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First published: 1978 Posted: 1999 Last edited:
23 September 2005
ON SCALE,
ORGANISATION, AND PERFORMANCE
The following
article is reprinted from the journal PAIDEUMA, 24, 1978 an issue in
honour of
Professor Vinigi Grotanelli of the University of Rome. It is
unchanged, save
for the correction of several misprints in the original.
Footnotes are
hotlinked to bookmarks.
CYRIL
BELSHAW
Social and
cultural anthropology, and ethnology, have
during their
history agreed upon one thing: the
foundation of
the work has been the detailed recording of
the facts of
social and cultural life. From that point on,
there have
been divergences, which, by comparison with
divergences in
other disciplines, have been extraordinarily
minor. We have
argued over the place to be accorded to
indirectly
observed data (by comparison with participant
observation),
about the length of field studies required to
give
reliability. Above all there has been argument about
"theoretical"
perspectives which, in the main, have a great
deal to do
with the philosophical position of the
anthropologist
and the selection of questions asked, and
almost nothing
to do with "theory" as the word is
understood in
most other subjects.
Grottanelli is
honoured as an ethnographer; one of a
significant
group of European scholars, but for many years
almost alone
in Italy, who "informed" his ethnography
with insights
built upon international trends. Behind this
position, and
perhaps especially now, is a deep, passionate
and engaged
concern for civilized values, for the future of
the world of
which the ethnographic reality is the
foundation,
for the interplay of ideas, forces, peoples, and
social
movements.
Scholarship
may be separated and controlled in writing,
but not in
the anxieties and aspirations of the person
engaged in
it. However one may agree or disagree with
this position
or that, one respects intensity, commitment,
the
continuing and troublesome search for the future,
and
the sense of
values which guides it. The ethnography of
other
societies is joined to the ethnography of the scholar's
own, and the
interplay creates deeper understandings.
This indeed
is the objective of anthropology as a
humanistic
discipline.
This paper
is, in a way, a request, to Grottanelli, his
disciples,
and to others, to extend the manifestation of
their
insights by applying them in scholarly writing to
questions
which concern them about the future of world
civilisation.
A Festschrift is a rite de passage, a
movementfrom
the constraints of the past to the openness
of the
future. This one is particularly timely because the
diversity --
some would say chaos -- of intellectual trends
in the
discipline now poses questions about the future of
anthropology;
and because one of those questions is the
manner in
which anthropology can or cannot, should or
should not,
be involved with the future.
It would be
true I think to say that in the last twenty-five
years there
has been a major shift in emphasis in the use
of
ethnographic data. While "informed" interpretation of
data is still
by far the predominant mode, the vast increase
in the data
base, the penchant for "hypothesizing"
(particularly
in North America), the structure of the most
elegant
essays directed toward the answering of a
specifically
stated question, the inroads made on the
humanities by
scientism, and the growth of statistical and
computer
applications, have enriched and confused our
methodologies.
What can be distressing about this
situation is
not the fact of divergence, even of confusion
for with
synthesis and dialectic that is likely to be
productive in
the long run. It is that the proponents of
specific
methodologies often present them as the only
source of
validity and the only true anthropology. That is
messianic
nonsense, and has to be.
My position
is that even the battery I have listed is
incomplete
and insufficient. Here I present an argument
couched in a
further alternative which, for reasons of time
and space, is
not nearly as tight as the method requires. I
argue that
interpretation of empirical data, leading to the
further
reflection upon and elaboration of general
positions,
can be usefully supplemented by the reverse
process,
namely by the elaboration of formal logical
models which
can be used for deductive prediction.
Ideally, such
models should at least be informed by stated
Scale,
Organisation and performance
ethnographic
information, though again for reasons of
space and
time, this will not be attempted in the present
paper.
However, the inherent strengths and weaknesses of
such models
can often be examined better, or rather with a
different
lens, when they are stated in pure abstraction,
ultimately in
symbolic logic. I hold that formalism of this
kind is not
to be separated from ethnography, since each
informs the
other, since neither has a monopoly on
approaches to
validity, and since in fact the formal model
can often be
more usefully linked to questions of policy,
social
purpose, and the options of the future, which are
upon
observation ethnographic in their manifestation.
In this paper
I intend to argue about scale and
organisation
in the abstract, and in doing so raise
questions
about the implications of scale and organisation
of
sociocultural units, and thus for
human
satisfaction. The subject is of concern for several
reasons.
First,
ethnographers, social and cultural anthropologists,
social
historians, to say nothing of scholars in other
disciplines,
have been interested in phenomena which
they identify
as containing variables of scale, have been
interested in
comparing situations of differing scale, and
have informed
their interpretations by assumptions about
the
implications, or indeed effects, of variation in scale. A
catalogue is
out of place here; one only has to think of the
concept of
social and historical evolution, of the work of
Godfrey and
Monica Wilson (1945) on social change which
was one of
the earliest attempts at a formal theory and the
volume of
work which has emerged from the initial idea
of the
folk-urban continuum.
Second, a
concern with scale is an important part of what I
call the
ethno-social science of at least European and North
American
culture. That is, there are assumptions about
scale present
in sections of the cormnunity, including
political
leaders, which imply propositions which could
be stated in
social science terms, and are hence
theoretically
subject to scientific or scholarly examination.
