Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy. 1994
Chapter 7 The city: new fraternities of patriarchs
116
4. Market centers in general versus the occidental autonomous 'communes' and 'burgher-
estates'
A city can have various origins: it can be built by concession of a prince, or autonomously,
by settlers
15
. It can find its central interest in production, in consumption or in trade,
16
and it
can have various relations with the agriculture of the hinterland
17
; yet in a city in the
Weberian sense of the word, the relations of barter and production between town and
country have to be regulated
18
. This implies the existence of urban economic policy.
19
The
city can therefore be conceptualized not only in economic, but also in political terms.
Even when it is administrated by a prince, the city forms a separate politically-administrative
unity, with its own legal, administrative and political institutions. It is therefore a partially
autonomous organization, a 'commune'.
20
As a rule the nature of land ownership in the city is
also different from that in the countryside, 'due to the specific basis of the earning capacity of
urban real estate: house ownership, to which land ownership is merely accessory.' (it.
mine).
21
The city also often has a garrison and a fortress, from which the surrounding countryside can
be dominated. Inside its walls it therefore has both a military and an economic population.
These two groups have to find a mode of co-existence; in Weber's view the way in which
they arrange their relations is of crucial importance for the constitutional history of a city.
22
Thus Weber narrows down his concept of the city to that of the fully developed 'commune',
which existed in considerable numbers only in the occident, and to its main prototype: a
settlement of the commercial type, with
'1. a fortification, 2. a market, 3. its own court of law and, at least in part, autonomous law; 4. an associational
structure (Verbandscharacter) and, connected therewith, 5. at least partial autonomy and autocephaly, which
includes administration by authorities in whose appointment the burghers could in some way participate. In the
past, such rights almost always took the form of p r i v i l e g e s o f a n e s t a t e ('Stand'); hence the
characteristic of the city in the political definition was the appearance of a distinct *"burgher"estate.
'
23
Weber is now able to examine the specific history of the 'occidental city': how did this
'burgher-estate' develop and why did it develop only in the occident ?
Weber treats the occidental cities of Antiquity and Middle Ages together, not because he
supposes a direct causal relation between their respective developments, but because he
sees structural parallels between them. He concludes that in both types of cities the different
estates - the old ones of war and the new ones of money - will have to compromise. He also
concludes that the number of ways to effect such a compromise is restricted.
15
ES p. 1214, WG p. 728.
16
ES p. 1215 ff., WG 729 ff.
17
ES p. 1217 ff., WG p. 730 ff.
18
This in contrast with the oikos in which the several activities are coordinated without barter. ES p. 1220, WG p.
732.
19
ES p. 1219, WG p. 731: 'wirtschaftspolitische Maßregeln'.
20
ES p. 1220, WG p. 732.
21
I will discuss the importance of house ownership when dealing with the city patriarchy, see below no 9.
22
ES p. 1224 ff., WG p. 735.
23
ES p. 1226, WG p. 736. I mostly translate 'Bürger' with 'burghers', and not with 'bourgeois', as the American
translation sometimes does.
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