Hierarchy & Society: Anthropological Perspectives on Bureaucracy

The time for anthropologists to study a “simple” non-Western culture is fast disappearing. As traditional societies are incorporated into modern industrial states, more attention must be given to complex social systems. Hierarchy and Society focuses on the central, all-pervasive element that no modern culture is without—bureaucracy. In an early chapter the editors establish a theoretical framework that takes account of the informal as well as formal operations of a bureaucracy. Not just the “rules” but the personal relationships should be studied; not only the organization itself but the way it copes with its environment. “Bureaucracies,” as Professors Britan and Cohen point out, “are living systems,” and as such they change in ways that none of their members can predict. In a modernizing country, bureaucracies are the link between local institutions and the nation as a whole. But as the chapters on Third World societies demonstrate, the linkage is often complex and contradictory; a system may appear to do one thing and in reality do the opposite. Other chapters tackle the problem of bureaucracies in the U.S.A.—examining, for instance, the web of financial dependency that entangles a community organization. Underlying all of the essays are some fundamental questions: to what extent is bureaucracy necessary? is a curtailment of individual liberties unavoidable? could modern society be organized in a more equal fashion? One chapter, facing these problems directly, studies the evolution of twelve egalitarian cooperatives that set out to avoid bureaucracy. Another chapter, more pessimistic, focuses in protest on the increased bureaucratization of scholarship itself. Hierarchy and Society takes a major step into a new area of study for anthropology. As more research is done, essays like these will be seen as landmarks in the field.