F. G. Bailey - Böcker

This book is about micro-politics: that kind of manoevre to control or avoid being controlled, to claim friendship or proclaim enmity, which takes place between people who know one another, and who must temper and adjust their actions towards one another because they share other activities. They are members of the one community and of the same organization, and this not only moderates their actions but also provides them with themes for use in the political arena.These justificatory themes and the irresolvable contradictions between them, and what is to be done when decisions cannot be made through rational procedures, is one subject of the book. The setting is the university world of committees and dons and administrators, but the inquiry is into general questions about organizational life. How are value contradictions resolved? Why are some matters discussed openly and others only before restricted audiences? Could we dispense with confidentiality and secrecy? What masks are used to make a person or a point of view persuasive?It is impossible and therefore wholly unwise to try to attempt to run such organizations in a wholly open and wholly rational fashion: without an appropriate measure of pretence and secrecy, even of hypocrisy, they cannot be made to work. At a basic level organizations require secrecy and confidentiality to run effectively.

Treasons, Stratagems, and Spoils is a sequel to the author's highly regarded Stratagems and Spoils.Treason, the new word in the title, indicates a heightened attention to morality?to ideas of duty and conscience?as a foil to rational calculations of advantage. By providing sets of propositions and questions that illuminate narratives of political events, this book helps anyone interested in struggles for power understand politics and political leaders in their own and in other cultures. The method can be used to make sense of power struggles in peasant villages, electoral and presidential maneuvering in the United States, the confusions of post-Soviet Eastern Europe, or Gandhi's morality deployed as a weapon to drive the British out of India.

Politics and Social Change: Orissa in 1959 offers a dual exploration of political dynamics and theoretical frameworks, reflecting both the region's evolving democratic practices and broader questions in social anthropology. This work builds on earlier studies conducted in Orissa between 1952 and 1955, which examined village-level power dynamics and conflicts between aboriginal Konds and Hindu settlers. In this volume, the author extends the inquiry to explore how the modern institutions of representative democracy interact with traditional forms of social and political organization in Orissa, providing a detailed case study of a society undergoing significant transformation.Set against the backdrop of political shifts in Orissa during 1959—a year marked by coalition-building and intense political maneuvering—the book captures the practical workings of parliamentary democracy in a diverse and stratified society. The unique political environment, characterized by alliances between the Congress party and smaller opposition groups, created an ideal context for observing the interplay of crisis and action, essential for social analysis. Additionally, the book critically examines how the methodologies of social anthropology, traditionally applied to smaller, isolated communities, can be adapted to analyze complex, multifaceted societies like Orissa, offering valuable insights for scholars of developing nations.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1970.

Politics and Social Change: Orissa in 1959 offers a dual exploration of political dynamics and theoretical frameworks, reflecting both the region's evolving democratic practices and broader questions in social anthropology. This work builds on earlier studies conducted in Orissa between 1952 and 1955, which examined village-level power dynamics and conflicts between aboriginal Konds and Hindu settlers. In this volume, the author extends the inquiry to explore how the modern institutions of representative democracy interact with traditional forms of social and political organization in Orissa, providing a detailed case study of a society undergoing significant transformation.Set against the backdrop of political shifts in Orissa during 1959—a year marked by coalition-building and intense political maneuvering—the book captures the practical workings of parliamentary democracy in a diverse and stratified society. The unique political environment, characterized by alliances between the Congress party and smaller opposition groups, created an ideal context for observing the interplay of crisis and action, essential for social analysis. Additionally, the book critically examines how the methodologies of social anthropology, traditionally applied to smaller, isolated communities, can be adapted to analyze complex, multifaceted societies like Orissa, offering valuable insights for scholars of developing nations.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1970.

In the village of Bisipara in eastern India, an anthropologist is witness to a drama when a young girl takes a fever and quickly dies. The villagers find Susilla's death suspicious and fear that she was possessed. Holding an investigation to find someone to blame, they carry out a hurried inquiry because the stage must be cleared for the annual celebration of the birthday of the god Sri Ramchandro. However, they eventually agree on the identity of a culprit an extract from him a large fine.F.G. Bailey, who was doing fieldwork in Bisipara in the 1950's, tells what it was like to be living there during this witch-hunt. As his narrative unfolds, we sense the very texture of the villagers lives—their caste relationships, occupations, kinship networks, and religious practices. We become familiar with the sites, sounds, and smells of Bisipara and with many of the village men and women and we learn their ideas of health and disease, their practice of medicine and burial customs, their ways of resolving discord. The author's commentary opens the curtain on a larger and more complicated scene. It portrays a community in the process of change: from one aspect, the offender is seen as a heroic individual who has broken from the chains of the past, a dissenter standing up for his rights against an entrenched and conservative establishment. From the opposite point of view he is a troublemaker who rejects the moral order on which society and the good life depend, a man who has trespassed outside his proper domain. From Bailey's neutral perspective, the offenders conduct threaten those in power; their determined and successful effort to punish him was an attempt to protect their own privileged position. In doing so, of course, they could say that they were defending the moral order of their community. Bailey moves easily between field notes and memory as he takes a new look at his first impressions and reflects on what he has learned. His elegant book is a powerful reassessment of anthropology's most enduring themes and debates which will imprint on the reader's mind a vivid image of a place and its people.

