Wikipedia:Today's featured article/December 30, 2004

Max Weber was a German political economist and sociologist who is considered one of the founders of the modern study of sociology and public administration. His major works deal with sociology of religion and government, but he also wrote much in the field of economics. His most recognized work is his essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which began his work in the sociology of religion. Weber argued that religion was one of the primary reasons for the different development paths of the cultures of the Occident and the Orient. In his other famous work, Politics as a Vocation, Weber defined the state as an entity which possesses a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force, a definition that became pivotal to the study of modern Western political science. (more...)

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