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
19
working out the course of action which would then probably ensue, so arriving at a causal
judgment.'
52
In this way the 'construction of a purely rational course of action in such cases
serves the sociologist as a type (ideal type) which has the merit of clear understandability
and lack of ambiguity.'
53
Weber admits that his method incurs the risk of having a 'rationalistic bias'
54
: it might provide
'rationalist interpretations where they are out of place.' In his view, however, the risk of a
rationalist bias can be counteracted by using rationality only as a means of comparison.
Non-rational social relations therefore can be conceptualized in an indirect way; the social
scientist should first imagine rational actions which might have occurred in a given situation
and then explain the difference between these imagined rational actions and those that
actually occurred.
As a consequence of the separation of public and private life interpretive sociology
('Verstehende Soziologie') therefore consists of two interpretive processes, a rational one -
which is a construction of what the investigator considers rational action - and an emotional,
empathic one. The faculties of the investigator's mind are thought of as divided in a 'rational'
and an 'emotional' one.
55
Weber himself admits that the combination of these opposite ways
of understanding constitutes no more than a 'thought experiment' or the use of an
'imagination nurtured by personal experience and trained in methodical thinking'
56
. Rational
and emotional investigation and their respective results therefore retain their different
cognitive status, which is also hierarchical.
The sociological interpretation of individual action orientations, according to Weber, has to
take account also of the reactions of individuals to processes and phenomena which from
the view of the individuals concerned are just given data, since they cannot control them.
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Weber views a whole range of facts of human life as such given data for the scientist as well
as for the actors themselves; he mentions 'human mortality, indeed the organic life cycle
from the helplessness of infancy to that of old age (-)'; 'certain psychic or psychophysical
phenomena such as fatigue, habituation, memory etc.; also certain typical states of euphoria
under some conditions of ascetic mortification; finally, typical variations in the reactions of
individuals according to reaction-time, precision, and other modes'
58
. Nevertheless he
52
ES p. 10, WG p. 5.
53
ES p. 6, WG p. 3.
54
ES p. 6/7, WG p. 3.
55
Marianne Weber-Schnitger views this opposition as one between masculine and feminine intellectual faculties,
see Die Beteiligung der Frau an die Wissenschaft (1904) in Weber-Schnitger (1919) p. 5 ('ihrer besonderen
Gabe, sich in die Gefühlswelt anderer zu versetzen un deshalb die Motive ihrer Handelns nacherlebend zu
verstehen.'); as she is convinced that 'woman' and 'man' share a common 'allgemeine Menschlichkeit' one may
suppose that she would have considered the use of this kind of intellectual faculty a necessary condition for all
social science; see further below, Ch. 2, 8.
56
MS p. 79, GAzW p. 179
57
In the words of Weber, ES p. 7, WG p. 3: they 'cannot be related to action in the role of means or ends (...)'.
Weber calls these 'processes and phenomena which are devoid of subjective meaning'. These processes and
phenomena, according to him, have to be taken account of 'in the role of stimuli (Anlaß), results, favoring or
hindering circumstances'.
58
Weber conducted an investigation into the possibility for the natural and the social sciences to collaborate in
the field of industrial psychology; in her biography Weber-Schnitger summarizes his conclusion as follows: 'the
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