Barth 1972 Analytical Dimensions in the Comparison of Social Organizations

8/13/2019 Barth 1972 Analytical Dimensions in the Comparison of Social Organizations

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Analytical Dimensions in the Comparison of Social Organizations

Author(s): Fredrik BarthReviewed work(s):Source: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 74, No. 1/2 (Feb. - Apr., 1972), pp. 207-220Published by: Blackwell Publishingon behalf of the American Anthropological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/672142.

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AnalyticalDimensions n the Comparison f SocialOrganizationsFREDRIKBARTH

University of BergenThe paper focuses on differences in the way social situations are defined indifferent cultures and societies. It develops and illustrates some dimensions forcomparing social systems in this respect, viz: their inventory of statuses, therepertoires of persons, and the cultural ways in which occasions are distinguished.Some contrasting types of society are compared on these dimensions; and theproblem is raised as to the epistemological character of such types, and theimportance of the variable of scale. The dual nature of social organization as anorganization both of people and of tasks is emphasized.

A MAJORAIM of social anthropology sto provide a comparative perspective onsocial organization, particularly one thatembraces all varieties of society from thesimplest to the most complex. Such com-parisons are fruitful because they lead toempirical generalizations, they exposeanalyticalproblems, and they allow for thefalsificationof hypotheses.To performsuchcomparisons,however,one needs to developexplicit typologiesof socialsystems.Currenttrends in the analysisof society and culturewould indicate the need for a typologywhich takes account of differences in theorganization of encounters and allows forthe explorationof interconnectionsbetweenaggregatesocial forms and the constructionof socialpersonson the micro-level.In the following I shall discuss a fewmajordimensionsof social organization ap-able of generating a fairly comprehensivetypology of social systems. This I shallillustrate with some examples and sub-stantive discussions; but the focus of thepaper is on the clarification of analyticaldimensions, not on the elaboration of ataxonomy.The comparativeanalysis developedherethus does not proceed froma macro-view fsocieties through a comparison of sub-stantive institutional structures. Rather, itseeks to penetrate down to modes of inter-action in encounters, groups, and com-munities and to see if we can characterizehow social systems differ in their basic

organizational pparatus. f we seek to maketypologies of the ways of constructingsocieties, ratherthan the overt structuresofsocieties, we escapeat leastprovisionally hevexing problemsof delimitationandscaleinthe comparison;we no longercomparecasesof society but kinds of socialsystems.In thelatter part of this essay I shall returnto theconnection between membershipsize andthe forms of organization,but the focus onencounters makes it possible to postponethis discussion.Wealso escapeat least someof the pitfalls of comparativemethod ex-posed by Leach in his contrast betweencomparison and generalization (Leach1961:2ff.), since we will mainlybe attempt-ing to generalizesome dimensionsfor com-paring social processes, not to construct ataxonomy of institutional forms. To con-struct my typology, in other words, I seekgeneralizable eatures-the kind of abstrac-tions that led to T6nnies' distinction be-tween Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft or ledanthropologists to develop concepts likesubstitutability (Fortes 1953) or multi-plexity (Gluckman1955) to characterizeacertaintype of society.A typology capable of being applied toanthropological material clearly must becompatiblewith basic analyticalconceptsinthe discipline, particularlythe concepts ofstatus and group. The analytical discussionin this paper will expose certain basic dif-ficulties in their use; but provisionallywemay regard he conceptsas unproblematical.

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208 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [74,1972Their still unworked potential has recentlybeen demonstrated (Goodenough 1965;Mayer 1966). That this potential can beincreased for typological purposes by aconsistentemphasison theirsystem-orientedrather than ego-oriented application wasexemplified by Nadel (1957 Ch. IV) in hisexploration of The Coherence of RoleSystems. Nadel seems to have articulatedageneral perspective, and been followed bymany, in seeing social systems as basicallyconstituted of a great number of abstrac-table elementary units of ascriptionwhichwe, pace Nadel, may call statuses.1 It haslong been recognized (cf. Radcliffe-Brown1958) that such statuses always cohere instructuredcontexts which may be seen asrelations or persons or corporate groupsaccordingto the aspect of social reality onwhich one choses to focus. Indeed, I shouldlike to add a fourth natural clusteringofstatuses in careers, to which we may havedevoted too little attention apartfrom theirstandardized lifecycle form.Most attempts at developing typologieson this basis seem to have concentratedoncorporategroups, and then quickly to havefounderedon the greatempiricalvarietyofsuch groups (see, e.g., InternationalEncy-clopediaof SocialSciences: PoliticalAnthro-pology: PoliticalOrganization).Constructinga typology of groupsseems to turn into arace with your own imagination, an im-provisationof subtypes and additional ypesbased on criteria fetched from outside atheory of social systems and descriptiveofthe hopeless variety of habitat and circum-stance documented by the ethnographicrecord.I would submit that these attempts failbecause they fail to abstract one of themajor dimensions of social organization:that of tasks and occasions. To subdivideand classify the flow of social events it isalways necessary to specify not only per-sons, relations,andgroups,but also the rulesof relevance which actors impose on thesituation. Though these often arise fromnecessities of a self-evident and commonhumankind, they are codified in ways which

