Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy. 1994
Chapter 8 Connections between formal rationality and patriarchal-patrimonial domination
over and through men
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repressed from public awareness into his universalist masculinist sociology. Since Weber,
because of his use of a universalist method, cannot analyze the developments of the private
sphere and their connections with the public sphere, he moves them to the universalist
public sphere. Private, sex-defined relations - between women and men and between men
as such - are therefore represented as universalist relations between men.
I have shown that Weber conceptualized non-modern relations between men as 'irrational' -
charismatic or traditional - and sex-defined: as fraternal or patriarchal. Only modern relations
between men are conceptualized as 'impersonal'. Although for private reasons he wants to
present formal rationalization only as a development of 'traditional' - patriarchal - relations
between men, his analysis of 'charismatic' - fraternal - relations shows that the latter contain
formal-rational elements.
Impersonality is the central characteristic of 'legal rational domination' or 'formal rational
bureaucracy': officials and subjects are supposed to obey rules, not persons; formal freedom
and equality of both officials and subjects are elements of bureaucracy which are as
indispensable as hierarchy and discipline.
Since in his view the irrational kinds of legitimate domination also contribute elements to the
bureaucratization process, Weber can not conceptualize the development of 'impersonal
rule' or 'authority of the rule' in any consistent way. He can only conceptualize separate
developments of patriarchal and fraternal relations; therefore he is unable to conceptualize
them as merging into one social formation in which relations between men are impersonal
because their sex-defined patriarchal and fraternal characteristics have been repressed from
public consciousness.
To finish my analysis of bureaucratization I will discuss the rationalization processes both of
patriarchal and of fraternal relations. In this chapter I will deal with the rationalization of
patriarchal relations between men; in the next one with that of fraternal relations; in the final
chapter I will discuss their fusion.
In Weber's analysis of the 'revival' of patriarchal patrimonialism several separate
developments are presented together: he analyzes both the contributions of feudal and city
'Estates' to this revival and the subsequent formal rationalization of patriarchal
patrimonialism. On the other hand he analyzes the barriers to this formal rationalization as
well. Political barriers can be found in the tendency of the patriarchal-patrimonial rulers to
attract the support of the population by a materially rational 'welfare state' legitimation,
economical ones in their political arbitrariness which hindered the development of formal-
rational capitalist mass production. I will first, however, continue my discussion of the
'Ständestaat', in which the specific Western influences came together and led to the revival
of patriarchal patrimonialism.
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