I finished my first Pysanka (Ukrainian Easter egg), except I have to take the wax off to see the final results. I don't think it's going to be very good, but I haven't made these in years, so I need to practice. I'm going to make another of the same pattern again.
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Returning to the text, this section is "Organizational Participation.""...[T]he issue facing a member-citizen, regardless of job level, is whether or not to participate as fully as his/her rights will allow." (p. 261)
The thing in my case in Vienna, was that the mission seemed to want full/complete/total/absolute participation, to the point of almost act first, think later (or "Let us do the thinking for you; trust us, we have your best intentions at heart.") So, sure, I coldn't participate in the same things my boss could, but the point was that I belonged to the mission 24/7. Also, the mission, being a total institution could make different sorts of demands with different types of clout than could your average corporation back home So here you have:
- a total institution
- demand of full participation
- demand of participation appropriate to one's position
I've discussed this in other ways elsewhere, but I did what I was asked regarding befriending my boss' wife and children, doing things with the secretaries and other singles, but some of those things I really didn't want to do that much and wouldn't rather have been doing hands on missionary work with people, with the Austrians. I thought that it was too bad that my boss' wife was so insecure that she felt she had to know her boss' secretary and be her friend and I I though that if families come with children they need to about how they're going to raise they're children. Like maybe bring a maid or something. I know that may sound callous or something but can we get past the stereotypes? If you asked them to describe a mission secretary during the time I was there they could have done it without thinking - and it have included the inevitable mentoring and babysitting and for their boss' kids. That's got stereotype written all over it.
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"Those having only an instrumental relationship with an organization are likely to be politically apathetic, except about issues having a direct impact on their own welfare (more on this situation follows). Those having normal Gemeinschaft relations, who identify with an organization and its leaders, are likely to be inactive, although their reason is not apathy but uncritical acceptance of whatever organizational leaders decide." (p. 261)
I wouldn't say I had an instrumental relationship with mission, but the mission might well have viewed me that me that way. Rather. I considered that I had a no-nonsense 2-year commitment to the mission. I thought that maybe after that something else might be worked out for a different positon, though, but within the mission. So I don't think it could be said that my attitude was one of a instrumental relationship with the mission. I wasn't just using them, for example, to get somewhere else. I didn't have any plans of anywhere else to go.
The second sentence here is odd when considered in light of the Vienna mission, because virtually everyone there identified with the organization and its leaders. But I don't remember anyone seeming apathetic. People were supportive, energetic, etc, but not apathetic. In any case, we all were mostly the 'yes men' and all we had to do was to go along with whatever decisions the Board had made. I'm talking about the big decision here.
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"Proposition 8: As organizational political rights increase, so does organizational participation.
Proposition 9: The direct relationship between organizational political rights and participation is enhanced if relational ties to the organization are covenantal in character." (p. 261)
I don't think proposition 8 fit the Vienna mission. The reason is that the only ones who had any political rights to speak of were at the very pinnacle of the organization, but participation was universal, and, total institution, it could demand universal participation. (It could do this because its workers were thousands of mil home, etc.)
Although, among options offered by Graham, the covenantal relationship to an organization is the closest fit, I think for the Vienna mission, in this particular situation. There should be stronger political rights and participation due covenantal relationship. But they are not. So that's when you go back to the drawing board and reconconsider whether or not they really were covenantal in nature.
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That's it for now. Next time I'll discuss some of Graham's findings from her study