Such
propositions can coincide with or diverge from
propositions
which are present in social science formal
thinking, and
we as anthropologists should have data and
theories of
our own by which to examine them.
Third, other
disciplines have formal theories relating
scale
Scale,
Organisation and performance
and
organisation. The theories are drawn from different
data, and are
congruent with a different wider range of
formal
statements, than would be the case with
anthropology.
We lack such a theory, but worse, we fail to
bring our
positions to bear upon the formal models used
in other
disciplines. Economics, for example, has for
decades been
concerned with the optimal size and
organisation
of the firm, and with the dynamics of change
in size and
organisation. The statements are now even
being cast in
an evolutionary" perspective (see, for
example, S.J.
Prais, The Evolution of Giant Firms in Great
Britain.
Cambridge, Cambridge, University Press, 1976.)
There will be
no impact of anthropology upon economic
thinking
until anthropology has its own models which can
be compared
with those of the economist, and which it
tests by
reference to the kind of data that is at our
command
1
3
The present
discussion, then, bears these issues in mind. It
is an attempt
to systematize some interconnected
propositions
in abstract form, rooted in the author's
(unexpressed)
reading and experience of the ethnographic
data,
including the ethnography of complex societies. It is
also oriented
toward issues about the evaluation of the
existing
social system as it moves into the future, rooted in
ethno-social
science and of course in the author's own
prejudices
and perspectives.
If
successful, the abstract statements ought to be readily
applied to
the interpretation of ethnographic material,
yielding the
probability of reformulation and
modification;
and in a similar way should be comparable
with
statements in the formal models of other disciplines,
yielding the
fruits of a dialectic argument. Neither of these
extensions
will, however, be attempted here.
The idea of
scale is itself highly ambiguous, and it tends
to become
more so the more we try to pin it down. In
anthropology
there is a trend toward the linkage of scale
and
complexity of social organisation, not by asserting
that they are
synonymous, but by holding that as the one
increases, so
does the other. There are equivalent
Scale,
Organisation and performance
problems in
economics, which might serve to guide and
warn us. The
most widely known concepts which can
serve as
analogies are those of growth and development.
Although
economics and sociology are still confused in
the usage
accorded to these two terms, there is a sense in
which
growth can be reserved for increases in performance
indicators
such as output, and development for increases in
the
complexity of organisation. When such a distinction is
made, it is
easier to see that growth does not necessarily
mean
development, and does not always or necessarily
produce
development or correlate with development.
When such
relationships do exist they are due to special
circumstances
which can be examined, and both may be
traced to a
third causative factor. An increase in grain
supply may be
traced to a change in fertilizer used, or to
haphazard
seasonal variation, and may have nothing to do
with prior
organisational development, nor be followed
by a lagging
development.
The same
remarks hold for decreases in scale or growth,
phenomena
which are insufficiently studied. Scale is a
quantitative
phenomenon. The question quickly arises as
to the tools
available for its measurement, and that in turn
depends upon
what is to be measured. Our concern in
anthropology
for the qulitative and descriptive has
hindered the
ingenuity with which measurement should
be
approached. We stop at certain critical affirmations of
distrust
about measurement in other disciplines, and a
certain
scepticism, usually justified, about the bases of
measurement
in our own. First we must come to terms
with the
probability that all measurement in the social
sciences does
violence to the phenomena measured by
simplifying,
that is by leaving something out. This is
particularly
true of indices, even or perhaps especially in
economics,
and of the use of comparative data divorced
from context,
as with the Human Relations Area Files.
What is left
out can turn out to be crucial to the
relationships
examined, but it can also be trivial, or can
faithfully
follow the trends determined by the
measurement.
Judgement and criticism provide the
correctives
and modifications; the wholesale rejection of
measurement
does not.
Measurement
when properly carried out does two other
things. It
provides a controlled basis for comparison, and,
what is
really a variant, it provides for controlled
Scale,
Organisation and performance
observation
over time. Most studies of scale in
anthropology
use the basic perspective of comparison of
social units
which represent different scale characteristics,
for example
village and town. The conclusions drawn
from such
studies may be compared with long term
evolutionary
studies of civilisations, or short term studies
of the
dynamics of social change. Such studies can hardly
be carried
out at all without statements about scale,
whether or
not measurement is in fact used. The
measurernent
may be incipient rather than openly stated.
14
To understand
this, it is necessary to make the point that
qualitative
statements are them selves statements of scale.
"The Kwakiutl
demonstrated rich cultural and artistic
achievements'.
Such a
statement includes at least two statements of scale.
"Rich"
implies complexity and variety greater than that
present in
cultures with "poor" cultural and artistic
achievement.
"Achievement" in this context implies that in
the eyes of
the observer there was greater quality
manifested
than was the case in some other cultures.
"Greater"
implies the possibility of still greater", "equal"
or "lesser".
The person making the rough statement
invented here
may deny that such a comparison was
intended, but
if so he would have to find different words.
If he were
successful, which I would consider an
impossibility, he
would have arrived at a mean- ingless
statement. He
may, for example, try to escape by saying
the cultural
output of the Kwakiutl was "beautiful" in
some absolute
sense. But that implies more beauty than in
an
hypothetical situation in which the output could be
judged
"ugly". The idea of scale is still present, though it
may be
reduced to its utmost simplicity, namely the
assertion of
presence or absence of a specific criterion, that
is positive
or negative on a scale.
