Becoming a Member of Society

Key Concepts

Socialization is the lifelong social experience by which people develop their human
potential and learn culture. Unlike other living species, whose behavior is mostly or
entirely set by biology, humans need social experience to learn their culture and to
survive. Social experience is also the foundation of personality, a person’s fairly
consistent patterns of acting, thinking and feeling (Macionis 2012: 102).

Another term for socialization is enculturation.

There are many theories on how the self, as a product of socialization, is formed. We
will examine the work of four researchers: Sigmund Freud, Charles Cooley, George
Herbert Mead, and Jean Piaget (Macionis 2012: 104–108).

Freud’s model of personality. Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) combined basic needs

and the influence of society into a model of personality with three parts: id, ego, and
superego. The id represents the human being’s basic drives, or biological and physical
needs which are unconscious and demand immediate satisfaction. In the human
personality, the superego refers to the cultural values and norms internalized by an
individual. Society, through its values and norms, opposes the self-centered id. The ego
is, thus, a person’s conscious efforts to balance innate pleasure-seeking drives (id) with
the demands of society (superego).

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. From his studies of human cognition, or

how people think and understand. Jean Piaget (1896–1980) identified four stages of
cognitive development.
Stage one is the sensorimotor stage (first two years of life), the level of human
development at which individuals know the world only through the five senses. Stage
two is the preoperational stage (about age two to seven) at which individuals first use
language and other symbols. Stage three is concrete operational stage (between the
ages of seven and eleven) at which individuals first see causal connections in their
surroundings. The last stage is the formal operational stage (about age twelve) at
which individuals think abstractly and critically.

Mead’s theory of the social self. George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) For Mead, the
self is a part of our personality and includes self-awareness and self-image. It is the
product of social experience, and is not guided by biological drives (see Freud) or
biological maturation (see Piaget). According to Mead, the key to developing the self is
learning to take the role of the other. Infants can do this only through imitation and,
without understanding underlying intentions, have no self. As children learn to use
language and other symbols, the self emerges in the form of play. Play involves
assuming roles modeled on significant others, or people, such as parents, who have
special importance for socialization. Then, children learn to take the roles of several
others at once, and move from simple play with one other to complex games involving
many others. The final stage in the development of the self is when children are able to
not only take the role of specific people in just one situation, but that of many others in
different situations. Mead used the term generalized other to refer to widespread
cultural norms and values we use as references in evaluating ourselves.

Cooley’s Looking-glass Self. Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929) used the phrase
looking-glass self to mean a self-image based on how we think others see us. As we
interact with others, the people around us become a mirror (an object that people used
to call a “looking glass”) in which we can see ourselves. What we think of ourselves,
then, depends on how we think others see us. For example, if we think others see us as
clever, we will think of ourselves in the same way. But if we feel they think of us as
clumsy, then that is how we will see ourselves.

Agents of Socialization
Several settings have special importance in the socialization process. These include the
family, school, peer group, and the mass media. The family, usually the first setting of
socialization, has the greatest impact on attitudes and behavior. Schools teach
knowledge and skills needed for later life, and expose children to greater social
diversity. The peer group takes on great importance during adolescence. The mass
media have a huge impact on socialization in modern societies.

Values, Norms, Status, and Roles

Socialization is also defined as the process of preparing members for membership in a
given group in society. Through socialization, individuals learn the norms and values of
their society. Values are culturally defined standards that people use to decide what is
desirable, good, and beautiful and that serve as broad guidelines for social living.
Norms are the rules and expectations by which a society guides the behavior of its
members.

Socialization prepares individuals to occupy statuses and roles (Macionis 2012: 127–
128). Status refers a social position that a person holds. An ascribed status is a social
position a person receives at birth or takes on involuntarily later in life. Examples of
ascribed statuses include being a daughter, a Filipino, a teenager, or a widower.
Achieved status refers to a social position a person takes on voluntarily that reflects
personal ability and effort. Achieved statuses include honors student, athlete, nurse,
software writer, and thief. Role refers to behavior expected of someone who holds a
particular status.

Gender Role Socialization

Sex refers to the biological characteristics distinguishing male and female (Macionis
2012: 169). Sex is based on chromosomes, anatomy, hormones, reproductive systems,
and other physiological components.

Gender refers to those social, cultural, and psychological traits linked to males and
females through particular social contexts. Sex makes us male or female; gender
makes us masculine or feminine. All the major agents of socialization—family, peer
groups, schools, and the mass media—reinforce cultural definitions of what is feminine
and masculine. (Dionisio 1992: 1-2; Macionis 2012: 170).

Enculturation and Socialization

Filipino Children in Family and Society: Growing Up in a Many-People

Environment
By Hiromu Shimizu

The objective of this presentation is to report on the social environment in which

children grow up in the Philippines. To be more specific, this is a report on the
characteristics of the socialization process of Filipino children who are born and brought
up in the many-people environment beyond the nuclear family, with complicated dyadic
relations and various parenting figures. The reference materials I have used concern
the Tagalog people living in the central and southern areas of the island of Luzon, but
basically these findings will also apply to the group called lowland Christians.

The Family Circle Around the Child

In the Philippines, the nuclear family is the basic form of household. A closer view of the
people in daily life, however, shows that the nuclear family is not a closed, isolated unit
consisting of only the married couple and their unmarried children. It has frequent and
intimate interactions with the families living nearby. It is not unusual to find elderly
parents or elderly unmarried siblings of the household’s head still living together in the
same household.

Even newlywed couples frequently live in the home of the parents of either the husband
or the wife. They build a new house after one or two children are born, but even then
they prefer to build the house within the compound of the parent’s house or in the same
neighborhood. There are no set rules about whether they live with the husband’s
parents or the wife’s parents. Statistics show that the Bisayan and Bikol groups tend to
choose the wife’s family and the Tagalog and Ilocano groups the husband’s family. In
either case, however, the choice seems to depend basically on which family offers
better economic conditions, such as wealth, amount of agricultural land, housing, or job
opportunities. No clear-cut differences can be observed between men and women, as
the parents’ estate is divided equally among brothers and sisters.

