Volume 54, No. 3, Fall 1995
The Hidden Injuries of Bureaucracy: Work in an American Nursing Home
Nancy Foner
Key words: bureaucracy, nursing home; US, New York
This article analyzes the tensions and contradictions in nursing home bureaucracies. Bureaucratic rules are essential for administrative efficiency and to reduce the potential for neglect and abuse of patients. These areespecially critical given the complex requirements of modern medical care and state regulations. At the same time, as my field research reveals, bureaucratic rules can interfere with a key goal of nursing homes as they stand in the way of aides' ability to provide compassionate and supportive care.
Miners and Managers: Workplace Cultures in a British Columbia Coal Mine
Michael J. Rouse and Usher Fleising
Key words: miners, management, organizational culture; Canada, British Columbia
A model developed specifically for organizational culture analysis is tested in an industrial relations case study of social change. The progression and deterioration of worker and management relations is seen within the context of changing world coal market contingencies, company adaptation to those changes, and workers' response to management's actions. From an organizational culture perspective, both management's and workers' responses are generated by their culturally formed interpretations of, and adaptations to, their environments. The research identifies two distinctive cultures within the organization which partly account for the conflictual interactions (e.g., "oppressive" industrial relations strategies, illegal strikes, etc.). The model is useful within organizational contexts, especially clinical or consultancy contexts, but some modifications are required to gain a more complete understanding of organizational culture.
Organizing for Global Effectiveness: Ethnicity and Organizations
Richard Reeves-Ellington
Key words: action research, ethnic organization
Emerging global organizations with multinational and multicultural personnel are failing because of internal cultural and value differences. They are also failing by focusing on their internal organization rather than striving to adapt to the external environment. Traditional organizational models and structures lack the flexibility to accommodate the diversity required today. This study discusses the theoretical basis for organizational change and organizational research methodology, including action research, used by the members of a regional organization of a major US multinational corporation. It further discusses how existing theory and research were modified by regional personnel in order to meet organizational change requirements. It demonstrates the potential of an old social model--the ethnic group--and attempts to demonstrate its positive potential as a model for developing a global organization. It also focuses on the processes used to develop an ethnic organization. This organization, based on mutually defined culture and values, turned a failing organization into a successful one.
Farmers' Knowledge and Sustainable Agroecosystem Management: An Operational Definition and an Example from Chiapas, Mexico
Mauricio R. Bellon
Key words: indigenous knowledge, sustainable agriculture, maize; Mexico, Chiapas
Indigenous knowledge of small farmers in the tropics may provide important contributions to the development of sustainable agricultural systems. This article examines this idea, particularly under conditions of socioeconomic and technological change. It develops an operational definition of sustainable agroecosystem management and links it to farmers' indigenous knowledge. It analyzes the management of soils and germplasm by a group of small maize farmers in Chiapas, Mexico. It shows that sustainable and nonsustainable managements can coexist in the same agroecosystem, and points out that an important part of the value of farmers' indigenous knowledge is to identify the incentives that lead to either management style.
The Displacement of Peasant Settlers in the Amazon: The Case of Santa Cruz, Bolivia
Graham Thiele
Key words: settlement, peasants, rural development, farmers, associations; Amazonia, Bolivia
Unlike peasants in many other parts of the Amazon, those settling on much of the frontier in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, have shown little tendency to be displaced by large farmers. This article attempts to identify the reasons for the persistence of peasant settlement. These include ambiguities in state support for the large farmer, the lack of dynamism of commercial agriculture, different spatial patterns of the expansion of peasant and commercial farming, the occupation of land by peasant farmers in legally recognized agrarian unions and the Andeanisation of the frontier with the extension of a distinctive social and economic space originating in highland Bolivia into the lowland environment.
Common Goods and Private Profits: Traditional and Modern Communal Land Management in Portugal
Robert Brouwer
Key words: forestry, social differentiation, communal land management; Portugal
In Portugal still exist large tracts of communally owned land used for grazing, gathering, and for provision of fertilizer. Within users' communities inequality can persist as one's capability to exploit a communal resource is related to access to private means of production: cattle, man-power, and land. Communal land has become private property by usurpation, sales by local authorities, and partitioning amongst the commoners after state intervention. In all cases, elites benefitted more than lower strata. Most of the remaining area has been placed under control of the forestry services, but since 1976, local communities can exercise rights of exploitation and management over these areas as well. Although revenues of state planted forests sometimes have become the bone of contention between local factions, and local and higher level organizations within and outside the state, this combination of forestry and popular rights seems to offer the best guarantee for equal distribution of communal wealth.
