123. Socialization File, Pt. 6 (Dubin, pt. 6)

I'm not sure why I'm so tired. After the surgery I was pretty tired the first couple weeks, and then when I could take the neck brace off I got tired again and it's been almost 2 weeks and I'm not sure it's getting better. The second half of the day I'm pretty wiped out. I rest some, but I still get stuff done, but I feel like I'm just dragging myself around I'm so wiped out. But I wake up refreshed in the morning.

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Anyway, one thing I wanted to say before hitting the book again is that my experience in Vienna could be taken alone as it is, OR... it could be taken in the context of my whole life, especially some things that happen after my Vienna experience. It'll take a lot to wind my way through that experience, but even when it's over, it might not really be over, because it could just be a harbinger of other things to come.

What I mean is, how much of what happened in Vienna was just because of the erroneous ways of the mission (and my vulnerabilities), and how much of it was related to my dad's work. I don't want to give you the impression that I know the answer to that question definitively, but my hunch is that at least a certain amount of the Vienna experiences had some relation to my dad's work. I can't be certain of this, however, but at the very least there are enough indications that this theory could be plausible.

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Next Van Maanen discusses Etzioni's theory of different types of organizations requiring different types of compliance.

"Normative organizations are characterized by a high moral commitment of their members to the mission of the organization. These organizations stress 'expressive' socialization aimed at insuring that the individual's values, attitudes and motives are congruent with the mission. While normative organizations may be dependent upon outside agencies for support (e.g., educational institutions), they must still develop some internal mechanisms for the socialization of their members. On the other hand, utilitarian organizations emphasize 'instrumental' socialization - aimed primarily at controlling only the overt behavior of the members. Values, attitudes and motives are considered largely irrelevant providing the new member's behavior is in the organizationally defined direction. Hence, utilitarian organizations orient their socialization procedures toward supplying novices only with the knowledge and behavior required of the specific role they are to perform. Finally, Etzioni perceives coercive organizations as most concerned with obedience. The organizational socialization process is punishment-centered and, as such, is conducive to an alienating form of individual compliance." (p. 86)

It seems pretty clear that the Vienna mission was of the first type - normative. In a way that's not too surprising considering it was a missionary organization and also the nature of the mission field. That is, missions would want the new missionary to share their theology and values, and there would undoubtedly be some care taken to work in countries otherwise not terribly friendly towards religious activity. But the problem is that I didn't foresee how far they had taken the precautions, and how that had somehow mutated the mission into something that I could barely recognize as a mission, and a theological institution to boot - filled with theologians who evidently had no qualms with the way things were done.

The Vienna mission was clearly in the normative camp.

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"Normative organizations, because of the reliance and concern with the values, attitudes and motives of their members, are likely to be most concerned with the socialization of their new participants. Hence, these organizations usually have time-consuming and intensive socialization methods." (p. 86)

The problem (well, one of the problems) with the Vienna mission was that it was hard to tell what was socialization and what wasn't. It's not as if it was clearly labeled as being socialization or something else, so eventually I began to think that just about everything was socialization. That might not have been true if I'd have been a more responsive subject, in which case I might not have felt that everything was socialization because I'd been socialized already. Then I'd become part of the socialization machine ready for the next recruit to be properly molded. In fact, it did seem, in my observations of others, that once you successfully pass the first battery of tests than part of your initiation was being entrusted to help socialize other new comers. To be able to do that you would have had to have internalized their values and ways of doing things, their norms.

***

Next Van Maanen looks at another way to classify organizations. In this system, the differential is how "total" an institution is (or isn't).

"...[T]he main issue is not which organizations are total, but rather how much totality does each display.

In strong institutions, such as the army, persons are socialized normally by harsh methods. Shiloh (1971) suggests that initiates to these organizations are 'profaned' by a standardized series of abasements and degradations. The organizational machinery is directed toward the classification of the initiates. As the socialization process progresses, tests of obedience are administered under tight supervision. These tests are considered necessary if the individual is to learn a new role." (p. 87)

I've discussed this some in earlier posts, that the Vienna mission was pretty much a total institution. In a sense you might have been freer to leave than, say the military or prison, but if you did you'd have a lot of explaining to do to your supporters (churches and individuals) back home, not to mention any other such life-changing consequences. And there you were plopped in a foreign country, although that didn't phase me personally much, but I think it was used with a lot of people as a way to keep them closely in the fold. Most missionaries who came had a profession (theologian, secretary) and didn't necessarily know German, for example.