Besides children continuing to live in the parents’ house or in the same compound after
marriage, there are many instances of relatives living on adjoining or nearby land. When
relatives live in the same neighborhood or group together in one place, there is frequent
visiting and sharing of food among them. According to Murray (1973), a local kin group
is formed in such a case. Three relationships are formed simultaneously in this group:
magkamag-anak (consanguineal or affinal relations), magkapitbahay (neighboring
relations). These combine to form organic relationship that surpasses the nuclear
family, which Murray says is “somewhat like a unilineal group.” To quote from his report:
“Among the Northern Tagalog as found in San Isidro, Nueva Ecija, there are corporate
local kin groups composed of family-households. There is no Tagalog term for such
groups, but residents recognize their existence… Local kin groups are the supra familial
units within which all important day-to-day, face-to-face interaction occurs (particularly
for the very old and the very young)… Although component nuclear-family households
are distinguishable from one another in terms of separate roofs, interaction pattern
makes this distinction less clear at all phases of the nuclear family’s development…
Moreover, since the children born to family-households belonging to such a local kin
group tend at marriage to remain in the group, the local kin group persists over time. In
this it is somewhat like a unilineal group” (pp.28, 34–35).

While Murray (1973) states that neighbors who do not have consanguineal or affinal
relations are not members of this local kin group (p32), he recognizes the basis of this
group as locality rather than descent (p30). Takahashi (1972), who conducted a survey
in Bulacan in central Luzon, points out the importance to daily life of a neighboring
household group, which is formed on the basis of kinship relations but also includes
non-kin neighbors.

Although all the people in the barrio have a friendly relationship, they do not have equal
relations with everyone in the community. There is a much closer relationship in every
aspect of daily living among those who live within shouting distance of each other.
These groups of people who have face-to-face contacts are called kapitbahay
(neighbors). To use the words of a friend who lives in Baliwag town, kapitbahay are
those living within a stone’s throw.

In the case of my village, in various places in the paddy fields, there are several slightly
raised plots of land, called pulo (meaning ‘island’), surrounded by trees or bamboo
forests where several to ten odd houses are grouped together. Not all the people living
in one pulo are consanguineal nor affinal relatives, but the relationship in each group is
a very close one. Members of the kapitbahay spend their time sitting together and
chatting day and night and it is also the kapitbahay members who help in the search for
a lost carabao (water buffalo). When there was a funeral, the people who were
providing the utmost assistance, such as in the kitchen, were kapitbahay members. It is
also among the kapitbahay members that the custom of the housewife borrowing food
and daily living commodities from friends and neighbors (humingi) is most frequently
observed. This kapitbahay is truly a primary group supported by feelings of solidarity
and unity, and it is where social regulations in daily living are strongest” (p.166).

It is questionable whether the group that Murray calls the local kin group and Takahashi
calls the neighboring household group is really a social group. This group has no
membership rules or fixed boundaries and the way it is formed differs according to the
situation. It may be more appropriate to call this, as Kaut (1965) does, a social grouping
or a family circle of interwoving dyadic relations. Furthermore, the kind of family group
having a clearly delineated framework, as reported by Murray and Takahashi, does not
exist in every Tagalog region. However, since this report does not aim to present a
study of Filipino social structure of analytical concepts, I only wish to point out and
stress the fact that the nuclear family in this case is not a closed and isolated unit but
part of a more open relationship. Some researchers point to the existence of the
extended family as a group that transcends the nuclear family and its significant role in
child rearing practices.

Features of Child Rearing

A newlywed couple will rarely live in isolation among complete strangers. They will
usually live close to the parents of either the husband or wife, within the same house or
in a small house built near the parents’ house. They will begin their new life together in
a place where parents, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters, and cousins are grouped
together. They will also associate with families living in the neighborhood practically as
though they were relatives, even if they are not consanguineally or affinally related.
When one considers the growing-up process of Filipino children within this network of
close human relations, the following can be pointed out as effects of the surrounding
environment.

First of all, the presence of many parenting figures, or surrogates for the mother and
father, such as grandparents, uncles and aunts, and older cousins, has the most
significance. The responsibility for child rearing does not rest solely on the child’s
parents. “As soon as the child can be carried outside the house, he generally passes
from one hand to another—fondled, kissed, pinched and caressed by almost everyone”.
There is always someone close at hand to take care of the child when the mother has to
go to work or leave the house on some errand.

Women are extremely active in Filipino society, in politics, economics, administration,

education, and many other fields, and the status of women is generally high. Although
the fact that society has a climate that can accept the social activity of women is a very
important background factor. The fact that women can easily find someone to take over
their child rearing and housework is also a major factor. Wealthy and middle-class
families in the cities employ housemaids at low wages; but when women of the general
populace, or women living in rural villages or smaller cities go out to work in retail
business or as civil servants or teachers or when they go out to do farm work with their
husbands, even they can easily find someone (such as the children’s grandparents or
an uncle or aunt) to take care of their children.

If a daughter becomes an unwed mother or is separated from her husband, the

grandparents will become parent surrogates for the child or an uncle may become a
father surrogate. Even if the family is angry at the daughter and will not speak to her,
the child is fully accepted into the family and treated warmly.

The second characteristic of the child’s socialization process in the Philippines is that
the child is taken care of for a long period of time, owing to the fact that, as seen in the
primary characteristic, there are many adults or elderly people who can become
parenting figures. Even when the next child is born and the mother’s attention is
focused on the newborn baby, there is no lack of parenting figures to take care of the
older child and therefore no need for the child to become independent immediately. If
the child cannot carry out such activities as bathing, dressing, or cleansing after
elimination independently, there is always someone nearby to help. Even when the child
can do those things unaided, it is not unusual for someone to help anyway.
Furthermore, when the child has matured to a certain degree, he or she will have to look
after younger brothers and sisters, and cousins in the same way. In general, there are
no rules or requirements in the Philippines regarding what the child must be able to do
at a certain age. “Maturation is a leisurely process, not to be accelerated by parental
encouragement or too deliberate training. The child will eventually come around to it
when he understands”. It is neither unusual nor embarrassing for one child to be unable
to do at the age of four what another can do at the age of two. Furthermore, it is strongly
believed that the longer the parents sleep with the child, the longer the child feels
affection for the parents and family after growing up and the longer the child stays close
to the family. Therefore, the child is not trained to sleep alone. The third characteristic is
that the child has very little stress or feelings of frustration, because there were many
parent surrogates to satisfy his or her desires. Even if the child’s parents do not satisfy
his desires, someone he can select from among the close relationships, such as the
grandparents, uncles, or aunts, will realize his wishes. When the mother ignores or
refuses to indulge the child’s wishes, it will not be such a great psychological strain on
the child. Even if the child has feelings of sorrow, anger, or rebellion, such feelings are
temporary and never long lasting, and there will be no accumulation of great stress that
may change the child’s character. It is probably because there is so little stress of this
kind that the so-called juvenile delinquency in the Philippines is rarely associated with
great violence.

