In THE SPIRIT OE WEBER 221 Addressing these silences requires a strongly inter-disciplinary perspective. It also requires that we abandon certain deep-rooted and intellectually disabling conventions of historical and social explanation. Just what these convcntions are and how we might begin to transcend them is a core concern of this paper. Fromwhat has been said already, it will come as no surprise that the starting point of my enquiry is Weber’s treatment of the English. I hope to contribute to the debate on the peculiarities of the English through a reconsideration of the notion of Britain as a deviant case, paying particular attention to the law and legal culture of England. Weber’s work on England highlights more starkly than most of his other writings the tensions within, and the limitations of, his notions of “rationality” and “modernity”. For instance, one can glimpse the juxtaposition of the Utopia and anti-Utopia within Weber’s thought.’^ Weber’s treatment of “rationality” and “modernity” represents a specific instance of a long-standing, important and highly influential tradition of explaining and describing the rise of modern capitalist societies. By analysing the limitations of his general concepts we begin to lay bare a wider problem: namely, the conceptualisatic)n and historical analysis of “modernity” within the human sciences. In short, what follows might be said to be in the spirit if not the letter of Weber’s comparative historical sociology. Max Weber, The Causal Importance of “Rational Law” and the Relationship Between Economy and LawExegesis versus Empirical Assessments^ Max Weber sought to distinguish those factors crucial to, and inherent in, the process of modernisation. For Weber, it was the development of rationalOn the close connection between the utopian and anti-utopian, see Krishan Kumar’s tine stuciy, Utopia and .Anti-Utopia in Modern Times, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986). See, generally, R. Bendix. Max Weber - An Intellectual Portrait, (London: Methuen, 1966); D. Trubek. “Max Weber cm Law and the Rise of Capitalism”, Wisconsin Law Review, 1972, pp. 720-53; M. Rheinstein, Introduction to Max Weber on Law in Economy, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954); M. Albrow, “Legal Positivism and Bourgeois Materialism: Max Weber’s View of the Sociology of Law”, British Jciurnal of Law and Society 2, 1975, pp. 14-31; A. Hunt, The Sociological Movement in Law, (London: Macmillan, 1978), chap. 5; P. Bierne, “Ideology and Rationality in Max Weber’s Sociology of Law”, in S. Spitzer (ed.). Researching law and Sociology. Vol. 2, (Greenwich: JAI Press. 1979) pp. 103-31: M. Cain. “The Limits of IdealismMax Weber and The Sociology of Law” in ibid. vol. 3, (Greenwich: JAI Press, 1981) pp. 53-83: R. Cotterrell, “Legality and Political Legitimacy in the Sociologv of Max Weber”, in D. Sugarman (ed.). Legality. Ideology and the State (London: Academic Press, 1979), pp. 69-93; A.T. Kronman, Max Weber, (London: Edward Arnold, 1983); F. Parkin, Max Weber, (London: Tavistock, 1982); R.B. Ferguson, “Lawand Commercial Order: Sales Transactions and the Legal Systemin Modern England”, Ph.D., thesis. University of Wales, 1982 parts of which appeared in his “The Adjudication
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