Iron cage is a concept introduced by Max Weber. Iron Cage refers to the increasing rationalization of human life, which traps individuals in an "iron cage" of rule-based, rational control. He also called such over-bureaucratized social order "[the] polar night of icy darkness". The original German term is stahlhartes Gehäuse; this was translated into 'iron cage', an expression made familiar to English language speakers by Talcott Parsons[1] in his 1958 translation of Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.[2] [3] Recently some sociologists have questioned this translation, arguing that the correct term should be 'shell as hard as steel' and that the difference from the original translation is significant.[4], [5] A more literal translation from German would be "a steel encasement."
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- "In Baxter’s view the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the “saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment.” But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage." [6]