Observing the socialization process of the child in the Philippines, the characteristics
may be described, in a word, as extremely dependent. The concept of dependency has
negative connotations, such as mental or physical weakness, but in the Philippines, it
does not have a negative meaning. Dependency must be understood as a relationship
that begins with the recognized relationship that the child forms with the adults in the
environment and eventually extends into a mutually dependent, cooperative relationship
in which all the members depend on each other and help each other. At least among
family members, neighbors, friends, and acquaintances, living in a relationship of
mutual cooperation and assistance is an important social philosophy that does not
change, no matter what age one attains, and is considered an ideal way of social life. In
their discussion of dependency and the child’s seeking of nurturance, which extends
into habitual succoring adults. The child seeks help even when he does not need it as a
bid for attention and affection. If he picks the right time, he gets it. If not, the situation is
plain enough or he is there, he is called on to help. He is not so much an individual as
he is a part of a family whose older members are his support and whose younger
members are his responsibility. Responsibilities are not pushed on him when he
reaches a certain age. Instead he grows into them, gaining the necessary skills as he
participates in the day-to-day activities of the family.

From childhood he learns to enjoy being taken care of and realizes that he can make
others happy by being dependent on them. There is no age when a child is expected to
leave home or an age when he is expected to become fully self-reliant.

Conditions of A Good Child

The fact that the child has multiple choices besides the parents in receiving love and
protection has many positive aspects. The child, however, does not receive such favors
one-sidedly. The child also has to carry out the role and behavior that the adults in his
environment expect of him.

In the Philippines, a child is a blessing from God and is considered proof that the family
is living in the grace of God. At the same time, for the parents, the child is a form of
investment and security in old age. For this reason it is generally believed that the
greater the number of children and the larger the family, the happier the family will be.
The government is conducting various family planning campaigns to reduce the annual
population growth rate, which is close to three percent, but with very little effect. Not
because Roman Catholic doctrine forbids it (the people are rarely conscious of the fact
that it is forbidden) but because of the strong desire to have many children. Even if the
wife attends lectures on family planning and takes an interest in birth control, it may be
difficult to practice because the husband, who thinks many children to be proof of
manliness, might be uncooperative or the parents, who believe a large family ideal,
might be against it. The average number of children born alive per couple is presently
about 5.4 (1970 census). The figure is lower in Metro Manila and other urban areas and
higher in rural areas. It is not unusual to find couples with more than ten children.

The many children born in this environment have various important roles to play in
family life according to their stage of maturation. When the child is still a baby, he is the
center of the love and attention of the parents and other adults and is expected to
provide laughter and joy through his smile and gestures. Weaning and toilet training are
not as forced or early as in the United States or Japan and have even been described
as permissive, but it is not important in the child’s development that he become able to
take care of himself. Rather, it is considered more important that the child learns to
respond actively to the people surrounding him and to communicate intimately with
them. Eventually, the child must take care of younger brothers and sisters and carry out
such daily tasks as drawing water. Boys must eventually help with their father’s work
and look after domestic animals and girls must help their mothers with housework and
shopping.
In the Philippines, the world of adults and the world of children are not separated and
the children assume certain roles in the family that they are capable of assuming in
accordance with their ages. The children learn as they help the adults in their work, by
imitating what they observe or by receiving specific training. There are therefore very
few tasks or activities from which the adults will exclude the children. Even at bedtime,
there is no set time beyond which the children are not allowed to stay awake and they
are allowed to stay up late with the adults if they wish to do so. However, the children
are usually exhausted by the day’s activities and will go to sleep before the adults. Even
if a separation into the world of adults and the world of children were possible, in the
Philippines the two worlds would exist in a relationship of interaction, super imposed
over each other.

The child’s growth, therefore, is not a process in which the child becomes an adult
through a sequence of rites of passage, receiving a clear-cut status in each stage of
development. It is, rather, one in which the child, with the exception of certain rites—
such as entering elementary school or Confirmation—assumes the world of adults little
by little in accordance with his physical growth and gradually enters the adult world. At
the same time, he learns the values and behavior patterns of the adults.

Returning to a previous point of discussion, in a life style in which the families of

relatives live close to one another and friendly relations are maintained with neighbors
who are not relatives, there are many parent surrogates but there are at the same time
a great number of children. The child has many choices regarding parenting figures, but
at the same time the child is not the sole focus of the love and attention of each adult or
elderly person. There are always several competitors, such as siblings close in age or
cousins of the same age. In such complex relationships, even a child cannot always
demand attention or depend unconditionally on the people in his environment:

Very early the child learns to relate at many different levels to several different adults
and, if necessary, learns to manipulate situations, to weave his way through to get his
own specific needs met, and his uniqueness acknowledged. He has to find a place of
his own in this many people environment, or else his value may not be recognized. If
one considers the complexity of the combinations of interrelationships involved; one
cannot but marvel at how smoothly and rhythmically this machinery of the Filipino family
can operate in spite of all odds!

In order to fulfill one’s desires or objectives, one first of all must be accepted by others
and maintain close and friendly relations with them. “With many people living in a close
physical and social relationship, the handling of hostility is of crucial importance. A good
deal of emphasis is placed on the ability to avoid potentially angry situations”.
Therefore, as Lynch (1973) emphasizes, the building of “smooth interpersonal relations”
is indispensable for the realization of “social acceptance”, the most important motivating
factor in the behavior of the Filipinos.

Filipino children are indulged by many parenting figures during the early infant period,
but once they reach a certain developmental state, they are taught not to be self-
centered or to try and have their own way in everything, but to always be considerate of
other family members and all the other people in the environment. The child is
repeatedly told that other people have likes, dislikes, and desires just as he does and
that if a conflict of interest should arise, he should always be the one to give in to others.
The child thus learns at a relatively early stage to refrain from asserting his ego and that
he should not try to push his demands through the end. The child is also taught that
other people have different characters and personalities just as he has different tastes
and desires, and that he should be able to get along with all types of people. In order to
do this, he should be careful about his attitude and language so as not to anger, hurt, or
annoys the other party. Even when he feels uncomfortable or angry, he should not let
the other party detect it by letting it show in his facial expression. So he must smile
when the situation requires it even when he is not amused, and pretend to be calm even
when he feels violent rage. A rebellious attitude should be avoided more than anything
else and is strongly suppressed.
Thus, the social environment in which Filipino children grow up nips an aggressive
attitude in the bud and orients the child’s development and character formation toward
getting along and cooperating with others. In other words, respecting the emotions and
feelings of others, and suppressing one’s own anger or displeasure for the sake of
smooth interpersonal relations, is valued more than anything else. The child must learn
the art of sociability in his own way and play the role of the good child.

