Naslov
Benjamin Franklin, Max Weber, and the Elusive "Spirit of Capitalism"

Autori
Šesnić, Jelena

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Poglavlja u knjigama, znanstveni

Knjiga
Ekonomija i književnost Economy and Literature

Urednik/ci
Hameršak, Marijana ; Kolanović, Maša ; Molvarec, Lana

Izdavač
Hrvatska sveučilišna naklada

Grad
Zagreb

Godina
2022

Raspon stranica
44-82

ISBN
9789531694995

Ključne riječi
Max Weber, Benjamin Franklin, the spirit of capitalism, autobiography, the public print sphere

Sažetak
Max Weber’s classical study of the origins of capitalism makes a strong claim about the vital nexus between ascetic Puritanism and the rise of capitalism, which he importantly illustrates by drawing on the American context, specifically the role of Benjamin Franklin in fostering new forms of economic behavior creating the market economy. To reiterate his argument, Weber ascertains that the doctrine of predestination and the concept of calling – taking place in a worldly environment but alien to it – pushed the men at the forefront of the Protestant Reformation, in the New World and elsewhere, to adopt a new rationale of economic behavior which in the course of time led to the emergence of capitalism. The argument acknowledges the general validity of Weber’s much rehearsed thesis but examines in more detail its weak points insofar as it intends to harness Franklin, his persona, and his texts (in particular his autobiography but also a number of his other writings) to uphold the hypotheses. The examination proceeds by considering the multifaceted social world of the semi-peripheral and colonial American society, which Franklin successfully navigates, sometimes breaking the rules and sometimes obeying them. The consideration of the rising public sphere, in which Franklin importantly participated as a printer, writer, and agile citizen, allows for a more nuanced understanding of the importance of social networks – both bottom-up and top-down – in the formation of a new economic system. The next stage considers the generic, rhetorical, and discursive analysis of Franklin’s texts cited by Weber so as to demonstrate the inconclusiveness of tagging them as clear-cut examples of Weber’s thesis. Additionally, this requires that we also reconsider the secularization thesis as a much less straightforward process than is suggested by the theories of modernity. The textual analysis encompasses several of Franklin’s texts, beginning with his long-standing and hugely popular colonial almanac, in which he adopts the enduring and performative literary persona of Poor Richard. The next key point of analysis refers to Franklin’s autobiography – more accurately memoirs – as a multi-focal and polyvalent text reflecting different points in his life and foregrounding concurrent strategies of self-presentation, confirming the autobiography’s status as a proto-national text, but thereby also complicating and reframing the explicit uses that Weber puts the text to. The conclusion is that, on the strength of Franklin’s example and its high status in Weber’s socio-cultural model, the thesis deserves to be re-examined and modified when we take into account the dynamic dialogue with the ineluctable Franklin and his rhetorically seductive, polyphonic texts.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filologija, Interdisciplinarne humanističke znanosti, Književnost

POVEZANOST RADA