Clearly, too,
the observer has his standards of judgement,
which in a
scholarly work would be revealed. Those
standards of
judgement constitute the method by which
Scale,
Organisation and performance
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he arrives at
his index. He may not use a formal statistical
index as
invented by the quantitative methodologists. But
index he must
have. The problems of indexation are with
us, whether
or not we use figures. In the statement made
above, "rich"
masks an index, and so does "achievement".
It may also
be argued that "cultural" and "artistic" mask
indices of
culture and art. A great deal of the debate in
anthropology
surrounds definitions of more or less
operational
concepts. A definition implies an index,
because an
index is the operationalisation of a definition.
While many
classical indices are single resultant figures of
a number of
complex variables, it is also 'possible to have
profile
indices in which the various parts are not summed,
but are
expressed separately so that they may be seen at
work, and
because the act of summation is either
impossible,
or because there are no adequate principles to
allow for
weighting. The profile welfare level of living
index
developed by the United Nations Research Institute
for Social
Development is an example; my own concept of
the
behavioral profile of culture is another.
The
literature in anthropology which specifically refers to
scale is
usually concerned with fairly gross comparisons in
which the
subtleties I have mentioned are not of great
importance.
Nevertheless,
they should be kept in mind, because they
may influence
our perception of the nature of the data
which can be
brought into the discussion. Furthermore,
any
discussion which focuses upon the implication of
differences
of scale is bound to be insufficient if the scale
reference is
unclear. For example, we may be concerned
with the
scale of productive units. We presumably mean
size, and
intend to compare big ones with small ones.
Ethnographically,
there is an immediate problem of the
boundary
assigned to the unit being examined. Here we
have to use
criteria which we impose on the data; we are
arbitrary,
though not purposeless. For example, it is our
tradition to
identify the productive unit in Melanesian
society, x,
as a household containing a two or three
generation
family, segmented possibly at the time of
marriage. In
Canada, it is our tradition to identify the
productive
unit as the factory or its equivalent in related
sectors. We
compare the two, making judgements about
scale. But it
is important to note that the choice of the units
has a strong
arbitrary element. It would be just as
Scale,
Organisation and performance
justifiable
to compare households in both societies at one
level, and
factory with village at another. If we did this we
would find
many non-literate or peasant societies in
which the
scale of productive units, coordinated in some
form, is the
equivalent in scale of many types of
productive
enterprise in modern capitalist society. The
problem does
not entirely disappear when we use the
polity as the
unit of comparison, the polity being the
largest
coordi-
1
5
nated
organisation of power relevant to the society in
question'.
For such comparison involves the discussion of
the
constituent units which make it up.
One might
have thought that this question had been
resolved in
economics, in view of the long history of
theoretical
formality. However, this is not so, and the
concept of
the size of a firm changes according to the topic
being
examined in ways which may be instructive to
anthropology.
Size can refer to scale according to the
following
criteria, among numerous others: numbers of
persons
employed, monetary value of capital, monetary
value of
market turnover, monetary value of production,
proportion of
G.N.P. represented by the monetary value of
turnover or
by production. Furthermore, the typical unit of
examination
can be either the plant, that is the physical
unit which is
organized for production, or the firm, that is
the largest
cornmercially-oriented unit which responds to
a single
authority.
In
anthropology we have all these choices and many more.
The simplest
thing to note is the number of persons
contained in
a given social unit, the boundaries defined by
some
principle of organisation, from household, to
lineage, to
geographically-defied community, to church or
firm, to
linguistic group, to polity. We can also start with
any given
ego, and ask at least two questions. How many
persons does
ego interact with on a day-to-day basis? How
many persons
are contained in ego's widest network of
contact? The
two anwers may vary independently and in
contradictory
directions.
Scale,
Organisation and performance
There is also
a scaling dimension which involves intensity
of
interaction. There is movement from one extreme, in
which the
boundary encloses a role-complete group, to
another, in
which a person lives through a multitude of
roles, each
of which relates to a different corporate
institution,
and often to a complex range of bounded
groups
(ethnic, political, religious, and so forth).
The scale
dimension linked to the number of persons will
not take this
variable directly into account. Similarly, one
might argue
that yet another scaling dimension often
(though not
always) decreases with increases in other
aspects of
scale. If there is a household of thirteen in a
village of
sixty-five, the village constituting an
inward-turning
role-complete group, it may be that there
is an
extremely intense level of day-today personal
interaction.
On the other hand, two households of five and
sixty-five,
but lacking a network of wider kin or friends,
with a work
setting based on on-line production and a
hierarchical
social division of labour, could have a very
low level of
personal interaction. Thus a dimension of
scale based
on numbers would be equal, but one based on
the number
of personal interactions taking place in a
given period
would be high in the first instance and low
in the
second.
