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.
80
intercourse (that is, intercourse which is not subservenient to economic or any other purposes). These
restrictions may confine normal marriages to within the status circle and may lead to complete endogamous
closure
.'
68
Thus, marriage and paternity are elements of Weber's concept of 'status group': they ensure
the continuation of the group in time, by defining the children who belong to the group as
having the superior characteristics of it 'in their blood'. Marriage especially means, according
to Weber, 'that only children born of stable sexual relationships within a more inclusive economic, political,
religious, or other community to which one or both parents belong will be treated, by virtue of their descent, as
equal members of an *association ('Verband'
)'
69
.
70
The restriction of 'connubium' to group members also gives the daughters a place inside the
status group.
71
Weber's transition from 'warrior fraternity' to 'status group', therefore, presents analytical
problems. He solves these problems by way of a conceptual shift: he changes the meaning
of the term 'warrior fraternity' in such a way that it can come to include 'patriarchy', in the
sense of 'property of land, women and slaves'.
In his outlines for a conceptualization of 'warrior status groups', which Winckelmann
published as a 'Beilage' accompanying the conceptual exposition of 'status groups and
classes'
72
, Weber presents this shift more clearly, by connected 'routinization of charisma'
with 'status groups' (Stände). These outlines are a plan for a casuistry of the forming of
status groups; the American translators left them out, probably because they are unfinished.
In the first outline Weber distinguishes between 1. charismatic, 2. traditional, 3. feudal
warrior status groups; in the second one between A. 'Gemeinfreie': communal free persons,
free clubmen, and B. Appropriated traditional military associates ('Genossen). Under A
'Gemeinfreie' Weber conceptualizes his description of the men's house in terms of status
instead of, as he did elsewhere, in terms of 'routinization of charisma' or 'manhood'.
73
68
ES p. 932, WG p. 535.
69
ES p. 357/8, WG p. 213. Weber, like Weber-Schnitger, sees the origins of marriage in the wish of rich or
privileged families to protect their daughters against slavery and to give the children of these daughters a
privileged status (ES p. 372, 688, WG p. 224, 413).
70
The men who form the status group can only perpetuate the group if they have male children, who become
equal members. They are therefore imagined as giving birth; in this way the myth of patrilinear descent - the myth
that when a man possesses a woman and has sexual intercourse with her, her children are the fruit of his loins -
is invented. See also Pateman (1988) p. 35/6, 214, 216, who uses the term 'monogenetic' coined by Carol
Delaney.
71
The Webers also mention a kind of 'matrilinear marriage' in cases where the family of the woman is richer than
that of the man and therefore take their son-in-law into their own house; EuM p. 28, ES p. 368, WG p. 221/2
('bina-marriage'). According to Weber-Schnitger EuM p. 24 ff. anthropologists who claimed to have discovered a
'matriarchy' had in reality only found this type of marriage.
72
Two unnumbered pages after WG p. 180.
73
In my translation:
'A. Free clubmen
1. Charismatic warrior associates: men's house association. Admittance after heroic-ascetic examination and
novitiate through dedication of the youths.
Contradiction: 1. Children, 2. Old people, 3. Women, that is: everybody who did not go through the dedication
ritual of the youths.
Way of life: without family in the house communism of the men's house, from loot, hunt and food contributions of
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