Promoting Sportfishing Development in Puerto Rico: Travel Agents' Perceptions of the Caribbean
Jeffrey C. Johnson and David C. Griffith
Key words: travel, tourism, sportfishing, development; US, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands
Tourist development often depends on the development of specific tourist activities (e.g. sportfishing), combined with new and creative approaches to promoting areas as tourist destinations. Travel agents occupy crucial positions in this process, acting as information brokers between tourists and tourist destinations. Their perceptions of tourist destinations influence their promotion behaviors. Methods that model perceptions using judged similarity and belief-frame comparison data, such as multidimensional scaling, optimal scaling and clustering analysis, are particularly useful in gaining information about how travel agents think about tourist destinations. Such methods may also facilitate attempts to promote one destination over another. We present these methods in this article, illustrating how they were applied to the promotion of sportfishing in Puerto Rico as one portion of an overall effort of fisheries development in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.
Assessing the Validity of Informant Recall: Results of a Time Use Pilot Study in Peri-Urban Egypt
Judith A. Rici, Norge W. Jerome, Nadia Megally, Osman Galal, Gail G. Harrison, and Avanelle Kirksey
Key words: Time allocation methods, direct observation, informant recall; Egypt
This article presents the results of a time use pilot study comparing informant recall with direct observation in a peri-urban Egyptian village. The operations research was conducted to determine whether informant recall could substitute for direct observation as a method to elicit accurate information on individuals' daily patterns of time allocation in this village. Trained fieldworkers, using two structured protocols (one for informant recall and the other for direct observation), collected time use data on 40 study participants as they performed routine tasks at home and away from home. Data were stratified by household subsistence type (agricultural versus non-agricultural) and recall errors were calculated. Results of the analysis indicated that the estimated recall error of 56% was unacceptable and that an observational protocol would generate more accurate time use data in our study site. We, therefore, modified the pilot time allocation research options and recommend that others follow a similar research strategy when deciding on time allocation methods for implementation in developing countries.
Irony among Blind Israelis: The Meaning, Construction and Force
Shlomo Deshen
Key words: disability, blindness workers, ritual, empowerment; Israel
Expressions of irony within a given culture or social group can diverge widely; some are harsh and others gentle. This article focuses on this variegation in the context of blind people in Israel. Various ironic expressions are linked with particular existential themes in the lives of the actors, such as discredit, danger, and isolation. The overt content of the expressions includes ethnicity, religion and playful tactility. The analysis suggests that in their doings the actors contend with threats of disorder of various kinds in their lives. They face those possibilities audaciously, and thereby reassert their hold onto existential niches they have created for themselves. The implication of the material for the practice of blindness workers is considered. Ironic expression has empowering potential and welfare practitioners are advised to encourage it.
Examining Power, Serving the State: Anthropology, Congress and the Invasion of Panama
Lesley Gill
Key words: Congress, power, authority, state; US
This article explores the tensions faced by anthropologists who seek to examine critically the institutional structures of state power in American society. but who find themselves immersed in the bureaucracies of state organizations. It examines the author's experience as an AAA Congressional Fellow and her efforts to write an op-ed editorial about the invasion of Panama for a prominent member of the US Congress. It situates this experience within the transformations that shaped the discipline of anthropology in the 1980s and pushed new PH.D.s to seek jobs outside the academy. It then explores the contradictions involved with "studying up" while simultaneously "serving power."
Applied Anthropology: From the Classroom to the Community
Roberta D. Baer, Marta Bustillo, Harold Lewis, Wendy Perry, Donna Romeo, Pat Slorah, and Carron Willis
Key words: applied anthropology, graduate curriculum, health care, ethnicity; US, Florida
An important part of training in applied anthropology is the experience of participating in applied research projects. Over the past nine years the principal author has experimented with a variety of class projects in the context of graduate course in "Nutritional Anthropology" and in "Ethnicity and Health Care." This article discusses the general mechanics of such projects, as well as the methodology and results of one project in particular, carried out in west central Florida.
Commentary: Informed Consent in Applied Research: A Comment
Murray L. Wax
Commentary: Social Research and Litigation: Good Intentions versus Good Ethics
Steven McNabb
Commentary: Methodological and Management Issues in Applied Interdisciplinary AIDS Research in Developing Countries
Pieter H. Streefland
Malinowski Award Lecture: Social Organization and Development Anthropology
Michael M. Cerna