In concrete terms this means not only that the child must not argue or fight but also that
the child must avoid getting into tense situations that could lead to arguments or fights.
When the child loses his temper or raises his voice in anger, such behavior is regarded
as reflecting the bad character or disposition of the whole family. Even when the child is
angry, he must not talk back and must always remain cool and composed and assume
a friendly attitude. When he cannot do so, he can, for example, cry or use some other
peaceful method of expression to show the other party or the adults in the environment
how hurt or angry he is and thus try to receive their protection.

Expansion and Manipulation of Dyadic Relations

The diverse human relations that surround the child are not limited to relatives and
acquaintances living in the same grounds or neighborhood. As the next baby is born
and the child retreats from the center of attraction, the circle of attention with which he
has frequent contacts will grow. He will gradually assume closer contacts with
playmates, people in the same village (kababaryo), relatives living in other areas,
godparents with whom he will associate through the compadre system, and so forth.

When one meets Filipino people, one is immediately struck by the strength of their
family bonds and by the great number of relatives they seem to have. In various daily-
life situations it is not unusual to be introduced to one person after another and to find
that they are related. In the Philippines, the third cousins of the ego and the spouse, that
is, the descendants of the siblings of the great-grandparents are usually recognized as
relatives. In some instances the fourth or even more remote cousins are recognized as
relatives. Since the average nuclear family size is seven to eight members, the number
of relatives’ swells to tremendous proportions by geometric progression. According to
the calculations of one sociologist, one Filipino person will have three hundred relatives
during his lifetime, even by the most modest estimates.

In actual daily life, however, it is impossible to maintain equally close relations with such
a great number of relatives. The actual number with whom one can associate and
maintain close and frequent contacts will be much smaller. The relatives with whom one
has intimate relations are not necessarily determined by set rules, such as the degree of
consanguinity, but by one’s personal tastes and voluntary selection, based on how well
one gets along with them, proximity of location, economic merit, and so forth. This
creates what is known in social anthropology as a “personal kindred.” The personal
kindred is a social category consisting of an individual’s circle of relatives or that range
of a person’s relatives accorded special cultural recognition. It is not a clearly delineated
group, such as a lineage of descendants of a particular ancestor, but is an ego centered
circle of consanguineal (and affinal) relatives. The dyadic relationship of ego with each
relative is not fixed and unchanging. When the individual is on bad terms with a relative,
he stops associating with him regardless of the degree of consanguinity, while a distant
relative becomes an important member of the circle if he lives nearby and is on friendly
terms.
The kindred of the parents or the circle of relatives plays an extremely important role in
the growing up and socialization of the child. Kaut (1965) calls this form of grouping that
occurs freely, according to the will and tastes of the individual, the “principle of
contingency” and explains it as follows:

“It is my hypothesis that social groupings—not social groups in the sense defined above
—are constantly changing their boundaries and dimensions in Tagalog society as
successful, unsuccessful, and accidental activation of modes of interaction create,
strengthen, or weaken social bonds of obligation. Kinship and descent act mostly as
points of departure rather than eliminating strictures”.

Another important factor in the development and social relations of the Filipino child is
the ritual kinship called the compadre system. This is a system of establishing ritual
parent-child relations as godparent-godchild through the baptism ceremony of the
Roman Catholic religion. When a child is to be baptized, the parents ask Catholic
relatives or friends to become the child’s godparents, regardless of marital status, since
it is not required that godparents be married. I have been asked by friends on several
occasions to become godparent, even though they know I’m not a Catholic.

In the Philippines, the religious significance of establishing a ritual parent is to have

someone to assume the role of guardian, to provide guidance so that the child will grow
up to be a devout Catholic. The godchild (inaanak) is supposed to show the godfather
(ninong) and godmother (ninang) the same respect and obedience that he must show to
his parents, and the godparents are expected to provide guidance and care, particularly
in matters of religion. Actually, however, secular and social responsibilities seem to
outweigh religious duties. For example, the godparents are expected to buy the
godchild clothes for the baptism and to provide remuneration to the church and other
congratulatory gifts. The godparents also continue to give gifts, such as at Christmas,
and continue to look after the child in various ways.

The compadre system was established for the better development of the child and it
plays a certain role, but actually it is the relationship between the godparents and the
biological parents, centering on the child that is more important. The compadre system
functions as a way of making more formal bond of a close friendship, or of drawing
distant relatives closer together, in other words, of making certain close relations even
closer. The godparents and biological parents call each other kumpare, in the case of
men, and kumare, in the case of women, and maintain an extremely close association
in various aspects of daily life. They constantly provide mutual assistance, such as
helping each other in farm work, lending each other commodities, and sharing food.
When a compadre relationship is formed between two families of different socio-
economic statuses, it works to establish or strengthen the so-called patron-client
relationship.
Furthermore, although their social significance is not as great as that of the godparents
at the time of baptism, the sponsors or witnesses at the confirmation and wedding
ceremonies also form ritual parent-child relations with the child and are also called
ninong, ninang, kumpare, and kumare. The godparents at the baptism are not restricted
to one couple, and other “godparent” figures may be chosen separately for the
confirmation and wedding. The child thus has not only the relatives and neighbors but
also the godparents in the compadre system with whom he has close relationships. The
parents will be able to have at least three sets of “godparents” for one child (at baptism,
confirmation and wedding) and can choose different sets of “godparents” for each child,
and will thus be able to form ritual kindred relations with a large number of people.
These ritual kinsfolk combine with the actual relatives, who are numerous to begin with,
to make kindred relations in Filipino society unimaginably complex and intricate.
The socialization process of Filipino children growing up in such open, complicated and
diverse relationships may be summarized as a process of learning the art and behavior
patterns of maintaining, strengthening and extending these relationships. In the
Philippines, as compared with Japan, the formation of groups based on ba, that is, a
situational position in a given frame (see Nakane 1970), is not so strong, and the
individual’s personal kindred, or various circles or networks of people formed by dyadic
relations, have an important function in social life. As Lynch (1973) emphasizes:

“Every individual has a social universe which is distinctively his own, constantly
changing in size and content, its members playing various and often multiple role in this
regard. Each such role promises, in the abstract, more or less support to the central
figure, and is empowered to demand in return a greater or smaller share of his loyalty
and energies. One is surrounded at every moment, in other words, by people who are
potentially or in fact his allies, people he can count on to a greater or smaller degree”.

The importance of Filipino social life as well as the socialization process of children in
the Philippines therefore lies in the awareness of each person that he or she is situated
in interwoven diverse human relations, and particularly in the awareness that each
dyadic relation must be maintained always in good terms, so that the individual can
depend on it when the need arises. These relations are not fixed and unchanging once
they are established, and the bond may break naturally unless the social distance of the
two persons is constantly narrowed.

