The Ideal Types in the Practice: Meanings, Constructions, Applications

Max Weber's concept of ideal type has been used both in implicit & explicit ways by numerous authors, before & after it was proposed & developed by him from the beginning of the 20th century. However, there is not much written neither about how an ideal typology can be built nor the way it can be used. In this article these questions are approached. After referring to Weber in order to know the essence of the concept & its implications as they appear in his work, there are two sections in which four possible procedures to elaborate ideal types are presented, which can be called, in short, simple abstraction, historical revision, logical dialectics & social trend, as well as three different kinds of practical applications: that of common understanding when approaching to a concept, that of comparing a reality to one or several ideal types for obtaining conclusions & that of formulating hypothesis. We consider three options from the last one: formulating hypothesis about one type & its features internal relations, about the relationship between two ideal types &, finally, about the evolution of an ideal type from a social trend. Tables, References. Adapted from the source document.