Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy.
Amsterdam 1994. SUMMARY
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SUMMARY
To answer the question why women in modern democracies are still not represented equally
in positions of authority, I have criticized the separation between public and private life which
is the foundation of modern universalist rule as well of modern universalist social science.
Feminist organization sociology has made an inventory of the problems a woman
encounters when she has been admitted to a position of authority as a token of the
democratic intentions of men. However, it has not yet succeeded in connecting insights in
the structure of masculine groups and of the means their members employ to dominate
women, with the concepts of organization theory. In order to make this connection, the sex-
neutral character of the concepts of organization sociology itself has to be criticized; only
then will it be possible to translate the sex-neutral terms of universalist sociology into the
sex-defined terms in which the experiences of women are conceptualized: to connect the
sociology of 'the organization' or 'the bureaucracy' to a historical world of women and men.
The way the separation of public and private sphere is formulated in modern social science
was established by the famous German sociologist Max Weber. Although Weber believed in
'the irrationality of history' and in the opposition of 'facts' to 'values', of 'reason' to 'emotions',
he believed also that a method could be invented by means of which an 'objective' scientific
procedure could be achieved. In this method the rational calculation of 'chances' that specific
individual actions will occur should be combined with an empathic understanding of irrational
individual action orientations; both rational and irrational action orientations are discovered
by comparing them to 'ideal-types', logically consistent concepts constructed by the scientist
himself.
Since one of the central objects of Weber's historical sociology in his unfinished 'Economy
and Society' (1921) is the modern 'formal-rational bureaucracy' and since he defines this
form of bureaucracy as an institution which separates public and private life, his method
follows the rules of his object. According to him 'bureaucracy' or 'formal-rational domination'
is specific for Western culture and leads to an irreversible process of 'disenchantment of the
world'. This means that in modern society 'values', 'emotions' and 'material rationality' can be
discerned only in extra-ordinary circumstances; ordinary life is defined by formal rationality,
which eradicates their validity. Correspondingly, 'values', 'emotions' and 'material rationality'
are termed 'irrational' in Weber's method; they can be investigated only in a negative way, by
comparing them to ideal types of 'formal rational' forms of conduct. He therefore
conceptualized all sex-defined relations - relations between historical women and men - in
an irrational way: by applying his 'law of unintended consequences', or, by formulating a
'paradox', an 'inversion of meaning', or a 'fluent transition between opposites', or, eventually,
by the use of irony. By projecting the modern separation of public and private sphere back
into history he could maintain his norm of 'objectivity' in science: historical relations between
women and men are rationally conceptualized as ruled by 'irrational' forms of domination.
The aim of his analysis appears to be 'political', not only in the everyday sense of the word,
but also in the radical-feminist sense of 'based on private masculine values'. The view
Weber presented in his political writings as well as in his scientific ones was that the German
bureaucracy checked the expansion of German capitalism, causing Germany to lose its
imperialist struggle with England and therefore threatening German manhood.
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