Protestantism and Industrialization: An Examination of Three Alternative Models of the Relationship Between Religion and Capitalism
Author(s)
Buck, Robert Enoch
Abstract
While Weber’s original Protestant Ethic thesis addressed only the impact of Protestant asceticism on the unique form of calculative rationality reflected in the capitalistic organization of free labor which arose in sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe, it has been stretched into a second broader thesis about the general effects of religious ideology on economic behavior. This paper suggests a third thesis: that religious structures, as well as religious ideologies, might have an impact on economic change as well. All three theses are examined in a comparative study of the industrialization of shoemaking in two New England communities during the nineteenth century. The results show that networks of linkages within and between Quaker communities, and, to a lesser degree, between Quaker leaders and the leaders of other denominations, provided an important structural basis for the formation of a series of structural changes which came to constitute the industrialization process. The relative explanatory power of different types of religious explanations of economic phenomena is discussed, as well as implications for further research.