***

"In Etzion's terms, coercive organizations are the most like total institutions. Virtually all facets of an individual's life are controlled within these organizations." (p. 87)

It sure felt like this - coercive and total - to me. If you consider that even in the military soldiers have free and leave time, but that setting is still considered coercive and total. So it was in Vienna, and it felt to me like the more I did apart from the group the more I felt the coercion, which was expressed in a variety of ways, such as socially shunning me or changing my work position. I don't want to go into this too much now, but, believe me, I'll get to it.

***

"[S]ome organizations require the recruit to learn a new style of life. Such learning places the members in a community (or subculture) whose claims over their daily existence exceed their official duties. Socialization into such organizations is generally harsh and attempts to force the novice to break old patterns and relationships. The new member is expected to emerge from the organizational socialization process with a strong identification with the collectivity. Moore (1969:879) notes that in such organizations, the process invariably involves suffering." (p. 87)

This was true, I think, of the mission in Vienna. I mean, it's not as if newcomers had to forsake a wanton lifestyle, but they did need to change to fit the way the organization thought and acted, and this did seem pretty all-inclusive. The initiated managed to use all facets of their life for the benefit of the organization. Thus, working to found a Christian school where the missionary kids (MKs) could attend would fit that bill, and would include a few people from the mission, so that it would be possible to make sure that the mission's interests were followed. That would be an activity outside the primary mission of the organization, but within the bounds of what was in the interests of the mission, so that outside activities like this were pretty integral to success in the organization - you couldn't just do your job well and go home and do what you wanted, even if it wasn't necessarily something that would hurt the mission. For the most part, to succeed there at least most, if not all, of your life had to be for the mission's interests, as they defined their interests.

***

"The existence of danger in an occupation or organization is another characteristic having implications for the socialization process. Janowitz (1964) and Van Maanen (1972) note that organizations involved in the performance of crucial life-death functions develop far-reaching claims over the participant's life." (p. 87)

This clearly describes the Vienna mission working in Communist countries. However, as mentioned earlier, this was a Christian mission and as such should have operated under biblical principles, which is exactly where I think they lost the mark. Try explaining that to a bunch of theologians, however. At least you can't accuse me of being intimidated. Back then I did eventually become intimidated through those 2 years of hell on earth (for me), but I grew through those experiences and I've faced a lot of things since then, so I'm pretty hard to intimidate now.

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It's after midnight and I'd better go for now. Good night.

~ Meg

77. Defense & High-Reliability Firms File, Part 3 (Kurt, pt. 1)

This next text is a book chapter:

Lang, Kurt. (1965) Mlitary organizations. In March, J. G. (Ed.). Handbook of Organizations. Chicago: Rand McNally, p. 838ff.

***

"What remains distinctive to the armed forces is their basic orientation toward an image of the battlefield... It is from this orientation that the armed forces have their specific military character and the military establishment its distinctive forms." (p. 839)

I am going to apply this to the Vienna mission situation (and probably also, by extension, to (many) other missions to 'closed' countries) in comparison to missions in other types of situation. It's a special type of adversarial perspective that might be exemplified by things like the article in my candidates' course manual comparing the economic standards of the East (i.e., Communist countries) and West.

I don't have any indication that I can remember that dad thought along these lines, but there were probably those in U.S. military work that would have seen Christian missions as at least in a supportive role, intentionally or not, to other efforts to thwart or win over the big red enemy. I have already pointed out people I knew in this type of mission work with military background, including our two human resource staff in Vienna who were chaplains in the military reserves at the same time they were working with us.

This attitude toward the target country was probably a major basis for approaching missions differently than other missions not working in 'closed' countries. Also, in our case it was not just the fact that these were 'closed' countries, but that these countries were also seen as political enemies by society at large, which wouldn't have necessarily been true regarding other 'closed' countries. Nowadays, working in Muslim countries would probably be the counterpart to the then Communist countries. And because of this public opinion about the Communist countries the churches and supporters back home might have been more lenient in their demands for accountability, also.

Even when I was living in Russia, was mostly the years after the fall of Communism there, how few missionaries I met who knew the language - even missionaries living there. My understanding was that missions usually sent their new missionaries to language school either before getting to the field where s/he'd be working or at the beginning during a time when other mission responsibilities would be at most minimal until the language was learned. A gal I went to Bible school had almost 2 years of language training for a mission to Africa, so that she could learn French (a national language) and also the local language. The only mission I came in to contact with during my 6 1/2 years in Russia who knew Russian were a German church planting team in Krasnoyarsk. I understood this lack to be a carry over from the how missions in that part of the world were treated differently than other missions, even though at that point there was little need to continue in that way.

