Economy and Society: The Final Version represents the codification of Weber's thinking on the fundamental topics of social science:

• sociology as an interpretative science of society
• the economy treated in an interpretative manner
• the legitimacy of rulership and power
• the formation of class, status groups, and political parties.

These were themes Weber had worked with throughout his academic life and in this final and succinct formulation they provide the basis of modern sociology and much of the thinking in economics, politics and law.

This edition offers a new translation by Keith Tribe, the first new translation of this classic text since the A.M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons' translation of 1947. The new translation restores Weber's original page layout, the precision of his language and where necessary supplies explanatory footnotes. Sam Whimster also provides a comprehensive introduction. This places the work in the context of the older, separate manuscripts of E&S, updates readers with the advances in international Weber scholarship and initiates the reader into Weber's architectonic vision of a unified social science.