Such behavior patterns as pakikisama (concession, giving in, following the lead or
suggestion of others), euphemism, the use of go-betweens, and utang na loob (a debt
inside oneself) (sic) are indispensable methods of realizing “smooth interpersonal
relations.” For behavior that departs from these accepted norms, the concept of hiya
(the uncomfortable feeling that accompanies awareness of being in a socially
unacceptable position, or performing a socially unacceptable action) acts as an
inhibitory force.

Guide Question
1. What is the context, content, processes, and consequences of the socialization
of Filipino children?
 The Social Production of Indifference: Exploring the Symbolic
Roots of Western Democracy
By Michael Herzfeld

The Self and the State

Why do some people apparently become humorless automatons as soon as they are
placed behind a desk? Why do kindly friends and amiable neighbors become racists
and bigots when they discover, or (more accurately) decide, that others do not
“belong?” How does it come about that in societies justly famed for their hospitality and
warmth, we often encounter the pettiest forms of bureaucratic indifference to human
needs and sufferings, or that in democratic polities designed to benefit all citizens,
whole groups of people suffer from callous neglect?

These are the questions that cluster around the theme of this book. They may be
summarized more generally: how and why can political entities that celebrate the rights
of individuals and small groups so often seem cruelly selective in applying those rights?
Indifference to the plight of individuals and groups often coexists with democratic and
egalitarian ideals.

Indifference is the rejection of common humanity. It is the denial of identity, of selfhood.

We may thus suspect that its appearance in state structures arises from competing
claims over the right to construct the cultural, and social self. Who “makes” the self—the
citizen or the state? Can we even speak of “the state,” or is that entity in turn a construct
deployed in certain manipulative individuals to legitimize their authority?

In this book, I propose to focus on representations of the instruments of state control,

and more particularly on the kinds of offices and agencies that are lumped together
under the generic heading of “national bureaucracy.” Most studies of bureaucracy look
at how they function. In so doing, they address the success or failure of particular
bureaucracies in the terms of bureaucracy itself: service of citizens’s needs, immunity to
patronage, efficiency. Moreover, it is clear that in some states, bureaucrats have a
relatively high degree of input into policy-making (Aberbach, Putnam, and Rockman
1981; Diamant 1989). It is no part of my purpose to dispute the value of these goal, on
the contrary, I proceed from a fundamental puzzlement: how does it come about that
repression at every level from that of the totalitarian state to the petty tyrant behind a
desk can call upon the same idiom of representation, the same broad definition of the
person, the same evocative symbols, as those enshrined in the most indisputably
democratic practices? To speak of anomie or dysfunction is a description, not an
explanation.

The term “Western” in the subtitle is intentionally ironic. It enshrines a stereotype. The
various countries lumped together under the rubric of “the West” conventionally
celebrate certain features that separate them from the rest of the world: democracy,
rational government, scientific and technological inventiveness, individualism, certain
ethical and cultural commitments. One does not have to take all these claims at face
value in order to appreciate how important they have been in shaping a sense of
common culture for centuries. “The West” is a symbol of shared identity.

Behind the mask of commonality, however, appear enormously different legal regimes.
Anglo-Saxon liberalism and German neo-Kantian authoritarianism, for example, may
have radically opposed consequences, even though both lay claim to reason grounded
in nature (Pollis 1987: 587–588; Bottomley and Lechte 1990: 60). “The West” acquires a
variety of meanings in the hands of different actors and in response to varied
international models. But that is just the irony of its predicament, and it gives us the
opening that our exploration requires. The idea of a coherent, unified rationality is
neither coherent nor unified in itself. I do not intend to show here what is “Western” and
what is not. That is the language of absolute identities—the conceptual idiom that I have
set out to criticize. Instead, I shall attempt to show when, why, and how social and
political actors manage to invest such suppositious entities as “the West” with
compelling significance in everyday life.

Calling oneself “Western” is a question of identity, and the bureaucratic management of

identity—personal, social, and national—is what this book is about. Nationalist
ideologies usually lay claim to some kind of constructed “national character.” Their
bureaucracies have the task of calibrating personal and local identity to this construct.
Identity is at the heart of all anthropological inquiry, and an anthropological approach to
national identity is well equipped to explore the relationship between national identity
and more localized models of social and cultural being.

Bureaucracy is one of those phenomena people only notice when it appears to violate
its own alleged ideals, usually those concerning a person’s place in the social scheme
of things. Consequently, in most industrial democracies—where the state is supposed
to be a respecter of persons—people rail in quite predictable ways against the evils of
bureaucracy. It does not matter that their outrage is often unjustified; what counts is
their ability to draw on a predictable image of malfunction. If one could not grumble
about “bureaucracy,” bureaucracy itself could not easily exist: both bureaucracy and the
stereotypical complaints about it are parts of a larger universe that we might call, quite
simply, the ideology and practice of accountability.

The conventions that govern talk about bureaucracy are very much like the equally
conventional habit of groaning at puns. In both cases, there is a play on the discrepancy
between formal or anticipated properties (precisely defined rights in the case of
bureaucracy, an exact correspondence between words and meaning in the case of
puns) and actual experience (the violation of personal autonomy in bureaucracy, the
disruption of everyday semantics in puns). In actual practice, the charges against
bureaucracy may be quite unfair, and listeners may find puns revealing and funny. But
comic dismay is expected in both cases, and in both it must be freely given. The
response has nothing to do with personal belief. It has everything to do with convention.

This is crucial to understanding bureaucracy as a social phenomenon. The fact that

people have stereotypical expectations of bureaucratic unfairness offsets their sense of
personal failure: there is safety in numbers, in being reassured that everyone knows all
about bureaucrats. Rejecting the hateful formalism of bureaucracy is itself a
conventional, formal act, and identifies areas of tension between official norms and
more localized social values. Representations of bureaucratic evil are comforting
precisely because, like the symbols studied by the ethnographers of small-scale
societies, they are collective.

Not all bureaucratic encounters are dismal; for some lucky individuals, the system works
every time. But their good fortune then raises a problem for the practice of social
relations. In cultures that value individualism and entrepreneurship, failures to get what
one wants suggest moral deficiency and demand self justification. In the industrialized
societies of Western Europe and North America, no less than in remote villages in
Greece or Italy, people find it necessary to explain away their inability to deal effectively
with the bureaucracy. Everyone, it seems, has a bureaucratic horror story to tell, and
few will challenge the conventions such stories demand. Hearers know that they will
soon want to use the same stereotypical images in turn.