In the village of Bisipara in eastern India, an anthropologist is witness to a drama when a young girl takes a fever and quickly dies. The villagers find Susilla's death suspicious and fear that she was possessed. Holding an investigation to find someone to blame, they carry out a hurried inquiry because the stage must be cleared for the annual celebration of the birthday of the god Sri Ramchandro. However, they eventually agree on the identity of a culprit an extract from him a large fine.F.G. Bailey, who was doing fieldwork in Bisipara in the 1950's, tells what it was like to be living there during this witch-hunt. As his narrative unfolds, we sense the very texture of the villagers lives—their caste relationships, occupations, kinship networks, and religious practices. We become familiar with the sites, sounds, and smells of Bisipara and with many of the village men and women and we learn their ideas of health and disease, their practice of medicine and burial customs, their ways of resolving discord. The author's commentary opens the curtain on a larger and more complicated scene. It portrays a community in the process of change: from one aspect, the offender is seen as a heroic individual who has broken from the chains of the past, a dissenter standing up for his rights against an entrenched and conservative establishment. From the opposite point of view he is a troublemaker who rejects the moral order on which society and the good life depend, a man who has trespassed outside his proper domain. From Bailey's neutral perspective, the offenders conduct threaten those in power; their determined and successful effort to punish him was an attempt to protect their own privileged position. In doing so, of course, they could say that they were defending the moral order of their community. Bailey moves easily between field notes and memory as he takes a new look at his first impressions and reflects on what he has learned. His elegant book is a powerful reassessment of anthropology's most enduring themes and debates which will imprint on the reader's mind a vivid image of a place and its people.

This book explores the distinction between selflessness and self-interestedness, between acting for one's own advantage and acting, even when disadvantageous, for reasons of duty or conscience. This apparently straightforward contrast (exemplified in the difference between rational-choice models in economics and holistic models in social anthropology) is a source of confusion. This is so, F. G. Bailey argues, because people polarize and essentialize both actors and actions and uphold one or the other side of the contrast as concrete reality, as the truth about how the social world works. The task of The Saving Lie is to show that both versions are convenient fictions, with instrumental rather than ontological significance: they are not about truth but about power. At best they are tools that enable us to make sense of our experience; at the same time they are weapons we deploy to define situations and thus exercise control.Bailey says that both models fail the test of empiricism: they can be at once immensely elegant and quite remote from anyone's experience in the real world. And since both models are "saving lies," we should accept them as necessities, but only to the extent they are useful, and we should constantly remind ourselves of their limitations. The wrong course, according to Bailey, is to promote one model to the total exclusion of the other. Instead, we should take care to examine systematically the rhetoric used to promote these models not only in intellectual discourse but also in defining situations in everyday life.The book strongly and directly advocates a point of view that combines skepticism with a determination to anchor abstract argument in evidence. It is argumentative; it invites confrontation; yet it leaves many doors open for further thought.

Treasons, Stratagems, and Spoils is a sequel to the author's highly regarded Stratagems and Spoils.Treason, the new word in the title, indicates a heightened attention to morality?to ideas of duty and conscience?as a foil to rational calculations of advantage. By providing sets of propositions and questions that illuminate narratives of political events, this book helps anyone interested in struggles for power understand politics and political leaders in their own and in other cultures. The method can be used to make sense of power struggles in peasant villages, electoral and presidential maneuvering in the United States, the confusions of post-Soviet Eastern Europe, or Gandhi's morality deployed as a weapon to drive the British out of India.

This book is about micro-politics: that kind of manoevre to control or avoid being controlled, to claim friendship or proclaim enmity, which takes place between people who know one another, and who must temper and adjust their actions towards one another because they share other activities. They are members of the one community and of the same organization, and this not only moderates their actions but also provides them with themes for use in the political arena.These justificatory themes and the irresolvable contradictions between them, and what is to be done when decisions cannot be made through rational procedures, is one subject of the book. The setting is the university world of committees and dons and administrators, but the inquiry is into general questions about organizational life. How are value contradictions resolved? Why are some matters discussed openly and others only before restricted audiences? Could we dispense with confidentiality and secrecy? What masks are used to make a person or a point of view persuasive?It is impossible and therefore wholly unwise to try to attempt to run such organizations in a wholly open and wholly rational fashion: without an appropriate measure of pretence and secrecy, even of hypocrisy, they cannot be made to work. At a basic level organizations require secrecy and confidentiality to run effectively.