Robert M. Price - Böcker

Society and Bureaucracy in Contemporary Ghana by Robert M. Price examines the organizational dynamics of the Ghanaian civil service as a key to understanding the constraints facing postcolonial African states. Price begins with the premise that independence brought sovereignty but not unconstrained capacity for autonomous action: choice for African states was quickly tempered by economic dependency and weak internal institutions. In this context, the bureaucratic machinery of the state becomes central, both as the instrument for economic transformation and as the locus where citizens experience government. Drawing on role theory and ecological perspectives, Price argues that Ghana’s administrative system illustrates how “traditional” obligations—kinship ties, clientelism, and personalistic networks—pervade formally modern bureaucratic structures, producing a hybrid or “poly-normative” system. Through extensive surveys of civil servants and their clientele, he demonstrates how kinship obligations shape bureaucratic role performance, how corruption emerges as a patterned adaptation rather than an aberration, and how weak organizational commitment undermines both efficiency and legitimacy.The book situates the Ghanaian case within wider debates about modernization, institution building, and administrative theory. Price critiques psychological explanations of bureaucratic weakness that emphasize maladjustment, instead showing how systemic role conflicts and incongruities structure everyday administrative behavior. Detailed chapters analyze familial obligations of bureaucrats, client-service relationships, and the mechanisms of corruption, demonstrating how these are embedded in Ghana’s broader social order. He further explores how incentives, recruitment, and organizational culture shape role orientations within the civil service. The conclusion emphasizes that Ghana’s experience illustrates the vulnerability of new states: where diffuse legitimacy is lacking, the performance of bureaucracy directly affects political stability and state survival. Society and Bureaucracy in Contemporary Ghana thus advances both a rich empirical account of Ghana’s public administration and a general theoretical framework for understanding the social foundations of bureaucratic behavior in transitional societies.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 1975.

Society and Bureaucracy in Contemporary Ghana by Robert M. Price examines the organizational dynamics of the Ghanaian civil service as a key to understanding the constraints facing postcolonial African states. Price begins with the premise that independence brought sovereignty but not unconstrained capacity for autonomous action: choice for African states was quickly tempered by economic dependency and weak internal institutions. In this context, the bureaucratic machinery of the state becomes central, both as the instrument for economic transformation and as the locus where citizens experience government. Drawing on role theory and ecological perspectives, Price argues that Ghana’s administrative system illustrates how “traditional” obligations—kinship ties, clientelism, and personalistic networks—pervade formally modern bureaucratic structures, producing a hybrid or “poly-normative” system. Through extensive surveys of civil servants and their clientele, he demonstrates how kinship obligations shape bureaucratic role performance, how corruption emerges as a patterned adaptation rather than an aberration, and how weak organizational commitment undermines both efficiency and legitimacy.The book situates the Ghanaian case within wider debates about modernization, institution building, and administrative theory. Price critiques psychological explanations of bureaucratic weakness that emphasize maladjustment, instead showing how systemic role conflicts and incongruities structure everyday administrative behavior. Detailed chapters analyze familial obligations of bureaucrats, client-service relationships, and the mechanisms of corruption, demonstrating how these are embedded in Ghana’s broader social order. He further explores how incentives, recruitment, and organizational culture shape role orientations within the civil service. The conclusion emphasizes that Ghana’s experience illustrates the vulnerability of new states: where diffuse legitimacy is lacking, the performance of bureaucracy directly affects political stability and state survival. Society and Bureaucracy in Contemporary Ghana thus advances both a rich empirical account of Ghana’s public administration and a general theoretical framework for understanding the social foundations of bureaucratic behavior in transitional societies.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 1975.

After more than a century of New Testament scholarship, it has become clear that the Jesus of the gospels is a fictive amalgam, reflecting the hopes and beliefs of the early Christian community and revealing very little about the historical Jesus. Over the millennia since the beginning of Christianity various congregations, from fundamentalist to liberal, have tended to produce a Jesus figurehead that functions as a symbolic cloak for their specific theological agendas.Through extensive research and fresh textual insights Robert M. Price paves the way for a new reconstruction of Christian origins. Moving beyond the work of Burton L. Mack and John Dominic Crossan on Jesus movements and Christ cults, which shows how the various Jesus figures may have amalgamated into the patchwork savior of Christian faith, Price takes an innovative approach. He links the work of F.C. Baur, Walter Bauer, Helmut Koester, and James M. Robinson with that of early Christ-myth theorists-two camps of biblical analysis that have never communicated.Arguing that perhaps Jesus never existed as a historical figure, Price maintains an agnostic stance, while putting many puzzles and scholarly debates in a new light.He also incorporates neglected parallels from Islam, the Baha'i Faith, and Buddhism. Deconstructing Jesus provides a valuable bridge between New Testament scholarship and early freethinkers in a refreshing cross-fertilization of perspectives.

"This book should be mandatory reading for all scholars concerned with Christian origins ... nothing of comparable importance has been written for at least a decade." - Freethinker For more than a century scholars have been examining the Gospels and other traditions about the life of Jesus to determine their historical accuracy. Although the results of these scholarly efforts are sometimes controversial, the consensus among researchers today is that the four Evangelists' accounts cannot be taken at face value. In fact, a team of more than 100 scholars called the Jesus Seminar has come to the conclusion that on average only about 18 percent of the four Gospels is historically accurate.An active member of the Jesus Seminar, Dr. Robert M. Price presents the fruits of this important historical research in this fascinating discussion of early Christianity. As the title suggests, Price is none too optimistic about the reliability of the Gospel tradition as a source of accurate historical information about the life of Jesus. Indeed, he feels that his colleagues in the Jesus Seminar are much too optimistic in their estimate of authentic material in the Gospels. After an introduction to the historical-critical method for nonspecialists and a critique of the methods used by the Jesus Seminar, Price systematically discusses the narrative and teaching materials in the Gospel, clearly presenting what is known and not known about all of the major episodes of Jesus' life. He also examines the parables for authenticity as well as Jesus' teachings about the Kingdom of God, repentance, prayer, possessions and poverty, the Atonement, and many other features of the Gospels.Written for the general reading public in a lively and accessible style, Dr. Price's highly informative discussion will be of interest to anyone who has wondered about the origins of Christianity.