are peculiarto each caseandcross-culturallyhighly variable. The events through whichstatuses, relations, and groups are mademanifest also have their form determinedbythe actors' codifications of tasks andoccasions-or, as Nadel puts it: social struc-tures have jobs to do. The variety ofcircumstancesand purposes,of jobs can-not profitably be left out of the formaltheory and then smuggledback in throughconcrete typologies, as, for example, byclassifying corporate groups into subtypesaccordingto the kind of activity they serveto organize. We should rather from theoutset give equal primacy to each of themajor axes of organization:the structuresof statuses,and the delimitationof jobs.To encompassthese twinaspectsof socialorganization n one frame of reference,wecan utilize the perspectiveso vividly pre-sented by Goffman (1959, 1961). For ourgrosstypologicalpurposes, t is sufficient toemphasizethe concept of definitionof thesituation. In arrivingat a definition of thesituation, actors reach certain agreementsabout the rules of relevancein a particularencounter,both with regard o what are therelevant capacities of the participantsandwhat is the job on hand, i.e., the occasion.This perspective opens very attractivepos-sibilities for developing analyticalconceptssuch as scene and setting, and typo-logical concepts such as forum andarena (e.g., Bailey 1969); but these havestill beenverylittle exploited.The important thing in the presentcon-text, however, is not to develop a sub-stantiveclassificationof activities nto tasks,institutions,or types of occasions,but to usethe concept to make a firststep at character-izing the way in whichmembersof a societyorganizetheiractivitythrough he definitionof situations.Thereby,we captureboth thecrucial aspects of social organization,viz.both the social structuresand the jobs theydo.

I shall attempt to substantiate his claimin the following paragraph.Very simply,wecan visualize any society of which we aremembers as follows. Each of us is a com-


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Barth] COMPARISON AND ANALYSIS 209pound person, the encumbent of manystatuses. When we come into each other'spresence we do so in a physicalenvironment-one which we perceiveselectively and classify culturallyas a pot-ential scene for certain, and only certain,kinds of activities. We add to these con-straints,or modify them, by communicatingwith each other as to who we are and whatwe intend to do, andtherebywe arriveat anagreed definition of the situation, whichimplies which status out of our total reper-toire we shall regardas relevantandto whatuse we shall put it. The agreementwill beworkable only if all participants have astatus in their repertoirewhich articulateswith those of the others and are willing toact in this capacity. A definition of thesituation thus implies the mobilization, asrelevant and acceptable, of a set of articu-lating statuses. Through such under-standings,social statuses are mobilized andactivity ordered in the manner we candescribe as social organization.Behind thiscreation of organized encounters, we canidentify the interestsandgoalsthat set sociallife in motion: we can recognize socialstatuses as assets, andsituationsas occasionsfor realizing them by enactment. In part,people will seek out the partnersand placesthat provide occasionsfor achievingthis; inpart, they will merely find themselves n theproximity of others who call on them totake socialcognizanceof each other.This implies a particular view of therelation between the micro-levelof separatesocial encounters and the macro-level ofsocietal form, one which it might be well tomake clear. I am not propoundinga sub-jectivist viewpoint which denies theobjective consequencesof social acts or theexistence of objective social and ecologicalmacro-featureswhich operateas constraintson behavior. What I am denying is themechanical determination of behavior bythese constraints. Human acts are pre-dominantly shaped by cognition and pur-pose, asserted through awareness andvoluntary behavior, i.e., through decisionand choice. Regularities n multiple cases of

