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.
84
'dishonorable', can be considered 'masculine'. Male members of 'negative status groups' are
therefore in an ambiguous position: they consider themselves masculine, but the members
of positive status groups do not regard them as such.
Weber will later present several instances of men in such ambiguous positions. 'Coloni' and
bondsmen are examples. The difference between their position and that of male slaves is
that the latter are allowed a kind of 'quasi-marriage'; in Weber's view, the transformation of
slaves into 'coloni' has played an important role in European history.
80
I will show that Weber conceptualizes such ambiguous positions as the result of a delegation
of patriarchal power. If the delegated 'quasi-patriarchs', as I shall name them, form their own
status groups, these will initially be characterized by a lack of privileges other than that of
delegated patriarchal power; however, by acquiring military or financial power, the members
of a negative status group can strive to transform their group into a positive one.
9. Caste and 'race'
Weber uses his concept of 'status group' to reduce the scope of biologist conceptions of
'race'. His aim is to substitute sociological concepts for biological ones and to criticize those
biologist thinkers who form the mainstream of social thought
81
. He therefore develops the
concept of 'caste': it is a 'status group' which is closed to such a degree that physical contact
with outsiders is regarded 'as making for a ritualistic impurity and a stigma which must be
expiated by a religious act'.
82
'Ethniticity' can be an element of the caste system in those instances where the members of
the caste believe in their 'blood relationship'; yet, in Weber's view, caste transforms these
'ethnic differences' into a vertical social system of super- and subordination.
83
Weber thus considers most 'ethnic' or 'racial' differences to be vertical caste differentiations,
but he leaves open the possibility that status groups can cause racial differences by
producing 'a thoroughbred anthropological type.'
84
80
See GAzWG, p. 298 ff.
81
See Ch. 1,4.
82
'When the consequences have been realized to their full extent, the status group evolves into a closed caste.
Status conventions are then guaranteed not merely by conventions and laws, but also by religious sanctions', ES
p. 933, WG p. 536; see also ES p. 435, WG p. 265.
83
'In general, however, the status structure reaches such extreme consequences only where there are
underlying differences which are held to be "ethnic". The caste is, indeed, the normal form in which ethnic
communities that believe in blood relationship and exclude exogamous marriage and social intercourse usually
associate with one another.' 'A status segregation grown into a caste differs in its structure from a mere ethnic
segregation: the caste structure transforms the horizontal and unconnected coexistences of ethnically segregated
groups into a vertical social system of super- and subordination. Correctly formulated: a comprehensive
association integrates the ethnically divided communities into one political unit. They differ precisely in this way:
ethnic co-existence, based on mutual repulsion and disdain, allows each ethnic community to consider its own
honor as the highest one; the caste structure brings about a social subordination and an acknowledgment of
"more honor" in favor of the privileged caste and status groups. This is due to the fact that in the caste structure
ethnic distinctions as such have become "functional" distinctions within the political association (...). But even
pariah peoples who are most despised (for instance, the Jews) are usually apt to continue cultivating the belief in
their own specific "honor", a belief that is equally peculiar to ethnic and status groups,' ES p. 934, WG p. 536;
here follows the concept of 'negative status honor'.
84
"Certainly status groups are to a high degree effective in producing extreme types, for they select personally
 |
 |
 |