On the other
hand, rather than counting the mere number
of social
interactions, one may be interested in assessing
the way in
which the interactions relate to complexity. If
this is the
case, the larger the number of roles and the
more clearly
differentiated they are, the greater, other
things being
equal, the complexity of the system. Of
course,
everything depends on how you count the roles. A
case could
be made for saying that a Melanesian adult
married male
fulfills one role, which combines the social
expectation
that he will be a shifting cultivator, father,
husband,
brother, son, fisherman, canoe-builder,
magician,
defender of the community, and a number of
other things
wrapped up into one package. But you don't
have to
count all those things together, particularly when
closer
inspection reveals that not all Melanesians do all
these
things, with the same skill and intensity, and that
they often
borrow skills from others. So then it may be
that a
Melanesian is involved with more roles than many
Westerners,
for example the post
1
6
Scale,
Organisation and performance
man who is
father, husband and son, but nothing else. On
the other
hand, in typical Western societies one does add
a range of
roles to that limited list, and furthermore even
when the
numbers of roles in the two styles of society are
similar,
some of the Western roles are, intuitively, more
separated
from each other than are the Melanesian ones,
and they may
even be in conflict. To be realistic, any
counting of
roles needs to be weighted by attention to
such
variables.
The mention
of conflict leads to the next important set of
variables
which anthropologists have to take into account.
Scales are
applied not only with reference to social
relations as
abstractions but to goals and preferences, in
short to
values. As I have argued elsewhere ad nauseam,
the
treatment of values in anthropology is thoroughly
confused
because some of the most prestigious and
influential
accounts completely overlook the point that, at
least in the
English language, the concept of value cannot
be divorced
from the concept of scale. A value is not a
piece of
philosophical mystery floating around in a
culture, as
most anthropology would have us believe. A
value is a
measure attached to something; by extension
values in a
culture are (for example, but not exclusively)
goals,
objectives, or preferences which are emphasized to
varying
degrees, and according to scaling criteria; by
further
extension, one does not value something, one
values it a
great deal, moderately, a little, or not at all; one
can even
negatively value it.
Here of
course we are talking of individual goals or
preferences,
presumably assessed by individuals, or by
individuals
expressing them on behalf of institutions.
This is the
topic par excellence of welfare economics, a
subject
which we anthropologists do not read, partly
because it
is too difficult, and partly because it would raise
enormous
questions for ethnography and ethnological
interpretation
which I suspect we know we cannot handle.
Yet welfare
economics, concerned as it is with the ways in
which
individual preferences interact as a result of their
valuation,
and produce a cultural resultant, is also
anthropology,
particularly as more of us come to use the
Barth-Blau
approach to choice and the impact of action
upon
structure.
Scale,
Organisation and performance
In most of
anthropology, particularly when we are
concerned
with culture and social organisation, even when
the approach
is particularistic, our focus tends to be on
some form of
group. We study perhaps the village, as
representative of
a wider unit, and have been criticized for
this. Some
of us, more sociologically oriented, are
interested
in varieties of corporate group, such as lineage,
credit
association or age grade. Some of us put the units
together
under the heading of culture, for which the
boundary is
usually, though not always, defined by
language. In
the Soviet Union, the ethnographic object can
be the
"ethnos", elsewhere the ethnic group. We speak, it
turns out
very loosely, of society or social system, which,
so long as
the participants are interacting, can be bounded
according to
a thousand criteria, it seems, or even none at
all. The
most common usage of "society" is a euphemism
for a
polity. Inspection shows that quite often, particularly
in complex
conditions, social relations are not at all
limited by
the boundaries of the defined society, and that
the analyst,
for good reason or unthinkingly, is imposing
the boundary
that by definition fits the polity, that is the
largest
identifiable unit, short of global society, in which
power can be
seen to be organised and an administration
effected.
In the early
post-war years, and before that following the
influence of
Malinowski and Boas, it became fashionable
to down-play
the significance of those anthropologists
who were
concerned with trait analysis, particularly
because they
were addressing themselves to the
diffusion-evolution
controversy in a doubtful way.
However, the
Human Relations Area Files, the work of
G.P.
Murdock, S. Udy, and many others, and most recently
the
contribution of Lomax and Arensberg, indicated that
the
identification of traits for large statistical and
model-related
comparison was in fact still a lively and
debatable
issue. It is going to become even more so as new
theoretical
questions are asked, and indeed the time has
come for a
reappraisal of the lessons,
17
the
achievements, methods, and failures of
earlier
Scale,
Organisation and performance
scholarship
- or we will have to learn them all over again.
I raise this
question because it is fundamental to any
concept of
scale which involves culture. It is even
fundamental
to the critique of participant-observation
fieldwork.
"Which units of culture do you observe and
record and
put together in systemic analysis?" is a
question
which applies to any method of anthropological
enquiry. In
modern field-work we tend to follow the
tradition of
earlier ethnographies, with modifications
suggested by
refinements of philosophy or slight changes
in question.
(How tired one is becoming of the continuous
on-stream
production of ethnographic treatises on New
Guinea
cultures, which do not have the modesty to admit
that they
are putting on record material for the
ethnographic
map, but rather insist that the treatment
justifies a
philosophical position.) We have seldom
developed
the resources which enable us to gather new
types of
data, except where team-work becomes
practicable.
We are thus vulnerable to the charge that the
phenomena we
record could be a-typical, that the single
instance we
give of ritual cannot be assessed for its
representative
qualities, that we are not in a position to
judge the
intensity of valuation. Of course, we have at
least
partial answers to such charges, but we deceive
ourselves if
we feel that we are superior in this respect to
those
naively frank about the manner in which they
assembled
traits. The loss of the word does not mean the
loss of the
problem.
