ideáltípusok

Ideáltípusok, often translated as "ideal types," is a methodological concept in sociology developed by Max Weber. It is not meant to represent an ideal in the normative sense, nor is it a statistical average. Instead, an ideal type is a conceptual tool constructed by the social scientist to understand and analyze social phenomena. It is an exaggerated, one-sided, and logically coherent picture of a phenomenon, achieved by the un-sided accentuation of one or more points of view and by a synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete, more or less discrete, and distinct individual phenomena.

Weber used ideal types to clarify complex social realities by providing a benchmark against which actual empirical situations could be compared. For example, he constructed ideal types of bureaucracy, capitalism, and various forms of legitimate domination (traditional, charismatic, and rational-legal). These ideal types serve to highlight specific characteristics and their interrelations in a pure, simplified form. By contrasting empirical events with these conceptual constructs, sociologists can identify deviations, analyze the extent to which a real-world phenomenon approximates the ideal type, and understand the causal factors behind these variations. The ideal type is a heuristic device, a tool for research, and its validity lies in its usefulness for clarifying and explaining social action and structures.