I messed up my finances this month, so I'm going to have to be more careful. I really am gradually reigning things in, but the thing is that I'm trying to repurchase the things that were stolen from me, so that's messing things up. I feel like the robbers are winning by ending out with the upper hand and me the loser. That might be a stupid way of thinking, but that's the way I feel. But then I bought some other things too. For example, I bought a little folding seat that I can keep in the car and when I'm going to have to sit in line long I can put in in my purse and set it up and sit on it, which is very practical with my legs the way they are, so that really isn't a splurge, but something very necessary for my health. And then I got a couple bonnets that you can put on and massage your head to use to "wash" your hair which should be very handy in the event I have another operation, which is very likely knowing me and it's been very difficult to wash my own hair and I never have anyone to help me do that, so I really need these.
Still, there werer some things that I didn't need as much as these...
Anyway, I'd better get to the text.
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The next section is titled "A Symbolic Perspective."I think anthropologists would really have had their work cut out for them at the Vienna mission on this one and I realy, really, REALLY would like to read a anthropologist's report from the symbolic perspective.
"Anthropologists such as Hallowell... and Geertz... treat societies, or cultures, as systems of shared symbols and meanings. They see the anthropologist's task as interpreting the 'themes' of culture - those postulates or understandings, declared or implicit, tacitly approved or openly prompted, that orient and stimulate social activity..." (p. 350)
The keys to unlocking the understanding - my understanding, for example, of what was going on, was those pesky shared symbols and meanings. And what's with the "themes" of culture anyway? How on earth was I supposed to figure that one out without understanding the shared symbols and meanings? The declared and openly prompted symbols and meanings I could handle, but that's like saying I graduated from kindergarten, I think. Whoopee!
So I desserved a gold star and a nice little pat on the head, but that's about it and then I'd be puzzled about everything else and pretty much out of step with the other things, or hit and miss, guessing right simetimes. Or I just gave up and marched to a different drummer disagreeing with their basic premises anyway in many cases. And since I wasn't going to give them them them the total submission they seemed to want from their members, we were at a stalemate anyway.
In this case, I might have appreciated the insights of a symbolic anthropologist, but the mission would have liked the insights of an interrogator who could get tinto my head to let them know what I was really thinking. They would have like that, I'm sure.
[For those of you new to this blog some of this might not make a lot of sense, because it refers to some things I've already written about in several posts. Sorry...]
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"When this symbolic perspective is applied to organizational analysis, an organization, like a culture, is conceived as a pattern of symbolic discourse. It thus needs interpreting... "reading" ... or "deciphering"..., in order to be understood. To interpret an organization, a researcher focuses first on the way experience becomes meaningful for those in a setting. This is done by regard for the figure-ground relationships they maintain through their processes of attention, naming, and other patterns of action." (p. 350)In a way, that is informally, I was doing this kind of thing when I realized the mission wasn't what I expected it to be. When I said I did as I was told and didn't complain but sort of just observed and tried to make out what was going on, this is the kind of thing I mean. I was drawing on my European Studies background but also my understanding of East European missions, which, although it wasn't as great as I thought it was, was substantial.
I didn't know all these anthropological terms when I was in Vienna though, although I've learned a bit about them since returning from Russia and my interest in qualitative research methods.
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Smircich describes a few studies that use this approach, but these is one in particular that seems relevant:"Van Maanen was concerned with how people decipher organizations so that they can behave appropriately. This interest led him to focus on the process through which neophytes, in this case, police academy graduates, learned the meaning system maintained by their occupational group.
The focus of this form of organizational analysis is on how individuals interpret and understand their experience and how these interpretations and understandings related to actions. With this orientation, the very concept of organization is problematic, for the researcher seeks to examine the basic processes by which groups of people come to share interpetations and meanings for experience that allow the possibility of organized activity. The research agenda here is to document the creation and maintenance through symbolic action." (p. 351)
So I'm the police academy graduate. So the big question is, how did I learn the meaning system of the Vienna mission? If you've read this blog very long you probably know that I decided not too far into my tenure with the mission that I didn't agree with certain fairly key aspects of their "meaning" (i.e., values, etc.), so I didn't really "learn" them (as in "accept").
Moving right along, then, it might help to try to understand how I interpreted and understood my experience with the mission and how these interpretations and understandings related to actions. I'm not sure if interpret and understood are two different concepts, but I'm going to just treat them as one to avid belaboring the point. I think I understood the mission on different levels and different faces too and you had to know which one you were dealing with at any given moment. Often it was clear by the context or the people involved, though. But not always. And then I didn't really undersand all the rules so I got things mixed up too. There was the mission family face. There was the external church face. There was the external supporter face. There was the external East Europe face. There was the external East Eurupe teaching face. There was the security threat face. etc. The thing was that each of these had protocols because they were potential security threats (as was anything, really). So being socialized was like walking a field of landmines.
So then what happens to those who don't come to share interpretations and meanings for experience that allow the possibility of organized activity? I guess presumably organized activity would be thwarted or at the very least be made difficult. In the case of the Viennna mission it was impossible really because if I didn't share virtually ALL of their values (which I already said I didn't) I was a security threat in their system and the fact that they werer a total system to boot was an added problem.
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That's it for the symbolic perspective. we'll look at another perspective next time.
