In the background of any discussion of the connection between child abuse and delinquency is sociological theory that can help explain how each phenomenon can arise in a stable society on one hand, and how one phenomenon can have an impact on a second on the other. The theories of Max Weber are important in this regard. Both child abuse and delinquency represent what could be called an aspect of irrationality in a society otherwise defined, by Weber, as rationalized. According to Weber, indeed, rationality is that invisible thing, force, process, and (most important) attitude whereby a society moves away from impulses, superstition, and emotion that probably cannot be controlled by mankind and toward social structure and organization that can be controlled by man.
The principle of rationalization is the most general element in Weber's philosophy of history. For the rise and fall of institutional structures, the ups and downs of classes, parties, and rulers implement the general drift of secular rationalization. In thinking of the change of human attitudes and mentalities that this process occasions, Weber liked to quote Friedrich Schiller's phrase, the 'disenchantment of the world.' The extent and direction of 'rationalization' is thus measured negatively in terms of the degree to which magical elements of thought are displaced, or positively by the extent to which ideas gain in systematic coherence and naturalistic consistency (Gerth and Mills 51).
This does not mean that a mere rational attitude guarantees one kind of perfect social structure. It also does not mean that rationalism itself is perfect. First of all, many different "rational conclusions" (Weber, 1946, p. 324) have been drawn by many different societies in the world. Secondly, rationalism itself is impersonal and bureaucratic--the enemy of personal freedom and the individual personality. The picture of bureaucracy as a corruption of social organization is always in...