As might be expected, Max Weber turns up a fair bit in my book. Weber explicitly thought of himself as "a member of the bourgeois class", ""educated in their views and ideals". He asked Robert Michels to consider him a "class-conscious bourgeois".
What Weber meant by 'bourgeois' was pretty complex. In one context, however, he defined the 'positively privilged classes' as 'entrepeneurs, managers and members of the various professions "with sought after expertise or privileged education" (e.g. lawyers, scientists, physicians and artists), as well as, in rare cases, highly skilled workers who are not easily replacable.' [From Wolfgang J. Mommsen, The Political and Social Theory of Max Weber: Collected Essays (Polity Press: Cambridge, 1989), pp. 53, 64.]
As it turns out, this isn't so far from my own definition of the bourgeoisie. However, as I argue that there is - more or less - a fundamental (if relational) economic basis for bourgeois class interests and attitudes, I don't primarily use Weber's typology with its emphasis on multi-valency. I discuss my 'definition' of the bourgeoisie in the introduction to the book, already available here [PDF].
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