Clients are not the only people who tell such stories. Bureaucrats too, often seek means
of exonerating themselves from blame. “Buck-passing,” which clients recognize as a
symptom of some alleged bureaucratic mentality, is in fact part of the same discourse of
accountability, personhood, and superior force. While disgruntled clients blame
bureaucrats, the latter blame “the system,” excessively complicated laws, their
immediate or more distant superiors, “the government.” While people often act as
though clients and bureaucrats were separate classes of human beings, separated by
some Manichean division of good from evil, they are demonstrably participants in a
common symbolic struggle, using the same weapons, guided by the same conventions.
Bureaucrats are citizens too; and, as one ethnographer of public policy management
has observed, “the most basic goal of any bureaucrat or bureaucracy is not rational
efficiency, but individual and organizational survival” (Britan 1981: 11). While some
social scientists (such as Goffman 1959; Handelman 1976; Schwartzman1989) have
focused on the practical devices with which clients and bureaucrats negotiate with each
other, there has been little discussion of the role in such interactions of the conventions
of explanation, and especially of attacks on “the system.” This is the theme of secular
theodicy.

Explaining the Evils of Bureaucracy

The concept of theodicy as I use it here is derived from Weber. Weber was interested in
the various ways in which religious systems sought to explain the persistence of evil in a
divinely ordered world. We need not take time here to consider his comparison of
several major religious traditions, but it is worth noting that he linked the urgent need for
theodicy to the idea of transcendence, the idea that a moral principle, or a deity, could
transcend the specifics of time and place. In some religious systems, notably
Christianity, this might take the form of salvation. The secular equivalent of salvation is
the idea of a patriotic and democratic community, one that tolerates neither graft nor
oppression.
European nationalism resembles religion in that both claim transcendent status. This
might seem not to apply to nationalism whose frame of reference is a specific
geographical and historical space. Nationalisms all claim transcendence, however, in
two important senses. First, internally they claim to transcend individual and local
differences, uniting all citizens in a single, unitary identity. Second, the forms of most
European (and many other) nationalisms transcend even their own national concerns, in
that the principle of national identity is considered to underlie and infuse the particulars
of nation and country. Gellner’s (1986: 124) claim that there is nothing particularly
interesting or different about specific nationalisms is less an analytic observation than a
somewhat backhanded voicing of the ideology itself.

Religious theodicy asks how, if there is a truly universal deity, evil can exist in so many
nooks and crannies of daily experience? Weber (1963: 138–139) links the answer to
this question directly to that of transcendence: “the more the development [of religion]
tends toward the conception of a transcendental unitary god who is universal, the more
there arises the problem of how the extraordinary power of such a god may be
reconciled with the imperfection of the world that he has created and rules over.”

It is not too fanciful, I suggest, to compare this problem with that faced by the members
of many modern nation-states. In the most promising beginnings of independence may
lie the seeds of a horrendous tyranny; in laws promulgated by the most benign
democracies lurks the possibility of bureaucratic repression. Not all risargimenti turned
into Fascism, not all Enlightenment philosophies led to concentration camp
administrations; but in even the most liberal national democracies the bureaucratic
capacity for petty tyranny remains a scandal of perception, if not of fact.

The explanation, I shall argue, lies in the confusion of expressive form with practical
meaning: symbols of hope may always become instruments of despair. Weber, who
clearly recognized this problem, was intensely ambivalent toward bureaucracy: a
necessity for the securing of various practical freedoms, it also threatened to become a
rigid “iron cage” (see Mouzelis 1968: 20–21).

For ordinary people, then, including bureaucrats bewildered by the apparent

ineluctability of forces that compel them to deny their own moral judgment, some sort of
explanation is needed. Such explanations are not necessarily believed by those to
whom they are offered. But it is not at all clear that belief is the issue.

Where Weber posits theodicy as a way of propping up belief against the evidence of a
flawed world, I suggest instead that secular theodicy, at least, serves a more pragmatic
goal. It provides people with social means of coping with disappointment. The fact that
others do not always challenge even the most absurd attempt at explaining failure does
not prove them gullible. It may instead be the evidence of a very practical orientation,
one that refuses to undermine the conventions of self-justification because virtually
everyone, as I noted above, may need to draw on them in the course of a lifetime.

This helps us to dispose of the contrast that is often posited between the passive
“fatalism” of oriental peoples and the action orientation of the West—a first step toward
conceptually unravelling “the West” itself. Weber (1976) suggests that Calvinism, with
its doctrine of predestination, was the crucial stepping-stone in the evolution from a
fatalistic to an activist orientation: effort in the material world to confirm one’s status as a
member of the elect replaced the more contemplative acceptance of fate that allegedly
characterized oriental and primitive religions. Weber’s discussion of the role of this
doctrine in the West thus did not prevent him from treating the East as excluded from
the march toward rational government. He made it clear, moreover, that nationalistic
self satisfaction had its roots in the idea that the elect might know themselves to be
predestined for greatness (Weber 1976: 166).

This mode of explanation is still very popular in attempts to compare the industrialized
West with other parts of the world. It informs, for example, a recent account of the
persistence of patronage and resignation to official dictates among Middle Eastern
populations (Presthus 1973). We shall discover, however, that resignation is a poor
gloss on actual social practice: the invocation of fate can serve highly calculating ends.
The citizen of an industrialized state who complains of bad luck in drawing an intolerant
judge or tax official is not responding at all differently from the Turk of Greek who,
having tried every possible avenue, must now face derision at home, at work, or in the
neighborhood, and seeks to minimize this social damage. In Weber’s analysis, the use
of predestination is effectively retrospective: once people had demonstrably succeeded
in their industry (in both senses of that word), their heavenly destination would be plain
for all to see. Their character was a part of their fate, to be revealed in the course of
events throughout which they had continually to keep up the struggle for success. As
we shall see, such eminently practical concerns are not in any sense the exclusive
prerogative of northern European Protestants.

Thus, what marks off the condition of modernity is not doctrinal impulse, but increasing
centralization and scale. The symbolic values that are activated, however, are
sometimes remarkably consistent from one level of social integration to the next. The
symbolic roots of Western bureaucracy are not to be sought, in the first instance, in the
official forms of bureaucracy itself, although significant traces may be discovered there.
They subsist above all in popular reactions to bureaucracy—in the ways in which
ordinary people actually manage and conceptualize bureaucratic relations.

There are clearly differences in the efficiency and level of integration of bureaucracy
among different countries. But to attribute these differences to variations in national
character or still more generically to a contrast between oriental and accidental
personality types, is simply a vicarious fatalism in its own right an assertion, never
demonstrated but often taken on trust, that “they” cannot escape the constraints of
culture and society to the extent that “individualists” are supposedly able to do in the
West. Presthus (1973: 54) portrays the Middle East in these terms: “Inshalla,’ the belief
that God’s will determines the course of human events, fosters a somewhat negative
attitude to self-aid and innovation.” Culture, no less than biology (and perhaps implicitly
because of it), is seen as destiny.

