Abstract

GIL VILLEGAS M., Francisco. Cien años de debate en torno a la tesis weberiana sobre la ética protestante. Sociológica (Méx.) [online]. 2005, vol.20, n.59, pp.137-169. ISSN 2007-8358.

Advancing materials from a broader research project, this article offers a sam-ple of some erroneous readings of Weber’s thesis about the Protestant ethic produced during the 1960s when an attempt was made to extrapolate it to cases not dealt with by Weber himself or that fell outside of the time-space parameters that he expressly established for judging his hypothesis’s validity. The examples selected show how fruitful Weber’s hypothesis is as a source of inspiration for new research, but also how irrelevant the latter is for confirming or refuting the intrinsic validity of the hypothesis itself.

Keywords : elective affinities; causality; ideal type; modernization; acquisi-tive society; Protestantism; capitalism.