The issue
becomes more germane when we consider the
type of
question for which scale in culture becomes of
theoretical
significance. What is scale in culture? It has to
do with such
things as the volume and diversity of
messages
passed through the symbol system, or the
volume and
range of ideas and concepts which are present.
It may have
to do with the number of persons who are
using the
symbol system, who share the ideas and
concepts
within the otherwise-determined boundary. If
this is the
case, is the index of scale simply the number of
persons
within the boundary?
That could
be the case, and I think it is in many possible
treatments
of cultural scale. If so, it is not very interesting,
and does not
answer very interesting questions. But I
think there
are interesting questions which suggest that
this
approach is only a simple beginning.
Scale,
Organisation and performance
The idea of
scale in culture (in differing forms of words)
has been
implicit in some approaches identifying qualities
of
civilisation. Most attempts in this direction have been
treated with
scepticism in anthropology, largely because
we see
dubious value premises in such attempts, or
because we
would wish to be more rigorous in criteria.
Nevertheless, our
scepticism cannot dispose of the validity
of certain
kinds of questions. One such field of concern is
the quality
of inintellectual achievement in a culture.
While we are
going through a period in which the very
notion of
quality is being barbarically attacked, we should
re-examine
the foundations of the issue.
There is one
sense in which civilisation and intellectual
quality can
be linked to the range of ideas, concepts and
propositions
which are used and to the complexity of the
concern
which the mind is accustomed to tackling. Both
dimensions
require careful definition and modification
(for
example, with reference to dynamics and intellectual
utility)
which cannot be expressed here.
The
relevance of the point, however, is to show that both
dimensions,
that is range and complexity, are dimensions
of scale.
The preoccupation with quality inevitably
involves a
preoccupation with quantity. Let me take up an
example of a
different kind of question, namely the
examination
of a proposition in the field of culture.
Propositions
state relationships, and any such statement
involves the
presence or absence of the variables, their
growth or
diminishment, in other words statements of
quantity.
They can come in many different kinds. One
such, which
I consider to be
18
crucial to
anthropological theory, would assert that the rate
of
innovation is, to simplify, a function of the size of the
pool of
ideas modified by the rate of circulation of those
.
All the terms in this equation are aspects of the
scale of
culture, and it is asserted that one of them is
composed of
relations between the other two. It is difficult
to see how
this proposition can in practice be tested
or
Scale,
Organisation and performance
falsified
without the development of an indexing and
measuring
technique.
Part of that
technique will have to be the identification of
the units of
culture in the form of ideas, and another part
will have to
be the identification of message conduits
appropriate
to the culture and the observation of the
messages
passed along them. Other disciplines,
particularly
economics, sociology. and political science are
already
using macrostatistical and survey devices which
purport to
resolve into indices which bear upon aspects of
the
question. Yet the question, dealing with culture as it
does, is
surely at the heart of anthropology, and we win be
most
dissatisfied with the validity of the work attributed
to our
sister subjects.
The
statements above have been concerned primarily with
definition
and clarification. I now wish to propose some
theoretical
relationships which should be tested more
deeply with
ethnographic material, even though in some
instances I
cannot be confident about the precision or even
the
direction in which the forces are working. However, to
begin, it
seems to me that, both in ethno-social science and
in
anthropology there has been a tendency to think of
scale as a
single and sufficient variable in the process of
explaining
other variables, such as the impersonality of
relationships or
secularisation or anomie. The central
feature of
scale in such arguments is the size of the
population
being considered. It will be my contention that
the size of
the population is not the governing variable in
itself, and
that the resultants in question must be seen as
the outcome
of an interplay between several scale
variables,
and particularly between elements of scale and
modes of
organisation to which the scales relate.
For example,
following Redfield, authors too numerous to
mention have
pointed to the city as an agent of
securalisation
and impersonalisation, contrasting it with
the folk
village. I do not recall that Redfield made the
distinction
on the basis of population size alone, or even
seriously;
he was much more concerned with what we
would now
label life styles, and he saw the city being
influenced
by external, even global forces whereas the
folk village
was protected from these and inward turning.
The
universality of Redfield's model was limited to the
existence of
specific, though not theoretically elaborated
conditions.
It could not apply to the mediaeval city,
the
Scale,
Organisation and performance
historical
oriental city, the city of pre-Columbian
Mesoamerica.
It is very doubtful indeed whether it applies
in many
large contemporary cities, and insofar as it does,
the larger
city is not necessarily more secular and
impersonal
than the smaller, even within the same culture.
What is at
issue is the way in which the life and culture of
the city is
organized. A large city may be divided into
neighbourhoods,
ethnic components, guilds, workshops,
and other
groups which mobilize interest and loyalties so
that it can
retain intensities of personal relations and of
focussed
cultural communication, and even cause these to
grow in ways
that are beyond the capability of the small
town or
village. Without controlling the ethnographic
facts, I
cite the probability that this is the case in Florence
and Siena
today, that it is important to the understanding
of Rio de
Janeiro and Sao Paulo, and to the way of life of
the much
maligned shantytowns, bidonvilles, favellas of
Africa and
Latin America, and the new Toronto which is
becoming
ethnically dominated. On the other side of the
coin, the
social organisation of the village or rural
populace is
equally important. A small populace can be
intensely
interactive and inward looking, divisively
organized
with little internal interaction, geographically
scattered,
and so forth.
