Max Weber's methodology: An ideal-type<FNR></FNR><FN>This contribution is based on my forthcoming book, Max Weber's Methodologies. Interpretation and Critique , to be published by Polity Press. I also would like to express my gratitude to Stephen P. Turner (University of South Florida at Tampa) for his many suggestions and generosity in spending time commenting on my various drafts. </FN>

Weber dealt—in contrast to the textbook image of his method—with rational and nonempathetic explanatory interpretation. His ideal-type for social action emerged in a very formative period, as a mediation between history and theory and can be characterized as releasing what was inherent in a historicist tradition in crisis. Theoretical elements from Austrian marginalism provided Weber with the prototype for developing contrafactual schemes into ideal-types. Weber as a scholar at the crossroads resolved the problem of uncontrolled value-intrusion in a way that provided rational evidence and limited objectivity, in the form of instrumental means–end analysis. His methodology was coherent over time but gradually emerged when contemporary polemics called for his voice to be heard. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]