, G. Kühlewind, C. Wehrsig, & H. Wiesenthal, 301-330. Nürnberg: Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung.

Reuband, K. H. 1985. Arbeit und Wertewandel--Mehr Mythos als Realität? Von sinkender Arbeitszufriedenheit, schwindender Arbeitsethik und "vergiftetem" Arbeitsleben. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziolgie und Sozialpsychologie 37:723-746.

Reuband, K. H. 1987. Die Arbeitsmoral der Arbeitslosen. Fragwürdige Deutungen einer empirischen Studie. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 39:550-559.

Rosenmayr, L., & F. Kolland, eds. 1988. Arbeit--Freizeit--Lebenszeit. Grundlagenforschungen zu Übergängen im Lebenszyklus. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.

Schlegelmilch, C. 1983. Arbeitsorientierungen und Lebensperspektiven in der Grauzone. In Krise der Arbeitsgesellschaft?, edited by J. Matthes, 385-392. Frankfurt: Campus.

Schmidtchen, G. 1984a. Neue Technik, Neue Arbeitsmoral. Eine sozialpsychologische Untersuchung über die Motivation in der Metallindustrie. Köln: Deutscher Instituts-Verlag.

Schmidtchen, G. 1984b. Vorhof zur Hölle? Die Deutschen haben immer noch Lust zur Arbeit. Die Zeit, 23 November 1984, 39.

Soeffner, H. G. 1988. Luther--Der Weg von der Kollektivität des Glaubens zu einem lutherisch-protestantischen Individualitätstypus. In Vom Ende des Individuums zur Individualität ohne Ende, edited by H. G. Brose & B. Hildenbrand, 107-149. Opladen: Leske & Budrich.

Strümpel, B., & J. Scholz-Ligma. 1988. Bewußtseins--und sozialer Wandel. Wie erleben die Menschen die Wirtschaft. In Wertwandel--Faktum oder Fiktion?, edited by H.O. Luthe & H. Meulemann, 21-48. Frankfurt: Campus.

Tacke, A. 1988. Erwerbswirtschaftliche Alternativen zur Lohnarbeit. In Regulierung--Deregulierung. Steuerungsprobleme der Arbeitsgesellschaft, edited by J. Feldhoff, G. Kühlewind, C. Wehrsig, & H. Wiesenthal, 245-260. Nürnberg: Institut für Arbeitsmarkt und Berufsforschung.

Teschner, E., & K. Hermann. 1981. Zur Taylorisierung technischgeistiger Arbeit. Gesellschaftliche Arbeit und Rationalisierung. Leviathan-Sonderheft 4:118-135.

Touraine, A. 1969. La société postindustrielle. Paris: Denoël.

Touraine, A. 1977. The Self-Production of Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Touraine, A. 1985a. An Introduction to the Study of Social Movements. Social Research 52:749-788.

Touraine, A. 1985b. Klassen, soziale Bewegungen und soziale Schichtung in einer nachindustriellen Gesellschaft. In Die Analyse sozialer Ungleichheit, edited by H. Strasser & J. H. Goldthorpe, 324-338. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.

Treiber, H., & H. Steinert. 1980. Die Fabrikation des zuverlässigen Menschen.

Über die "Wahlverwandtschaft" von Kloster- und Fabrikdisziplin. München: Moos.

Vollmer, R. 1986. Die Entmythologisierung der Berufsarbeit. Über den sozialen Wandel von Arbeit, Beruf und Freizeit. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.

Vonderach, G. 1980. Die "neuen Selbständigen." MittAB 13:153-169.

Weber, M. 1956. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Tübingen: Mohr.

Weber, M. 1965. Die protestantische Ethik. Neudruck München: Siebenstern.

Windolf, P. 1984. Formale Bildungsabschlüsse als Selektionskriterium am Arbeitsmarkt. Eine vergleichende Analyse zwischen Frankreich, BRD und Großbritannien. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 36:75-106.

Windolf, P., & H. W. Hohn. 1984. Arbeitsmarktchancen in der Krise. Betriebliche Rekrutierung und soziale Schließung. Frankfurt: Campus.

Yankelovich, D., H. Zetterberg, B. Strümpel, M. Shanks, J. Immerwahr, & E. Noelle-Neumann. 1985. The World at Work--An International Report on Jobs Productivity and Human Values. New York: The Public Agenda Foundation.