Thomas Schwinn

Max Weber’s work, especially his comparative sociology of religion, is about the historical genesis of modernity. Today, the global spread of modernity is in the focus of research. The article outlines the references in Max Weber’s work to this current problem. We can find them in his comparative political sociology, in which he interrelates Germany, Russia and the USA. Weber’s assessments of the longer-term path of development of the two large countries in the East and in the West are ambivalent. They range between the Europeanization of America and Russia and his hope that both countries could keep open the “scope of modernity”. Using the example of the US, this article demonstrates the development of an independent form – compared to the European one – of modernity in politics, religion, law and science. Max Weber’s research program can be updated and enhanced in terms of the multiple-modernities thesis. It thus constitutes an alternative to today’s widespread globalization research, which is mostly too simple.