Quiz for Chapter 6
Multiple Choice Questions
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1. What were Weber's main contributions to studies in the sociology of religion?
a) his ethnographic study of impoverished puritan communities
b) the relationship between Protestantism and capitalism
c) a general theory of religious movements
d) the universal significance of capitalism and the marketization of religion
Answer: B (Page 151)
2. Who said, 'The satisfaction of our most ideal needs are everywhere confronted with the quantitative limits and the qualitative inadequacy of the necessary external means…'?
a) Karl Marx
b) Max Weber
c) Emile Durkheim
d) Auguste Comte
Answer: B (Page 155)
3. What is an area of convergence in the sociological perspectives of Marx and Weber?
a) They were both collectivists.
b) They shared utopian visions of the end of society.
c) They were committed to the institutionalization of sociology.
d) They identified negative features of bourgeois civilization.
Answer: D (Page 160)
4. Talcott Parsons developed his own theory, structural functionalism, based on a synthesis of the work of Emile Durkheim and ________.
a) Karl Marx
b) Auguste Comte
c) Max Weber
d) Herbert Marcuse
Answer: C (Page 161)
5. In the 1960s, how was Marx's work viewed in the United States?
a) Sociological theory was virtually identical to Marxist theory.
b) Marx's theories were dismissed as the work of an ideologue.
c) Many attempts were made to integrate Marx's theories into sociology.
d) Marx was seen as contributing to a scientific understanding of society.
Answer: B (Page 140)
True or False Questions
1. For Weber, the scientific method meant integrating his political and ethical values into his analysis of society.
Answer: False (Page 159)
2. Parsons praised Weber for rising above the ideological disputes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Answer: True (Page 161)
3. Weber was an apologist for liberal capitalism.
Answer: True (Page 162)
4. Marx was a bloodthirsty radical.
Answer: False (Page 140)
5. The material forces of production include everything needed for production to take place.
Answer: True (Page 145)
Fill in the Blank Questions
1. One of the historical trends associated with rationalism is that social actors free themselves from ________ and replace that with thinking informed by empirical observations.
Answer: magical thinking (Page 157)
2. During Weber's lifetime, many social thinkers did not believe that the ________ of society was possible or even desirable.
Answer: objective study (Page 159)
3. Weber believed that the calling or vocation of a scientist is to be a ________, not a leader.
Answer: teacher (Page 159)
4. For Weber, Marxism was ________ and simplistic in its economic determinism.
Answer: dogmatic (Page 160)
5. Marcuse used Weber's analysis of bureaucracy and ________ modes of thought to help inform his own thinking about social class and class oppression.
Answer: legal–rational (Page 162)
Short Answer Questions
1. What is an ideology?
Answer: An ideology is a system of coercive ideas that dictate the way the world ought to be, mystifying social relations for the benefit of the dominant social class.
2. What did Weber think would happen as a consequence of the advance of capitalism?
Answer: Weber associated the advance of capitalism with the process of rationalization, holding a pessimistic view of a world devoid of religion and enchantment. He in turn associated the rise of bureaucracies with the loss of personal autonomy and grand narratives about human existence.
3. What are the consequences for sociologists in following Weber's methodology?
Answer: In following Weber's methodology, sociologists are prevented from asking important scientific questions about the generality of social relations and whether or not these generalities constitute sociological laws.
4. What was Hegel's form of philosophical idealism and why did Marx reject it?
Hegel's form of philosophical idealism posits that physical things are not real and that reality is a product of thought. In contrast, Marx took the material conditions of peoples' lives seriously, considering their existence real in the same way that the physicality of the human body is an integral component of human existence.