choice are not satisfactorily xplained by thedemonstration of the presence of someobjectivecircumstances lone, but requireanaccount of how these circumstances areperceived and evaluated by actors. Theirspecific effects on social organizationdepend on the way in which participants nencountersaccommodate hemselves o suchcircumstancesby takingthem into account;thus they are present as part of themicro -events of an encounter, as con-straints on behavior,modified throughtheactors' definition of situations and con-siderationsof choice. Only by showing howthese codifications and evaluations arestereotyped and shared do I feel we haveexplainedregularitiesn social behavior, .e.,aggregateeaturesof society.The feedback on societal macro-featureswhich arises from the objective con-sequences of behavior, e.g., on the dis-tributionof assets or facilitiesfor control, islikewise neitherexplained by a denialof theobjective consequences of acts nor byimputing purpose to all the unsought con-sequences of acts. An analysisrequiresthedemonstration, or eachconnectionclaimed,of the particularmechanismswherebysuchconsequences ollow.I thus see encounters, constrained bycircumstances and structured by commonunderstandingsbetween the participants,asthe stuff of society. If you grantme that thisis one way of looking at social life, myquestion will be: Are the people in differentsocieties equipped with structurallysimilararrays of statuses, alters, scenes, and oc-casions through which they can definesituations and structure interactionsequences, thereby generating the regular-ities in their encounters? Comparativematerialclearly provides no as an answer.Societies differ, as I shall try to show, infundamental ways with respect to theelements of organizationwhichthey providetheir membersand by which these memberscreate order in their social lives. And theydiffer not only in their status inventories,but in ways these statuses can be combinedin persons and elicited by alters and the


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210 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [74,1972ways distinctive social occasions can becreated. These differences would seem toprovide a significantand fundamentalbasisfor classifying and understandingdifferentsocial systems.To construct more exact dimensionsforsuch a typology we need to look moreclosely at what I have referredto as statussets. The concept is an expansion of thedyadic social relationshipto encompassanynatural cluster of two or more reciprocallyrelevant statuses, exemplified by mother-child, or doctor-nurse-patient.t is meaning-ful, indeed possible, to differentiatestatussets only if actors themselves distinguishbetween social situations that systematicallyelicit them as different sets, i.e., if alter-native capacities exist for some of thepersons which are elicited in other situa-tions. Otherwise, all of the society wouldconsist of only one set, making the termredundant.Let us compare the two examples ofstatus sets mentioned to note some di-mensions of structural contrast. Mother ismother to (her own) children only; she iscalled so only by them and acts as motheronly toward them. Nurse is nurse both todoctor and to patient, and must act verydifferently toward the two. Hers is a statuswith severalroles,as first clarifiedby Merton(1957).' Whichof thesesectorsof herrightsand duties as nursewill be activatedmainlydependsupon which alterin the total set herbehavior s directed.

Yet, being mother also in fact impliesrelationsto others, just as being nursedoes;by virture of motherhood a person shouldalso be a party to relationships o husbandand father-in-lawand is liable to becomemother-in-law ndgrandmother.Do all thesestatuses together constitute the set in theanalytical sense? Are we just duped by adifferent convention of naming, where inour conventionsof kinshipterminologyeachrole sector is given a separate term? Notquite, because, having indicated that thestatuses involved are kinship statuses, wehave implied a special kind of linkagewherebya numberof statusesareconnected

so that beingmother to a child you arealsochild to another mother, whereas beingdoctor to a nurseyou are not also nurse toanotherdoctor.In other words, the concept of statussets expounded here is not sufficient todescribe the structure of social systems.Such systems also exhibit fundamentaldif-ferences in the ways of constructingpersons, or relevant sectors of persons.Inthe sphere of kinship each person is socomposed as to produce, in conjunctionwith others, a particular kind of largersystem which we may call replicating :f a

person is A to B, he is frequentlyalso B toanother A, so most personsare indeed A +B. Kinshipsets internallyalso show anotherspecial feature:any status canonly be maderelevanttoward a particularkind of other-they can be depicted as dyads, and, givenany particularinteraction partner, there isno freedom to manipulatethis componentof the definition of the situation, only thetask at hand remains open to negotiationand agreement. The hospital set, on theother hand, does not presume any othercomponent of the definition of the situa-tion: both the occasion and the relevantalters must be specified before predictablebehaviorwill be generated.

