Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy. 1994
Chapter 5 Expansion of patriarchy by decentralization and affiliation. Political patrimonialism as
masculine domination by an hierarchy of unfree men
89
Chapter 5. Expansion of patriarchy by decentralization and affiliation. Political
patrimonialism as masculine domination by an hierarchy of unfree men
1. Decentralization of the patriarchal household: patrimonial domination - 89
2. Political domination: the patrimonial state and the affiliation of free men - 90
3. The patrimonial officials and their ambiguous position - 94
4. Estate patrimonialism: administration by free men - 96
1. Decentralization of the patriarchal household: patrimonial domination
The concept of 'the large, differentiated patriarchal household' or 'oikos' is the basis for
Weber's construction of 'political domination': for the understanding of the development of
'great empires' into modern, public, 'political' domination of men. In the patriarchal 'oikos'
public and private sphere are not differentiated, since everything and everybody is property
of the patriarch; under modern political domination the masculine subjects are themselves
formally free and equal patriarchs. Weber constructs this contradictory development by first
conceptualizing a decentralization process of patriarchy, in which patriarchal property and
power is delegated to some of the members of the household, and then an affiliation
process, in which free men subject themselves to the power of a greater patriarch. The
results of both processes he calls 'patrimonialism'; the affiliation process is the development
of 'patrimonialism' proper to 'political patrimonialism'.
If the men who have affiliated themselves to the patrimonial ruler and by their subjection
have lost their formal freedom succeed in forming status groups in order to emancipate
themselves from the patriarchal power of the ruler, Weber calls the resulting form of
domination 'estate patrimonialism'; if they do not, 'patriarchal patrimonialism'.
The first step in Weber's construction of the building of empires is the decentralization of
'patriarchal' domination into 'patrimonial' domination. Such a decentralization may be caused
by the size of an 'oikos' (a differentiated patriarchal household), by the quantity of land and
dependents the patriarch wants to control; it results in a qualitative change. In the
decentralized patrimonial oikos some of the male dependents are made into some kind of
patriarchs, while remaining dependent on the original patriarch.
Decentralization of the patriarchal household leads to a material transformation of patriarchal
power. The dependents, who are settled on the land of the patriarch and who are given their
own house and family, animals and equipment, remain bound to the patriarch by the
patriarchal loyalty and fidelity. Nevertheless they may evolve their own claims to reciprocity,
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