And yet that mark of differentiation is itself part of the same logic and symbolism as that
of (for example) the supposedly backward peasants of the non-industrialized
Mediterranean lands. The latter may in fact also treat their successes as a consequence
of character, saying in effect that one is predestined to be a certain type of person. In
this sense, their position is remarkably close to that of Weber’s Calvinists. They, too, are
entrepreneurs. The one clear contrast lies in the far more massive scale at which
collective action is possible in industrialized countries. The idea that fate subsumes
character is elevated, in the modern nations to a much more broadly inclusive level,
giving rise to the grim predestinations of national character and destiny.

To the extent that a Middle Eastern cultural attitude of the kind Presthus describes really
exists, it is no more usefully treated as a resignation to the inevitable than Calvinist
notions of predestination. Like these, it is a theodicy, useful for explaining away one’s
own misfortunes or the successes of one’s competitors. If Middle Eastern attitudes do
exhibit generic divergences from the values of post-Reformation northern Europe, these
must be seen as a consequence rather than a cause of international inequalities. Such
cultural contrasts, so judgmental in their implications and so easily evoked at the level of
national entities, also subsist at more local levels, particularly between a capital city and
its provinces. They spring from real experience, and from the resulting conviction that
since those in authority cannot be trusted, one must seek more intimate bases of
reliance. If the state has proved unable to fashion a perfect national universe, people
have grounds for seeking self-exonerating explanations of their own failures to deal with
bureaucratic mismanagement.

The concept of a secular theodicy is part of a larger argument in which I propose to treat
nation-state bureaucracy as directly analogous to the ritual system of a religion. Both
are founded on the principle of identity: the elect as an exclusive community,whose
members’ individual sins cannot undermine the ultimate perfection of the ideal they all
share. Both posit a direct identification between the community of believers and the
unity of that ideal. This is what Weber (1963: 50) meant when he claimed that “[i]t was
Moses’ great achievement to find a compromise solution of... class conflicts... and to
organize the Israelite confederacy by means of an integral national god.” We may view
the continual reaffirmation of transcendent identity as an effect of some bureaucratic
labor. The labor itself is highly ritualistic: forms, symbols, texts, sanctions, obeisance. If
some bureaucrats fail to do their jobs wisely or fairly, it does not invalidate the meanings
of these formal accoutrements, although it may undercut the authority of particular
officials—and it certainly caIls for a comprehensive theodicy. Just as anticlericalism
often coexists with deep religiosity (Herzfeld 1985: 242–247), those Greeks (for
example) whose experience of bureaucracy leads them to exclaim, “We have no state
(dhen ekhoume kratos)!” are thereby affirming their desire for precisely such a source of
justice in their lives.

Symbolism and the State

Much has been written by anthropologists about the symbolic aspects of the modern
nation-state (for example, Binns 197–1980; Cohen 1974; Gajek 1990; Handler 1985;
Kligman 1981; Linke 1985, 1986; Lōfgren 1989), and I make no claim to novelty in
emphasizing the symbolic aspects of government power. Such writings have been
valuable in showing that symbols can be emotionally manipulated for political purposes.
The danger with this approach, which derives from Durkheim’s separation of the sacred
from the profane, is that it often treats that distinction in highly literal, one might say
ecclesiastical, terms. As Douglas (1986: 97) notes, that is an unhelpful development, for
it disregards the ways in which highly charged symbols pervade areas of everyday.
Elsewhere, I discuss this usage in the context of historic conservation and its
bureaucratic management in a Cretan town (Herzfeld 1991), experience that are not
obviously political—sacralized intrusions into profane social space.

Unobtrusive symbols, however, are often the most potent of all. Their connections with
received ideas about self and body, family and foes, give them unusual potential for
manipulation. They seem natural and obvious. When drawn from physical nature, they
exemplify what Douglas (1970), emphasizing their surreptitious force, has called
“natural symbols.” These include race, blood, and kinship. For better or for worse, such
ideas have served state ideologies well. Weber (1963: 90) pointed out that
bureaucracies have tolerated and even exploited popular religion to induce cohesion
and obedience. The social symbolism of family and local groups, and especially the
highly sacralized rhetoric of blood, has a similar utility.

In the earlier chapters, I shall provide more details about the specific forms of the
symbols that nationalism shares with local level societies. The most widespread of
these forms is the imagery of blood as the common substance, or essence, conferring
common identity. Like all symbols, this complex can take on a wide variety of meanings,
some of which may diverge radically. Indeed, symbolic ambiguity is central to my
argument. Because some symbols have proved extremely durable, it is often assumed
that their meanings are constant. Nothing could be further from the truth. While blood
may become the basis of differentiation in general, for example, the question of whom it
includes and excludes is the most important issue here. It obviously makes a great deal
of difference whether one remarks of an in-law that the latter is “not a blood relative,” of
an enemy state that “we shall shed their blood in revenge for ours,” or of an ethnic
minority that “we should not mix their blood with ours.” These are widely separated
levels. Even at the same level, however, the symbol of blood can be used both to
include and to exclude. It is a device of extraordinary affect and power.

Blood is the key metaphor in representations of kinship in Europe and elsewhere. Adam
Kuper (1988) has recently given us an astute account of the rise, in the nineteenth
century, of an “illusory” distinction between primitive societies based on blood and
kinship and modern ones based on the contract. This idea persists in the enduring
distinction between tribal anarchy and bureaucratic rationality. What is so extraordinary
here is that the metaphor of blood-kinship clearly suffuses the rhetoric of the state even
as the latter denies its relevance. While modernity is largely defined by a commitment to
rational management and immunity to family interest, the rhetoric of state is redolent
with kinship metaphors. Those who serve familial interests at the expense of larger,
communal ones are treated as though they were guilty of the political equivalent of
incest.

There are, of course, very sound practical reasons for the desire to eradicate favoritism
of any sort. My intention here is not to decry the intentions or the reasoning that underlie
such impulses. The danger to democratic institutions does not, I suggest, lie in critiques
of political or civic processes which is after all the stated aim of such institutions to
protect. That same aim, however, may be seriously subverted if we lose sight of the
metaphorical basis of much bureaucratic rationality. The familial and bodily symbols of
nationalism are not simply metaphors. They are powerful emotive magnets, and they
can be, and are, deployed by capricious officials and citizens. In the hands of totalitarian
regimes, they can become an instrument of mass suasion. For all the enormous
intellectual labor that has gone into the creation of a primitive “other,” the collective
bureaucratic self is cast in the very language and imagery that is conventionally
attributed to that other. A sense of paradox arises from pious objections to the alleged
“amoral familism” of Mediterranean or Latin American peasants, objections often raised
by their own governments, when official rhetoric still makes the family the moral core of
the citizen’s affective bond with the state.

