Blod 4- Max Weber and Authority

This past week, my Sociology class discussed Max Weber. Two of the things we talked about were Bureaucracy and Authority. The subject that intrigued me the most was the three forms of Authority. The first form is rational; the police are put into power for a reason and we should follow them. The next is traditonal. We do things because "it is tradition"; there is no other logic to why we follow that authority. The third is charasmatic authority. That is where we follow a certian authroity because it is appealing to us.

The form of authority that I realted to the most was traditional authority. I am getting married this coming August and I am expirienceing this form of authority firsthand. All the time that I am planning my wedding, I am hearing my mother saying, "You have to do this; it is tradition." "No one does that, Andrea, that is too non-traditional." It is really frustrating sometimes, because I want to have my wedding the way my fiance and I want it and yes, somethings are not traditional. You should have heard the hour conversation on why I could not wear glitter TOMS for my wedding shoes with my mother.

I have no choice but to follow these traditions, because people will see my do something outside of the social norms and they will think less of me. I do not want people to look down on me, so I still go along with a more traditional wedding.



I chose this photo, because correlates with what I am going through right now and it has to do with traditional authority. I looked at a wide variety of pictures of weddings from a long time ago. These pictures that I looked at all reminded me of tradition. However, the way weddings look today is because people defied traditional authority and did what they desired.