Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy.
Amsterdam 1994. Chapter 3 Private versus public sphere: the origins of household and kin group.
Chapter 3. Private versus public sphere: the origins of household and kin group
1. Weber's shift from 'traditional social order' to 'traditional domination' and from there
to 'patriarchal domination' - 53
2. Weber on matriarchy - 54
3. The household and its masculine authority - 57
4. Kinship as a public formation; the establishment by status contract of sister-trading
fraternizations - 59
5. From 'masculine-dominated household' to 'patriarchy' - 63
1. Weber's shift from 'traditional social order' to 'traditional domination' and from there to
'patriarchal domination'
In this chapter I will discuss the way Weber's private notions and the way he transformed
them into social science are expressed in his construction of the concepts of 'traditional
legitimation of a social order' and 'patriarchal domination'. As I have shown¹, Weber's
development of 'legitimate domination' from 'legitimation of a social order' is pragmatic in
character; he constructs his types of legitimate domination he will use to compare reality to,
in a realistic way; he does not construct a type of value-rational legitimation, since in his view
no legitimate domination ever has ever been built upon a value-rational social order.
The construction of his concept 'traditional domination' also is based on such a pragmatic
shift. 'Traditional legitimation of a social order' is defined in a general sense and in a sex-
neutral way as the validity of 'what always has been'²; the type of domination Weber
constructs out of it, however, is presented as masculine in character.
Women are not excluded from the potential 'masters' by the content of Weber's definition of
'traditional domination' in the conceptual exposition, only by his use of masculine terms:
'*Domination' will be called traditional if legitimacy is claimed for it and believed in by virtue of the sanctity of age-
old rules and powers. The masters are designated according to traditional rules and are obeyed because of their
traditional status ('Eigenwürde'). This type of organized rule is, in the simplest case, primarily based on personal
loyalty which results from a common upbringing
.'³
He then proceeds to define 'traditional domination without the use of an administrative staff'
as 'primary' or 'elementary' 'patriarchy'.
4
This conceptual shift from the sex-neutral concept 'tradition' into the sex-defined concept
'patriarchal domination' is made explicit in the section of his essay on 'patriarchal and
patrimonial domination' where he discusses the limits of patriarchal power.
5
These can be
based on custom, since 'everything within this structure is ultimately determined by the
power of tradition, that is, the belief in the inviolability of what has always been ("das ewig
1
See Ch. 1,5.
2
ES p. 36, WG p. 19.
3
ES p. 226/7, WG p. 130. Weber here uses the term 'Herrschaft'; ES translates it with the sex-neutral term
'authority', which is the equivalent for the German 'Autorität'. I will use 'authority' only in translation for 'Autorität';
'Herrschaft' I will translate with 'domination'; see also Roth's note 31 on ES p. 61/2.
4
ES p. 228 and 231, WG p. 131 and 133.
5
ES p. 1008, WG p. 581/2.
53
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