These two systems imply very differentorganizations of activity. In the kinshipsystem, most persons will perform mosttasks, but toward different alters. The ad-ditional situationalcomponents determiningwhat motherwill do arein a sensesecondaryand are connected both with the scene andwith what is instrumentaln anenvironment.Nor can mother repudiatethe relationship:the rights and obligations of the status setare always entailed in the interaction be-tween these persons. Given the appropriatealter,thereis thus reallyno alternative tatusthancan be maderelevant,andconsequentlyno social interaction is necessary for thepurpose of defining gross features of thesituation. The fact that the main situationvariable--theavailable alter-is incorporatedin the status definition leads to the sub-


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Barth] COMPARISON AND ANALYSIS 211stitutability and multiplicity noted in suchsystems.The structure of the hospitalset, on theother hand, implies the existence of alter-nativesets and the possibility of interactionin termsof such sets; consequently,activitydoes not become organized until a grossdefinition of the situation, indicating therelevanceof a particular hospital)statusset,has been reached. In systems of this kind,activity is organizedso that any one personperforms relatively few tasks, but does sotowardmany.The limitingcase is the personwho performsa uniquecombinationof tasksand does so for all membersof the society,being singularly unsubstitutable. This ofcourse is the aspect of organizationemphasizedby the concept of organicsolid-arity. A wide rangeof implicationsof thecontrastbetween these two kinds of systemhas been explicated by Levi-Strauss1963),suggestingthat we are indeed dealing withtwo basically alternative and differentsocietaltypes.Three crucial dimensions which depictthe organizationalbases for such differencesbetween social systems can be formulatedasfollows. A person, as a combination ofstatuses, can be said to have a certainrepertoire of statuses;differentsituationaldefinitions bring out different componentsof this repertoire. Further, a total societymay be said to be composed of a totalinventory of statuses--partly intercon-nected in sets, partly co-existing as alter-native sets. Finally, social situations areconceived in differentsocieties as differentlyconstituted and contrasted.The dimensionsI propose for classification-not quantifiablein numbers but clearly measurableas con-trastingordersof magnitude-arethus:(1) The inventory of statuses in asocial system: the total number of dif-ferentiated statusesknown to the actors.

(2) The repertoires of persons:thesizes and structures of the standardizedclustersof statuses that make up personsin the society.(3) The components used in theactors' definition of situations : what

agreements are made about relevantstatussets, occasions,andtasks.A short comparative series of thumbnailsketchesof empirical ypes may demonstratethe features brought out by thesedimensions. I appeal to the reader'sknow-ledge of the relevant ethnographies toelaborate and criticize the characterizations:they are included here merely to provideconcretereferents for the typologicalterms.I. Shoshonean or Bushman bands: (1)small inventory of statuses, (2) very smallindividual repertoires, (3) environment-oriented task organization. In theseelementary social systems, each personwould seem to occupy a relatively ndivisibleposition. There is thus no clear separationbetween a man'scapacity as dominantadultmale/husbandand father/hunter/etc.,andinall these respectshe contrastswith a childora married woman. Though such speciallycodified capacitieschangein a regular areerpatternthrougha life cycle, they are at anyone time unambiguouslydistributedon thelocal population, and interaction is pre-dominantly organized by one dominantstatus set. Situationsdiffer from each othermainly with reference to the definition ofthe task at hand, and this derives promi-nently fromthe opportunitiesofferedby theimmediateenvironment.II. Australian societies: (1) larger in-ventory of statuses, (2) larger but highlyrepetitiveindividualrepertoires, 3) partner-specific elicitation of capacities. Thesereplicating systems show considerablygreater complexity than Type I, without,incidentally, being associated with morecomplex productive technology. Character-istically a personis the encumbentof statusA vis-a-visperson one, of status B vis-a-vispersontwo, etc.; those persons may turn tohim whenever hey wantprestationsof kindsappropriate o statusesA andB respectively.Withclassificatoryascriptionof kinstatuses,marriage-classorganization, etc., the lifecycle does not involve drasticchanges n theconstitution of the persons.Situationsdifferpre-eminently n termsof whichpersonnel spresent; therefore activities are organized


