Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy. 1994
Chapter 10 Hidden Masculinity: impersonal bureaucracy as a result of the unsolvable conflict between
fraternity and patriarchy
176
Impersonality implies the separation of the relations between men in the public sphere from
those in their private, sex-defined life; in the long run this separation leads to the repression
from consciousness of the private relations between men themselves. Love between men
hides itself in the covert culture of homosexual and other masculine emotions.
3. The limits of interpretive sociology. Repression from consciousness: Weber's
'unconscious rationality' as a paradoxical connection between formal and material rationality
Since my analysis of bureaucracy and its history in sex-defined terms is based on the
connection of causal relations constructed by Weber, the question arises in how far such an
analysis is compatible with Weber's method and intentions. The answer to this question has
to be tentative; Weber does not state clearly to which degree he is able to analyze motives
and interests which have not been brought into consciousness; he only states that in that
case the interpretation of their meaning is brought to its limit. As I wrote earlier
6
, in his
introduction to ES he explains that motives are not always brought to consciousness
7
;
according to him '"conscious motives" may well, even to the actor himself, conceal the
various "motives" and "repressions" which constitute the real driving force of his action.'
'Then it is the task of the sociologist to be aware of this motivational situation and to describe and analyze it, e v e
n t h o u g h it has not, *or mostly: not fully, been brought, as concretely 'meant', into the c o n s c i o u s n e s s
of the actor; this is a borderline case of the interpretation of meaning'
.
8
Another limit to interpretive understanding Weber mentions is the situation in which the
actors are 'subject to opposing and conflicting impulses, all of which we are able to
understand.'
9
In these cases 'only the actual outcome of the conflict gives a solid basis of
judgment.'
10
In 'Ueber einige Kategorien der verstehenden Soziologie'
11
he analyzed the limits of
interpretive sociology in a more fundamental way, drawing a parallel between interpretive
activities and the methods of Marx, Freud and Nietzsche. Weber, like these theorists, wants
to discover the cases in which actors were driven by their desire to pursue their own
interests, while subjectively they were oriented to quite other motives - he is interested in
cases of 'falsches Bewußtsein', or of 'Verdrängung' of desires or feelings of resentment. In
these cases an 'unconscious rationality' of the actor can be deduced from the effects of his
action. Such a concept of 'unconscious rationality' refers to rational motivations - to
motivations oriented to fulfillment of wishes, to individual or collective care for psychological
himself to his superior without any will of his own, but (...) status sentiments are the compensatory consequence
of such subordination, serving to maintain the official's self-respect. The purely impersonal character of the office,
with its separation of the private sphere from that of the official activities, facilitates the official's integration into
the given functional conditions of the disciplined mechanism.' ES p. 968, WG p. 558.
6
Ch. 1,10.
7
ES p. 21, WG p. 10: 'In the great majority of cases actual action goes on in a state of inarticulate half-
consciousness or actual unconsciousness of its subjective meaning.'
8
ES p. 9/10, WG p. 4.
9
'In a large number of cases we know from experience it is not possible to arrive at even an approximate
estimate of the relative strength of conflicting motives and very often we cannot be certain of our interpretation.'
10
ES p. 10, WG p. 4. (It. mine).
11
1913, Gazw p. 427 ff.
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