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.
76
Therefore he elaborates on such a military barracks system in Ch. IX, § 2, 'Stages in the
formation of political associations'.
49
He observes the development of legitimate violence in
the sense of 'violence bound by norms' 'in situations where the most warlike members of a
group on their own initiative consociate through personal fraternization to organize
marauding raids'.
50
If these ad hoc associations under charismatic leadership, in which
violence initially is only legitimate among members, develop into permanent war
associations, these war associations can claim obedience from 'the inhabitants of conquered
territories as well as against the military unfit members of the territorial communities from
which the warrior's fraternity has emerged.'
51
According to Weber those military unfit members are seen as women and children. The
fraternity lives 'as a communistic organization' 'on war booty and on the contributions they
levy on non-members, especially on the women by whom the agricultural work is done.'
52
(It.
mine). Whatever the men did before, they now fight other men.
53
The men of the men's house practice a kind of show violence, of which Weber gives
examples which have been reported by Schurtz:
'In order to secure their economic position, which is based on the continuous plundering of outsiders, especially
women, the consociated warriors resort under certain circumstances to the use of religiously colored means of
intimidation. The spirit manifestations which they stage with masked processions very often are nothing but
plundering campaigns which require for their undisrupted execution that, on the first sound of the tom-tom, the
women and all outsiders flee, on pain of instant death, from the villages into the woods and thus allow the "spirits"
conveniently and without danger of being unmasked to take from the houses whatever may please them.'
54
However, the men do not consider their threat of violence against the women to be
legitimate:
'Obviously, the warriors do not believe at all in the legitimacy of their conduct. The crude and simple swindle is
recognized by them as such and is protected by the magical prohibition against entry into the men's house by
outsiders and by the draconic obligations of silence which are imposed upon the members. The prestige of the
men's league comes to an end, as far as the women are concerned, when the secret is broken by indiscretion or,
as has happened occasionally, when it is intentionally unveiled by missionaries
.'
55
charismatic extra-ordinariness, he regards the 'men's house' - conceptualized as a late development of
charismatic warrior consociations - as older than 'the household', which is the oldest form of traditional
domination; see Ch. 3,3.
49
ES p. 904 ff., WG p. 516 ff.
50
ES p. 905, WG p. 517.
51
'The freely selected leader is then normally legitimated by his personal qualities (charisma).''Violence acquires
legitimacy only in those cases, however - at least initially - in which it is directed against members of the fraternity
who have acted treasonably or who have harmed it by disobedience or cowardice. This state is transcended
gradually, as this ad hoc consociation develops into a permanent structure. Through the cultivation of military
prowess and war as a vocation such a structure develops into a coercive apparatus able to lay effective and
comprehensive claim to obedience', ES p. 906, WG p. 517.
52
Ibid. 'The only work, in addition to the conduct of war, regarded as worthy of them is the production and upkeep
of the implements of war, which they frequently reserve for themselves as their exclusive privilege'.
53
In many instances this fighting, however, cannot be called 'war' in the modern sense, because the rules of the
game prevent mass killings.
54
ES p. 907, WG p. 518.
55
Ibid.
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