Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy.
Amsterdam 1994 Dissertation University of Amsterdam. Chapter 1. Max Weber's universalist
sociology of bureaucracy: the contradiction between public rationalism and private masculinism
18
To summarize: to analyze the development of 'rationality' and 'bureaucracy' in an 'objective'
way, Weber conformed to the rules of the object of his investigation; by fostering belief in
'objective social science', in the existence of a correct 'procedure' to attain 'objectivity', he
reinforced the separation of a public sphere of 'rationality' and a private sphere of
'irrationality'.
4. Weber's rational construction of ideal types and its limits
The concepts Weber constructs to order empirical reality are his famous 'ideal types'. These
are 'ideal thought images' ('Gedankenbilder') which 'integrate certain relations and events of
historical life into a cosmos of in our thought existing relations, which is free of inner
contradictions';
47
they are to be used as 'limiting concepts to which the real situation or
action is measured, with which it is compared, to clarify specific components of their
empirical content'.
48
Ideal types serve to bring to consciousness those specific characteristics of cultural
phenomena which fall outside of the ideal type as it had initially been constructed; the ideal-
type proves its use in particular when it 'demonstrates its own unreality'.
49
The main instance
of the use of abstract constructions to understand concrete circumstances in an indirect,
comparative way, are the rational constructs Weber uses to understand irrational actions.
As long as actors act rationally, Weber can reconstruct their calculations and in this way
understand their action orientations; but for those cases in which the actors apparently do
not predict the actions of others in a rational way, he advises the use of a comparative
method. This means that he has to supplement his subjective emotional understanding of
the irrational actions, acquired through 'Einleben' or 'Einfühlen'
50
- a method which Weber
derived from the neo-Kantians - with a rational reconstruction; he should treat 'all irrational,
affectually determined elements of *conduct as factors of deviation from a conceptually pure
type of rational action.'
51
Weber calls this method the 'uncertain procedure of the "imaginary
experiment"'; it consists of 'thinking away certain elements of a chain of motivation and
47
MSS p. 90, GAzW p. 190: 'ein in sich widerspruchlosen Kosmos gedachter Zusammenhänge'; see also ES p.
20, WG p. 10: '... which in each case involve the highest possible degree of logical integration by virtue of their
complete adequacy on the level of meaning.' This is a way of systemization which is intimately related to German
legal thinking, the 'Begriffsjürisprudenz', of Weber's time as he defines it in his chapter on Economy and law, ES
p. 656, WG p. 306: 'According to present modes of thought it represents an integration of all analytically derived
legal propositions in such a way that they constitute a logically clear, and, at least in theory, gapless system of
rules, under which, it is implied, all conceivable fact situations must be capable of being logically subsumed lest
their order lack an effective guaranty.' See Ch. 9,2 below on the charismatic elements in this kind of formal
rationality.
48
MSS p. 93, GAzW p. 194.
49
MSS p. 101/2, GAzW p. 202/3; see also ES p. 20, WG p. 10: 'The more sharply and precisely the ideal type
has been constructed, thus the more abstract and unrealistic in this sense it is, the better it is able to perform its
functions in formulating terminology, classifications, and hypotheses. (...). Then it is possible to compare with this
the actual course of action and to arrive at a causal explanation of the observed deviations (...).'
50
The term 'sich einleben' is easy to translate into Dutch, but difficult to translate into English. My dictionary only
gives 'sich einleben' into a role ('enter into a part'); its meaning can be approximated by 'project oneself into', or
'identify oneself with'.
51
ES p. 6, WG p. 2.
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