Max Weber y la constitución de identidades: un legado para un mundo desencantado

Abstract

This article begins discussing a definition of the concept of identity, in order to be able to, departing from it, assess the specific contribution to it that can be read in Max Weber’s work. Not being a concept in which Weber dwelt on much —in fact, it begun to be used in the social sciences much later—, his approach on the constitution of communities, specially of political and religious ones, shows the author’s interest in the communal bonds. Looking at the identity processes he discusses, i.e. ethnical or status groups, the importance assigned to the subjective role in their constitution becomes apparent, as much as the irrational factors that allow for these social bonds. The historical prospective of Weber stresses the communal relationships established around world religions, and the incapability of Modernity to reproduce them in their intensity. Notwithstanding this, modern politics has for him the possibility of establishing communal bonds that may emulate the intensity those bonds used to have, for instance around the national problem. In the last section, the article points out to the potentiality of contemporary populism to allow the rise of new identities and, by this, to encourage new paths for politics.