19
There is
also an important element of time-dynamics to be
considered.
From the thirties to the sixties numerous
studies
provided evidence that urbanisation brought
breakdowns
of family life, kinship organisation, and
ritual.
Perhaps. But urbanisation also meant population
shift, and
many of the phenomena were at an early
historical
stage, even then. A migrant family, isolated from
kin by the
move, naturally has to live with important
modifications
(although even here it has been noted from
Africa and
Oceania that where conditions are auspicious
the urban
kinsman often retains strong ties with his rural
relatives).
This is particularly the case when the sea, or
expensive
transport, intervenes. But as time permits the
growth of
population, the cut off family unit gains the
potentiality
to reinvent, as it were, kinship.
Furthermore,
Scale,
Organisation and performance
many of the
studies were undertaken at a time of
relatively
low per capita income; the priorities for its
expenditure
were survival, and also tapping in to the
fascinating
consumer world which is an important
positive
value of city life (however much intellectuals may
endeavour to
impose their negative judgement upon it).
But with
almost global increases of real income, the
possibility
has also increased of diverting substantial
percentages
to ceremony, ritual, and the religious life.
Hence large
groups of modern city dwellers, oriented
towards
redefinitions of religion, ceremony, and the folk
life, are
growing up in parallel with the detached
impersonal
apartment dweller or suburban family of the
stereotype.
Indeed it may be the case that in the United
States there
is more mobility of residence than in other
countries,
particularly among university intellectuals, but
by no means
limited to them. Mobility of residence in a
large
country involves frequent changes of personal ties. I
believe
there has been a tendency for North American
analysts to
superimpose a model derived from their own
society upon
the phenomena of others, though this is not
the whole
explanation.
Similar
remarks apply to the examination of politics.
Differences
between Switzerland, the Western Provinces
of Canada,
France, and the United States, have very little
to do with
the size of the population as such, although I
must admit
that there is a relationship between population
and
geographical size which makes certain types of
organisation
very difficult to put into practice (and hence I
would argue
that in an ideal world it would be of great
benefit if
the U.S.S.R., the U.S.A., and China each
consisted of
half a dozen or more truly separated
countries.)
The
differences in the ways in which the polities in
question
contribute to the satisfaction of the citizens, that
is, in my
jargon, contribute to social performance, is very
largely an
outcome of the nature of political and ethnic
boundaries
within the countries concerned, on the one
hand, and
the internal structure of communications on the
other. Both
of these things can be expressed in scale terms,
but it is
not population scale per se. For example, the
question of
Quebec in Canada, and the industrial and
commercial
structure of British Columbia, would have
very
different manifestations if (a) Canada had
been
Scale,
Organisation and performance
organised on
a cantonal basis with ethnic and linguistic
overtones,
and (b) the communications system of British
Columbia had
been organised and developed in a
self-contained
Swiss style, rather than being dominated by
federal
geographical considerations.
The issues
of scale also apply to corporate groups. At what
size are
they the most effective, in terms of costs of output,
or the
personal involvement of participants? Once again,
the answer
is that it all depends on the organisation, and,
in the
larger units, the ways in which the constituent parts
of the
organisation articulate with each other. It has been
observed,
for example, that the International Telephone
and
Telegraph Company is highly centralized, nati onally
controlled
despite its global operations, and yet the
component
parts operate as if the others do not exist. On
the other
hand, International Business Machines, Royal
Dutch Shell,
and Nestlé though all large multinationals,
have varying
degrees of international participation,
interaction
between components, and plant control and
size. In the
decades of take-off into modern indu-
20
strialisation,
very large scale Japanese enterprises operated
by
incorporating into their processes the output of small
family
workshops. The permutations and combinations
are endless,
and are open to anthropological comparison.
It is now
fashionable to support the slogan "Small is
Beautiful"
as a critique of contemporary society,
particularly
in production and technological matters. In
July, 1977,
for example, I attended the Inter-Congress of
the Pacific
Science Association in Bali, Indonesia, which
was treating
the theme of "Appropriate Technology".
Margaret
Mead was a participant, and I admired the
restraint
with which she refrained from pointing out that
in 1955 she
was responsible for the then influential
volume
Cultural Patterns and Technological Change,
which at
that date treated most of the issues which are
now still
current. The economists, engineers and bankers
who were
present in Bali, were making their points on the
basis of
self-discovery, as if there was no history in the
literature.
And they were making their points in extreme
Scale,
Organisation and performance
terms;
either small was good and beautiful and effective or
it could
never meet the optimum effectiveness represented
by
large. Very little attention was given to the
possibilities
of combining
small and large, or having both in parallel,
or of
deciding between the two on the basis of a
combination
of social objectives and the cultural content
of
activity.
