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
11
of the rules, the use of written reports. The public character of legal domination becomes
apparent in its 'spirit of formalistic impersonality': "Sine ira et studio", without hatred or
passion;' its universalism from the characteristic that bureaucracy is based on formal
equality and therefore tends to level social inequalities.
6
According to Weber bureaucracy is
the most effective of all forms of domination. It is impersonal to the degree, that it functions
like a machine. It can work for all masters, since it holds no values except the belief that
rules have to be obeyed;
7
its own 'power instincts' are 'inseparably fused with the abstract
and "objective" idea of "reasons of state"'.
8
Weber formulates his characteristics of modern bureaucracy in masculine grammatical
forms; yet he does not mention 'masculinity' as a characteristic of bureaucratic officers. He
states nowhere that it is required to prove any form of manhood in order to become an
official.
In Weber's work everybody who is sociologically relevant - as a politician, official, general or
soldier, manager or worker - is a 'he'; but it is unclear whether this 'he' is a 'generic he' which
formally includes women, or whether Weber means to draw attention to the masculine sex of
officials, thereby implying that the number of women among them is too low to be of any
interest for the investigator.
The latter interpretation does not seem very plausible; in Weber's time women everywhere
were challenging their exclusion from public life, which, although it was often not formal, had
been undisputed; it had been considered self-evident that doctors and officials were male.
The ambivalence of the term 'rights of man', though, had given rise to several feminist
movements which claimed masculine rights and positions, patriarchal relations being eroded
by the growing market economy and by the men's revolutionary claims to freedom, equality
and brotherhood. In Weber's time, around the beginning of the 20th century, these
movements had not won many victories as yet, but they had won much support for their fight
for women's suffrage. The several wings of the movement were also united in their claims for
equal rights in marriage, for access to all jobs and functions, in particular bureaucratic ones,
and for an education which would provide them with the diploma's required for access to
bureaucratic functions.
In Weber's analysis of bureaucracy the almost total exclusion of women
from it goes unmentioned; indeed, his treatment of modern society lacks any discussion of
the 'women's question'.
9
. Women are only mentioned where modern marriage is
supervision of a higher one.' ES p. 218, WG p. 125.
6
WG p. 129, ES p. 225: 'Everyone is subject to formal equality of treatment; that is, everyone in the same
empirical situation'.
7
Winckelmann (1952) has criticized this empty concept of 'legality' and claimed that also in Weber's view some
'material' rationality is necessary to provide legitimation; see for a repudiation of this view Mommsen (1959) p.
404 ff. and for a summary of the discussion his Zum Begriff der plebizitären Führerdemokratie in Mommsen
(1974), note 76 (p. 242). I will show, however, that according to Weber patriarchal-patrimonial domination in the
absolutist 'welfare state' of the 17th ad 18th centuries was partly legitimated by 'material rationality', by an
orientation to the welfare of the subjects; many theorists of modern public administration state that legitimation in
the modern democratic 'welfare states' has shifted from formal to material rationality as well. See further below no
7.
8
ES p. 979, WG p. 565, see below, Ch. 8,10.
9
See on the German feminist movements Evans (1976), Koontz (1987) p. 19 ff., Kandal (1988), p. 89 ff. (p. 126
ff.),
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