This is not to say that such rhetoric indicates bad faith. To the contrary, it is presumably
based on the assumption that the family provides an easily understood model for the
loyalty and collective responsibility that citizens must feel toward the state. Just as
internal strife can disrupt a family to the point of dissolution, so civil war can arise from
various forms of political factionalism and subvert the most generous intentions of
officials at every level. But the rhetoric of kinship, which may provide a strong basis for
day-to-day solidarity when applied by disinterested officials, can also serve more
sinister aims—sinister, because they consist of the special interests that they purport to
deny. The rhetoric of “the common good” does not always serve the common good.

It is one of the goals of this book to show how and why this can happen. It is not my
intention to brand officialdom in general, or to investigate the psychological motives of
those in whom we recognize the worst of bureaucratic repression. Instead, I intend to
ask how it is possible for these people to wreak such widespread damage. I shall argue
that they draw on resources that are common to the symbolism of the Western nation-
states and to that of long established forms of social, cultural, and racial exclusion in
everyday life. Any symbolic form, removed from its original context and given new
meanings by official fiat, may easily relapse into something akin to its previous
significance. It also provides members of the public with a means of conceptualizing
their own disappointments and humiliations, and with an argument that, under some
circumstances, may lead them to acquiesce in the humiliation of others—the social
production of indifference.

In the opening chapter, I offer an argument for treating the world of the bureaucratic
West within the same framework as the smaller-scale societies traditionally studied by
anthropologists. Mary Douglas, to whose comprehensive work on classification and
symbolism this book owes a great deal, has made a cogent case against overestimating
the importance of scale and sociocultural complexity in determining the relations
between institutions and the way people think (Douglas 1986: 21–30). Her argument
attacks the false dichotomy between primitive and modern modes of social organization,
and points out that most anthropologists today would reject the stereotype of a tribal
society forever mired in unchangeable tradition.
To her argument, however, I would add a further dimension: that of the historical
relationship between modern industrial societies and the local societies that they had to
unite within themselves in order to constitute themselves as nation-states. In that long
process of transformation, certain symbolic forms were earned forward. While their
meanings often changed, they have in many cases remained extremely volatile, liable to
manipulation and misprision in equal measure. Douglas treats the social basis of
identity, a theme to which we shall return in Chapter Three under the heading of
“iconicity,” without attending to the semantic slippage that has enabled seeming
continuities of symbolic form to conceal potentially disruptive ideological changes.
Earlier and modern societies, or national states and local communities, may not
consider their contexts of use or the historical processes of transformation that conjoin
them.

In Chapter Two, I attempt a more comprehensive delineation of indifference and its

relationship to systems of classification. In pursuit of this goal, I examine three studies
that all focus on change. One, an ethnographic account of a Portuguese fishing village
offers the sort of evolutionary view of encroaching modernity that Douglas so rightly
rejects, although its author builds on her work to show connections between the
symbolism of a prebureaucratic social order and the new way of doing things. A similar
contradiction appears in the second study, an ethnographic account of peasant workers
in northern Italy, since the author of that study follows Weber’s pessimistic account of
the “disenchantment” of the modern world—a common sociological conceit in the early
years of the twentieth century (see Nisbet 1973). In the Italian study however, nuanced
historical analysis allows us to see the source of the continuities: they are not just formal
nor are they indicative of growing conceptual complexity, but they spring from changes
in the distribution of local power and the effects of outside forces. Finally, I turn to a very
recent comparative account of nationalism and exclusion in Sri Lanka and Australia.This
work, also a study of transformations, serves to focus attention on the fact that any
ideology, no matter how consistent its formal expression, may produce radically
divergent applications and interpretations.

This is crucially important, and is addressed more fully in Chapters Three and Four.
Chapter Three examines the formal properties of stereotypes, both those commonly
entertained about bureaucrats (the conventions of disdain) and those that appear to
guide bureaucrats’ own actions. In both cases, we find ourselves examining the use of
conventional images for what often turn out to be far from disinterested goals. Chapters
Three and Four examine the role of individuals and groups in taking seemingly
transparent symbols and investing them with different meanings, some of which are
derived from older or more local contexts than those ostensibly in force. In Chapter
Three the focus is explicitly on stereotypes, in Chapter Four on the forms of language in
general.

These chapters provoke questions about accountability. If people can shift the
meanings of institutionalized forms, who is to hold them responsible? Alternatively, what
devices can officials use to escape the constraints of accountability? And how do their
clients cope with a world in which officials can duck their responsibilities so easily?
These sets of strategies are mutually complementary, and belong to a shared symbolic
order. We are back to the issue of theodicy here. Moreover, we will find that officials’
dependence on a symbolism derived from local-level interests allows or compels them
—according to circumstances—to depart from received interpretations of the law. It is
not only the state that determines the bounds of the acceptable.

Chapter Five is an ethnographic demonstration of these points, particularly of the role of

secular theodicy. Theoretical arguments about the way national bureaucracies work
have not paid sufficient attention to the common ground on which bureaucratic practices
and popular attitudes rest. Yet it is clear that, in the absence of such common ground,
bureaucrats would feel no need to excuse their actions, nor would citizens have any
hope of reversing them. In looking closely at one particular set of popular attitudes,
then, I hope to say something of a more general nature about the relationship between
secular theodicy and official ideology. While there are special reasons for examining the
case of modern Greece in particular, the data presented in Chapter Five suggest the
possibility of comparable data elsewhere—data that would help us to explore further the
mutual dependence that we discover in institutional structures and individual strategies.
Finally, in the closing chapter, I offer some suggestions about where such a
comparative exercise might lead.

I do not claim that anthropology can or should supplant the insights of other disciplines
into bureaucratic practice, nor would I expect, from the vantage point that I have
sketched here, to provide a comprehensive account of bureaucratic process. I suggest,
however, that anthropological sensitivity to immediate context—ethnography—helps
shift the focus away from perspectives that are already, to some extent, determined by
the institutional structures they were set up to examine. I have chosen to call my subject
“Western” bureaucracy in part from a playful sense of irony: it is not at all clear what “the
West” is, even though its existence and its association with bureaucratic rationality are
often assumed. By making central such a problematical identity, I seek the sort of
productive discomfort that characterizes anthropology through continual realignments of
cultural and social comparison. This is an approach that offers a perspective on how
people contend with the forces that try to control who they are.

Guide Question
1. How is social indifference conditioned by state, political, and ideological interests
that underpin bureaucratic structures?