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.
character, and the majority of these contracts are "fraternization contracts". By means of such a contract a
person was to become somebody's child, father, wife, brother, master, slave, kin, comrade-in-arms, protector,
client, follower, vassal, subject, friend, or, quite generally, comrade ('Genosse'). To "fraternize" with another
person did not, however, mean that a certain performance of the contract, contributing to the attainment of some
specific object, was reciprocally guaranteed or expected. Nor did it mean merely that the making of a promise to
another would, as we might put it, have ushered in a new orientation in the relationship between the parties. The
contract rather meant that the person would "become" something different in quality (or status) from the quality
he possessed before. For unless a person voluntarily assumed that new quality, his future conduct in his new role
could hardly be believed to be possible at all. Each party must thus make a new "soul" enter his body. At a rather
late stage the symbolism required the mixing and imbibing of blood or spittle or the creation of a new soul by
some animistic process or by some other magical rite
.'
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It is a pity that Weber does not introduce this important concept of the 'status-contract' in his
section on the kin group, since it offers an understanding of the formal aspects of kin
relationships: of the aspects that defy the public-private dichotomy. Without this concept
these relationships remain rather vague, as indeed they are in Weber's exposition of the kin
group in the chapter on 'origins':
'The kin group is not as "original*" a group as the household or the neighborhood. As a rule, its social action is
discontinuous and lacks association; in fact, the kin group proves that social action is possible even if the
participants do not know another and action is merely passive (refraining from sexual relations, for example).'
'Substantively, the kin group competes with the household in the sphere of sexual relations and in-group
solidarity; it is a protective group, which substitutes for our detective force and vice squad; and it is also a group
of expectant heirs made up of those former household members who left when it was divided or when they
married, and of their descendants. Hence with the kin group begins inheritance outside the household. Since
members are committed to blood revenge, the in-group solidarity of the kin group may become more important
than loyalty toward patriarchal authority.
'
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Weber appears to view the kin group as a masculine organization, which is secondary to the
patriarchal household. Although in passing he includes women as possible participants in
status contracts - though only as 'wives' - they generally have the status of possessions, of
objects. Neither the possibility of sisterhood, of 'consororization', nor that of free sexual
activity of women within - or without - the traditional kinship regulations is conceptualized;
although Weber mentions autonomous 'women's organizations', he does not give them
anything to do. Thus, in his view, the kin group only has a police function; no work seems to
be done or to be organized in it. The women are conceptualized as being outside of the kin
group, even if they work on the land they possess collectively; each of them has to obey the
head of the household they live in. How they worked together and how they lived before they
developed agriculture is hidden in the mists of private life.
To summarize Weber's views on household and tribe: he separates public and private life so
thoroughly, that he cannot imagine collective sibling relations between adult women and
men who are no biological siblings but behave like siblings are expected to behave
49
- that
47
ES p. 672, WG p. 401. Weber here discusses the theory of the historical development 'from status to contract',
of which Henry Maine is the most celebrated adherent. Pateman (1988) bases her discussion of 'the sexual
contract' on this kind of theories; if she would have used Weber's criticism of them, she could have connected the
'stories' of the contract theorist to historical sociology.
48
ES p. 365, WG p. 219.
49
According to Baumgarten, cited by Green (1974) p. 125, 'Frau Weber separated Max, in his student days, from
Lily' (a younger sister) 'by sending the latter out of the house, because she feared that his affection for her was
semi-incestuous.'
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