Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy.
Amsterdam 1994. Chapter 4 Relations between men: from routinization of charisma to patriarchal
domination over men.
67
this by giving 'the men's house' or 'men's league' a decisive role in developments. These
institutions, according to him, established training and examinations as a criterium for
participation; the men who failed this 'proof of manhood' or refused to succumb to it
remained with the women and children and were treated as such.
The concept of 'the men's house', in its turn, he constructed as an instance of 'routinization
of charisma', a process in which the meaning of the concept of charisma is transformed into
its opposite. More exactly: the routinization of charisma is based on transformations, not of
'charisma' proper, but of a 'secondary', artificially produced charisma, the belief in which is
derived from that in 'primary charisma'. By identifying 'primary charisma' with the 'magic'
'primitive' people are supposed to believe in, he finally has reached prehistory.
In order to explain Weber's argument, I now will follow his construction of the development of
the 'magic' or 'charisma' of prehistoric or 'primitive' people, into 'routinized charisma',
monopolized by groups of 'proven' men in the men's house, and from there to the concepts
of 'status group' and 'caste'.
2. 'Charisma' as a personal characteristic
The sexual meaning of the content of Weber's concept of 'charisma' is as ambiguous as that
of 'tradition'. He defines it in a sex-neutral way; neither in his conceptual exposition, nor in
the corresponding chapters, does he discuss the question whether women are able to
exercise charismatic domination. His conceptual exposition of 'charisma' begins as follows:
'The term "charisma" will be applied to a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is
considered extraordinary and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically
exceptional powers or qualities. These are as such not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of
divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a "leader". In
primitive circumstances this peculiar kind of quality is thought of as resting on magical powers, whether of
prophets, persons with a reputation for therapeutic or legal wisdom, leaders in the hunt, or heroes in war'
.³
Women are excluded, not by the content of Weber's concept, but by the use of his pronoun
'he', just as they are excluded from 'rational legal' and 'traditional' domination. Weber
mentions only masculine examples of charismatic leaders: beside 'berserkers' and
'shamans' only Joseph Smith (the founder of Mormonism) and the socialist leader Kurt
Eisner ('who is overwhelmed by his own demagogical success').
4
Weber considers modern 'charismatic leaders' to be of the same type as the 'berserkers' and
'shamans' of certain non-technical peoples. The likeness he discerns between these two
types of conduct in quite different societies is the basis for his projection of modern
'charisma' into prehistory by way of its identification with what is known about 'magic' in such
societies.
Weber defines 'magic' as the use of extra-ordinary powers that are supposed by non-
technical people to exist in certain objects or persons, by which, for instance, those objects
3
ES p. 241, WG p. 140.
4
I cannot really believe that he did not know of the existence of female leaders like Jeanne d'Arc and Florence
Nightingale - see on to her activities as a reformer of British public administration Woodham-Smith (1964) - who
were 'exceptional' in all meanings of the word; the degree of circularity of his arguments - masculine domination
is explained by comparing it to ideal-types of masculine domination - here does not conform to any standard of
rationality.
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