Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy.
Amsterdam 1994 Dissertation University of Amsterdam. Chapter 1. Max Weber's universalist
sociology of bureaucracy: the contradiction between public rationalism and private masculinism
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Chapter 1. Max Weber's universalist sociology of bureaucracy: the contradiction
between public rationalism and private masculinism
1. Separation of public and private life as a characteristic of Weber's ideal type of
bureaucracy - 9
2. Sociology as rational social science: the separation of facts and values and the
creation of the abstract individual as consequences of the separation of public and
private life - 12
3. Adequate causation and chance - 15
4. Weber's rational construction of ideal types and its limits - 17
5. From the understanding of 'action orientations' to the construction of ideal types of
legitimate domination - 19
6.Ideal types of developments; the problem of causality in an irrational world; Weber's
law of unintended consequences; 'paradoxical causation' - 23
7. The contrast between formal and material rationality - 25
8. The origins of rational bureaucracy in Europe: Weber's unfinished analysis - 29
9. Resistances to rationalization: the modern family - 30
10. Conclusion: the irrationality of formal rationality - 33
1. Separation of public and private life as a characteristic of Weber's ideal type of
bureaucracy
In his unfinished work Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Economy and Society)¹ Max Weber
constructed the first analysis of modern society as a bureaucratic society. Weber saw
'bureaucracy' as 'the specifically modern form of domination', namely as 'legal domination
with bureaucratic administrative apparatus'², which is founded on a belief in the validity
('Geltung') of intentionally established law as a 'cosmos of abstract rules', to which also the
'Herr' (lord or master) owes obedience. Bureaucracy according to Weber separates public
and private life³, both through a separation of public from private property - the rules do not
permit any appropriation of functions, career chances, secretaries or material advantages
which are not officially included in the salary - and through the belief 'that obedience is not
due to persons, but to rules'
4
.
The characteristics of bureaucracy which are the result of this belief are, according to
Weber, continuity, division of competence, hierarchy
5
, professional training in the application
1
I will use the English translations of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft edited by Roth and Wittig in Economy and
Society; only when they show very important deviations from the meaning of the German text I will give a
different translation, indicated by *.
2
WuG p. 124, ES p. 217. To the distress of many later sociologists Weber has never given an exact definition of
'bureaucracy'; see on the history of the concept Martin Albrow (1970).
3
'In the rational type it is a matter of principle that the members of the administrative staff should be completely
separated from ownership of the means of production or administration'; 'There exists, furthermore, in principle
complete separation of the organization's property (respectively, capital), and the personal property (household)
of the official. There is a corresponding separation of the place in which official functions are carried out - the
"office" in the sense of premises - from the living quarters'; 'there is also a complete absence of appropriation of
his official position by the incumbent', ES p. 218/9, WG p. 126.
4
Those rules can be 'technical rules or norms', ibid.
5
'The organization of offices follows the principle of hierarchy; that is, each lower office is under the control and
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