Who Were the Sea Peoples?

For the first time I am delving into the International Relations literature, in the process of reviewing a book called Liberal World Orders . (This is funny in a way, as IR was one of the specialties of my dissertation supervisor.) I was immediately struck by how prevalent Max Weber's concept of "ideal types" is in what I am reading. Here is a typical quote: "One is to map the various models of liberal international order--both in ideal-typical terms and in their historical setting." (G. John Ikenberry, "Liberal Internationalism 3.0")

Book browsing, I picked up The Economics Book (a slim encyclopedia) and began to flip through it. I happened to open to the section on Max Weber and Protestantism. In the two pages(!) devoted to Weber, I found the following presented as "conflicting cases," arguing against his thesis: "Swedish social scientist Kurt Samuelsson argued that Puritan leaders did not truly endorse capitalistic behavior." Yes, that would certainly conflict with Weber's thesis... if it was not exactly what Weber said, which was that Calvinism promoted "capitalistic behavior"  despite the fact its leading thinkers in no way were endorsing it. Next we have: "The leading European power 16th and 17th centuries, and the first global superpower, was he thoroughly Catholic Spanish Empire." Right. So what Weber posited was, "To become a global superpower, a nation must be Protestant." Wait a second... that is nothing like what he said! So the point i...

Well, at least if you are taking my course on The Great Transformation they are: 1) Describe the division of labor. What does Adam Smith see as its advantages? What are some possible disadvantagtes? 2) What is the idea of dialectics as developed by Hegel? How did Karl Marx apply the idea to history? How did feudalism trasition into capitalism in this view? 3) How does Max Weber characterize the spirit of capitalism? Specifically, how is it different from the traditional attitude towards economic life? How did Lutheranism and Calvinism contribute to that change?

"'Historical concept-formation' does not seek to embody historical reality in abstract generic concepts but endeavors to integrate them in concrete configurations, which are always and inevitably individual in character." -- Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism