8: Protestantism, Ethnicity, and the Spirit of Capitalism

On December 7, 2005, I was invited by Mary Darmanin and Peter Mayo to speak at the University of Malta in a series of seminars marking the 100 years since the publication of Max Weber’s famous articles on “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,” mostly known to readers in English, in book form, in Talcott Parsons’ translation 1930. I felt that it would have been worth discussing, in the appropriate surroundings of a former Presbyterian Church, converted to two lecture halls, these texts from the historical perspective of a Critical Sociology. In this paper, I hope to contribute toward a future discussion of this work in the context of one of Mary Darmanin’s main research areas: faith-based social and educational enquiry in a developing Europe. In my text, I want to discuss these questions: Which paradoxes Max Weber sees in the historic phenomenon of the “Protestant Ethic?” Why does “ethnicity” emerge out of the ascetic ideology of the “spirit of capitalism?” What can Antonio Gramsci’s Critical Sociology contribute to the understanding of advanced capitalism?