Maybe part of my problem was that I never really got into that way of thinking, even from way before my Vienna days. I wasn't drawn to that ministry because of the political nature of the area, but because of my heritage and my interest in the people. It's not that I didn't think about political issues, but that I wasn't so absorbed with it as others and the mission seemed to be.

This "orientation toward the image of the battlefield" not only affected interpersonal relations in the Vienna mission, but how the ministry was actually carried out also.

***

Under the heading of "'Communal' Character of Military Life":

"The milieu of the military organization differs most clearly from that of the 'civilian' occupation in the degree to which organizational control extends to many phases of personal life normally left untouched....

Goffman's concept of the category of total institution as 'a place of residence and work where a large number of like situated individuals, cut off from the wider society for an appreciable period of time together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life'...

Unless there is a strong identification with military goals, the curtailment of freedom to regulate one's own off-duty activities can be felt as a deprivation." (p. 848-849)

"Total institutions" include things like prisons and the like, but even the military, in which, certainly, members may physically leave the base, for example, to go to a civilian church or for school or whatever. As such, I think I would classify the Vienna mission as a total institution similar to how the military is also identified as such.

Also, the last quote is especially true of me regarding identifying with the institution. That is, I did identify strongly enough with the general goals of the ministry, but I didn't identify with a lot of the values and how they did things. Going back to our pragmatic ends and means discussion, I accepted the missions ends but not the means they took to try to get there. The broad brush means, of course, I knew about before coming and explained to others countless times during deputation. The saying about the devil being in the details was where I got hung up once I arrived in Vienna. If you can imagine this, or maybe you have some experience of this too, it's like the public p.r. image an organization portrays even when those inside the organization know that it's not a completely accurate picture, not in the sense of an incomplete picture but a misleading picture. Something can be incomplete but not misleading.

Since I never reached that kind of identification with the details of how they operated in Vienna, I did indeed feel like efforts (direct or otherwise) to curtail my freedom was not only a deprivation, but also unwarranted and unnecessary.

***

I'm going to just sort of summarize the section titled "Authoritarian Ideology," because it's a bit involved.

The author in this section discusses, at least in part, several studies where a test was administered over time to new recruits to the military to identify whether any changes about authoritarian leadership had occurred. When this test was administered over a longer time frame (3 to 4 months) there were changes in which the new recruits viewed authoritarian leadership as less authoritarian.

In Vienna this might play out this way: A new recruit arrives in Vienna and is pretty soon confronted with a total institution and authoritarian (top-down) structure. Upon realization and initial experience of this she might identify all or most of the usual traits of authoritarianism, but a few months later might only recognize a few of such traits as being authoritarianism.

It's as if the new recruit had become acclimatized to it and did not think of her situation as being particularly authoritarian. Another context: a Western woman moves to a strict Muslim country or village and has to start wearing the burka. At first she might balk at this and think of it as demeaning and insulting, but eventually she gets used to it and thinks it's not so bad after all. That might not be a perfect example, either, but I hope you get the idea anyway.

I think this adjustment to authoritarian ideology happened in Vienna. It didn't happen to me, but as part of a total system I paid a heavy price for not conceding.

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That's all for that article. Now I'm going to go get lunch...

~ Meg

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Later addition: I found a few pages that got separated from the main text, so I'll address them now just to keep the comments on one text all together.

We're jumping ahead now to the summary statements:

"... Some measure of identification with the collectivity and some sense of generalized obligation and readiness to acknowledge the legitimacy of its demands in numerous particular situations must exist..." (p. 872)

My problems with the situation in Vienna included my hesitation in completely identifying with the collectivity and in acknowledging the legitimacy of some of the apparent demands being made on me.

As far as the identification was concerned, I didn't think they had the right to even demand what I saw as complete identification with them. When I got on the plane and crossed the "big puddle" (The Atlantic) I didn't leave my brains back home and I wasn't going to identify in such a way as to abrogate my ability to think for myself and disagree with them if I really disagreed with them.

I guess I covered legitimacy and identification in one fell swoop there. So now this is really and truly it for this article and we're moving on.

~ Meg