Excerpt from Chapter 2: The Legacy of Max Weber, pp. 30-69

Bureaucracy: the organizing principle of modern life

To speak about bureaucracy, as many nowadays love to do, is to engage the central concern of Max Weber. Preoccupied with understanding the distinctively individual or unique character of the present historical phase,l Weber was convinced that modern bourgeois reality is marked by an unprecedented “passion for bureaucracy.” In no previous country or historical period has existence come to be so absolutely confined within calculating, rationalized forms of organization. Their scope and influence tend to become universal. Everywhere houses of bureaucratic serfdom are being constructed and finished; the advance of bureaucracy seems irreversible. Click here to continue reading (PDF)

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Spanish

John Keane: vida pública y democracia by Victor Alarcón Olguín
April 1996, Estudios Políticos

Transformaciones estructurales de la esfera pública, Estudios Sociológicos
Vol. 15, No. 43 (Jan. – Apr., 1997), pp. 47-77 (31 pages), El Colegio de Mexico

John Keane, la vida pública y el capitalismo tardío by César Cansino
México, Alianza Editorial, 1993, 320p.

La Fragmentación del Espacio Público Global by Lenin Martell

English

Read Cass R. Sunstein’s Review of John Keane, Public Life and Late Capitalism, 96 Ethics (1986): download pdf file here

Read the review of Public Life and Late Capitalism and After Full Employement, by Kevin McDonald, Thesis Eleven, Vol. 26, No. 1, 167-172 (1990) – click here

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