I can give
but one illustrative example. Electronic
communication can
be put together in technological
packages of
very high capital cost, and complexity and
very low
personal involvement. A nationally centralized
television
system based on satellite technology would be
an example,
and one debate centres upon whether this is
the most
suitable kind of system to be thought of for large
population
countries with large geographical areas, even
though they
may be poor on a per capita basis. Again, on a
global scale
poor commodity-producing countries which
cannot
connect with the satellite transmissions used to
handle
commodity market information and transactions
are at a
disadvantage. Yet the idea of such systems is often
criticized
on account of the scale and cost implications.
But it might
also be argued that, even given the huge
networks
involved, it is technically, administratively, and
socially
possible to link them effectively with small scale
units of
interaction to increase decentralisation and to
enable
ethnically disparate communities to communicate
effectively
and regain a self-respect, a vitality and a
viability
which would otherwise be in jeopardy. A
national
satellite television network does not have to be
organized
centrally; that is a political and administrative
decision not
necessarily dictated by the technology. It can
be used as a
conduit from the parts to the other parts.
Similarly,
given certain questions of economy and
technology
that cannot be gone into here, it is possible for
sophisticated
information to be made available to the
smallest
possible social unit by electronic means, whether
that unit be
household or village or office in town or
countryside.
It is no longer necessary to go to the expense
of
establishing large-scale university libraries in
numerous
centres, or insist that users of infor mation
travel to
national data centres. In this kind of instance,
large-scale
Organisation is essential to small-scale use.
The debate
about scale, in ethno-social science terms, has
been
particularly vigorous with reference to
university
Scale,
Organisation and performance
organisation, and
the structure of the research
establishment. It
is perhaps appropriate to use this as the
final area
of discourse in view of the intensity of the
debate in
Italian, as well as other, circles at this time. It
might indeed
be argued that Italian university troubles are
largely
attributable to the immense growth and huge size
which some
of them have attained. Parallels could be
drawn with
the University of California and Parisian
universities
in the sixties. Obviously, complaints are not
focussed
specifically on the issue of size, but the question
remains, and
has been put, is size itself the factor which
leads to
administrative atrophy, policy negation, teaching
poverty,
research confusion, political confrontation?
21
Many
scholars, of course, refuse to consider universities as
goal-oriented
institutions, largely because strong elements
in the
public think of the goals in unacceptable vocational
manpower
producing terms, and this kind of objective
becomes
highly inflammatory in times of crisis when
students are
resolving in their own persons the conflict of
intellectual
open-ended enquiry and restrictive
professional
demands which can be related to the
"meal-ticket"
complex. While such confusion and
negativism
prevails in the scholarly community, that
community
has no means whereby it can judge the
performance
of a university; indeed many of its members
deny that
such a concept has any significance, and so we
are led to a
justification of anarchy.
It is,
however, possible to affirm certain goals which,
while not
acceptable to all, provide a set of performance
criteria
which then enables us to consider questions of
size. I have
argued at length about this elsewhere, and
arrived at
the following summary:
"The special
characteristics of university quality are:
a) the
objective of generating enquiry and creativity,
b) the
objective of expanding cultural resources,
including
Scale,
Organisation and performance
scientific
knowledge and artistic works,
c) the
objective of developing powers of scientific,
aesthetic
and moral
judgement, which is also essential as a means to
the first
two characteristics,
d) the
assumption that students are adults,
e) the
derived activity of education for the application of
cultural
resources, including knowledge, attitudes toward
enquiry,
and
disciplined
judgement."
(Belshaw
The
Anatomy of
a
University,
Toronto,
McClelland
and
Stewart
1974.
Emphases
added.)
Once
performance objectives have been stated, whether
one fully
agrees with them or not, they can be used as a
reference
point for the evaluation of the effects of the
social
organisation, cultural values, communication of
ideas, and
scale, of specific organisations on the analogy
of any other
social organisation with which
anthropologists
deal. Here, of course, I am concerned with
the general
rather than the specific, and I must focus on
scale,
rather than all the other factors with which one
could
deal.
Small
universities (let us say, under a thousand students)
have often
been lauded for the quality of intellectual
education,
especially in the humanities, which they can
provide.
They are, however, somewhat like culturally
bound
villages, in the sense that the student is limited in
the types of
ideas with which he deals. If the university
has a
clearly expressed philosophy of education, which the
student
maturely and consciously chooses as his road to
creative
thinking, the clarity of method and the intensity
of personal
support can be formative in a disciplined
and
Scale,
Organisation and performance
productive
way. But this is not necessarily the case. If the
student is
philosophically misplaced, he will spend his
time
psychologically fighting the system, without escape,
and if the
university has no philosophy of education, (a)
the
likelihood of student misplacement will be high, and
(b) the
student may be subjected to a mish-mash of
wishy-washy
ideas, so that his ability to survive, in a
creative
sense, becomes a matter of accident and
personality.
Small universities have virtues, then, only in
special
circumstances and for specific kinds of students.
The middle
range university, say up to 10,000 students, is
again in a
variable position. Some such universities have
established
a very high tradition of creative scholarship, in
both student
and faculty member. They have tended to be
somewhat
purposive philosophically, e.g. by orienting
themselves
to the creation of cultured leaders and
gentlemen ,
and by reinforcing the tradition of the scholar
who is
individual as a scholar but in his social life is a
member of an
intellectual community. Sometimes the
philosophy
has had a strong religious support, and
although
22
such
universities may have been somewhat short on
scientific
hardware, they were strong on people and
books. Most
have used the concept of the college as an
organising
principle providing smallness of scale within
the wider
framework.
From a
faculty perspective, such universities, once
established
with a long continuing tradition, have retained
much of
their creative appeal, but their appeal and effect
on students
is by no means as strong as it used to be. With
their
emphasis on books and people, such universities
could often
maintain and support highly esoteric branches
of
knowledge, with very few students, who selected
themselves
with advanced scholarship in mind. But, even
allowing for
such out-of-the-way disciplines, the
expansion of
such universities could not keep pace with
the
explosion of knowledge and the diversification of its
organisation,
except in a few special fields.
Furthermore,
the close relation of faculty member to
student, and
particularly to the student advancing in a
Scale,
Organisation and performance
scholarly
career, tended to be highly dependent, of
client-patron
form. The emergence of "schools" of thought,
that is very
restrictive approaches to disciplines with a
high degree
of orthodoxy, turned the notion of discipline
into its
biblical rather than its intellectual meaning. This
was helpful
to some forms of faculty creativity, and was
good for the
students who understood it and accepted it.
In Europe,
and in mediaeval times, the confinements of
scale which
we can see operating here were
counterbalanced
by a process which now seems to be
declining in
Europe, and to have little place elsewhere.
The student
searched beyond the confines of his own
institution.
This is particularly possible where universities
are in close
geographical connection, and where the
student is
not confined by the kind of high school class
which is
typical of North American undergraduate
education.
Students would know of lectures given
elsewhere,
would be able in cafes and in other ways to
gain access
to specialists and scholars of influence (though
often the
path to contact was strewn with difficulties) and
would seek
stimulus accordingly.
The giant
university can contain elements of the small and
medium, and
the student can be caught in the same way.
He finds
himself in an urban setting rather than a village,
and he can
be isolated, alienated and destroyed by the
impersonality and
confusion of the system. He can also
learn to
find his way through the maze, and if and when
he knows
what he wants, he can usually find it because it
is likely to
be there. It is now calculated that in most
conventionally
defined disciplines it requires forty to fifty
faculty
members to cover the field with depth; only the
massive
university can hope to achieve this in a large
number of
fields, and to add the further depth of research
institutes
and programmes, and interdisciplinary
combinations.
Undergraduate student preparation today
consists in
permitting students to explore within this
range, and
to start to make intellectual connections which
could not
otherwise have been imagined.
Advanced
student work may involve a choice of a narrow
sub-topic
which could not be present in a smaller
university
except by chance, or a wide-ranging breadth of
interest for
which the small university is too restrictive, or
even a
combination.
Scale,
Organisation and performance
Of course
whether the large university does this or fails
depends on
the way it handles its size. Theoretically, and
ideally, it
could be constituted of small parts, each
intellectually
and philosophically defined, among which
the student
was encouraged to roam. Unfortunately, in
most
university traditions the definition of such parts is as
departments
or discipline faculties, which places
unnecessary
and sometimes damaging restraints on the
organisation
and presentation of knowledge. Also
unfortunately,
some university systems attempt to impose
a structure
defined in teaching terms upon the research
process.
While the two are interlinked, they require very
different
concepts of manpower, its distribution and
concentration and
even of hierarchy. Thus the large
university
fails to capitalize on the advantages of its size
by, in most
cases, failing to invent an internal organisation
designed to
optimize intellectual conditions.
23
It also is
evident that, historically, many giant universities
are simply
cancerous growths upon the old smaller body,
using
patterns of organisation and material resources
which were
designed for them when they were small, and
when the
nature of knowledge was relatively simple.
They have,
in other words, failed to adapt with growth, for
reasons
which are usually traced to governmental
influence,
but which are also rooted in the combination of
academic
inertia and radical unreality.
To sum up,
scale in its various manifestations has complex
interactions
with organisation and performance, with
numerous
permutations and combinations of possible
variables.
The study of those manifestations, particularly
through the
use of anthropological and ethnological
observation
in contexts which may be unorthodox for
those
disciplines, is still in its infancy, and there is much
to do before
a theory can be productive. I hope that these
remarks may
encourage others to pursue some of the
questions,
and that some of the answers will come from
Scale,
Organisation and performance
the vigorous
Italian ethnology which Vigini Grottanelli
and his
colleagues have done so much to form.
Footnotes
The
performance of a social system or unit is defined in such a way that
an
increase in
performance may be said to occur when (a) the behavioral
profile of
culture expands, this value being modified by the capability of
the system
to move further in the future. (b) the costs of achieving the
behavioral
profile decline, and (c) the gap between the behavioral profile
of
culture and
the potential (i.e. desired) profile of culture decreases,
neglecting
consequential redefinition of the potential profile. For
elaboration,
see Belshaw, 1970.
1.
.A recent
example of interplay between ethnographic data and
generalized
statement on this topic is contained in G. Berreman,
"Scale and
Social Realitions", to be published in Current
Anthropology,
June 1978.
3. Very
frequently when we use the term "society" we are really
talking
about a "polity". Cf. Belshaw 1970.
4. 1 have
expressed this symbolically and added a number of
qualifications in
Belshaw (1970) d. pp. 44-6 and 49-S 1 .
(c) Cyril
Belshaw
2.
Scale,
Organisation and performance
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