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212 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [74,1972through the process of seeking out specificpartners, as well as by the definition oftasks.Let me contrast these two types of simplesocieties with two types of complexsocieties, usingthe same dimensions:III. Indianvillages and regions:(1) largeinventory of statuses, (2) large repertoires,which tend to be found only in a limitedrange of standardized constellations, (3)elaborate structuresof occasions and tasks,signaled by complex idioms widely mani-pulated to define situations.These involutesystems have occasioned considerabletheoreticaldiscussion,wherealso an attemptof mine to accountfor them in general ermsrelated to those exercised here (Barth inLeach 1960) has been severely criticized(Dumont,in Reuck 1967). The issue,as I seeit, lies in what has been referredto as thesummationof statuses. I find it necessaryto distinguish he versatilityof a personthatcomes about by his havinga large, diverserepertoire of statuses, from the versatilitythat comes about by his occupyinga statuswith a large diversityof rights and obliga-tions. My argument,now and previously,isthat these should be distinguishedbecausethey come about in very differentways andexist in societies with very different con-stitutions and properties,although, from acertain perspective, they may appearphenotypicallyalike.No one seems to disagreewith the grossgeneralization that subcaste membershiptends to imply standard constellations ofcapacities, i.e., standardizedsocial persons.These component capacitiesof a personcanbe distinguishedas separatestatusesonly ifthey can be shown to belong in differentstatus sets. This requires that actors haveways of defining a social situation so thatonly one sectorof a personis maderelevant,that this sector articulateswith a limitedsector/statusin an alter, and that the two ormore partiesneed not involve themselves ninteraction n other sectors.It is not possiblein this way to elicit one such sector offather and define situations so that noother interaction involvingother rightsand

duties of father will takeplace:fatheris onestatus. But it is possible to elicit one suchsector of toddy-tapper, .g., liquor seller,and allow only that status be relevant tointeraction without becominginvolvedwiththe other statusesof toddy-tapper.In otherwords, toddy-tapper s a standardrepertoireof statuseswhich may be activatedseverallyand singly in distinct social situations andrelationships.The fact that these statuses inIndiansociety tend to clusterin stereotypedrepertoires has important implications forthe form which interaction may take: itbecomespossible to treat whole personsasstandardizedtransactionalpartners; ndeed,some parts of Indian social organization,such as, for example, the jajmanisystems,are based on this fact. But the recognitionlthat this is not necessary, that the Indiansystem is one basedon largerepertoiresandnot on a few wide and undifferentiatedstatuses, is importantbecause t leads one topose two central questions that wouldotherwise be meaningless:What maintainsthe stereotyped repertoires?What are theaggregateconsequences of those processes,and of the presence of non-stereotypeddeviance?Weknow that the stereotypedrepertoiresare maintainedby persons'own efforts andthe sanctionsof othersandthat they dependon a hierarchicalconcept of congruencewithin repertoires.A single pollutingstatusin a cluster has a contagion effect on theperson as a whole, while a few more highlyrankedstatuses and capabilitiesgive limitedbenefits when associated with the others.These premiseshave enormousimplicationsfor the social process,and thereby organizeactivity in a characteristically ndian way:personsboth seek, andavoid,occasionswithelaborate care; they pursue a sensitivehusbandry of social assets that channelscommunity life and sustains complexcultural codifications for defining socialsituations.

The fact that people are capable ofentering into limited interaction in a singlestatus set, on the other hand, leaves a wayopen for persons to try to construct alter-


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Barth] COMPARISON AND ANALYSIS 213native repertoires, and through them toachieve cumulative results for themselveswhile at the sametime creatingnew patternsin the society. Thus while a careerfor mostpersons nvolvesa rather imitedandpredict-able progression hroughsuccessive ife cyclephases, for some persons it constitutes atactically ordered, innovative pattern withpotential consequences for communityorganization. It is thus possible for thegoldsmith to be a moneylender,the toddy-tapper to be a liquor salesman,the toddy-tapper (to his own and his customers'mutual advantage)to double as a money-lender until, one day, the toddy-tapper s alandowner.The local diversity and regionalcomplexity of Indiansociety is usefullyseenin this perspective: not as an ultimateexplanation of the creativityof the Indiantradition, but as a picture of the socialorganizationthroughwhich this traditionisconsummated in behavior and therebysustainedand elaborated.IV. Modern Western societies: (1) verylarge inventory of statuses, (2) very largeindividual repertoires (but each muchsmaller than the total inventory), highlydiverse in their constellations, (3) swift andoften transientdefinition of situation, greatvariation n degreeof formalizationbetweensituations. A label for such complex thoughpartiallyfamiliar ocieties is difficult to find;but, in view of the great range of op-portunities they offer for diverse andvoluntaryarticulationwith a very largerangeof potential alters, we might characterizethem on the basis of their most explicit andformalized kind of individualagreementsascontract societies.As to the social organization thatcharacterizeshem, differentpotentialities nthese organizational elements are empha-sized, in fact or description, in differentaccounts: (a) In an impersonal,urban en-vironmentthe parties to different kinds ofinteraction are segregated,i.e., each statusset involves a different personnel and theperson moves in social space, articulatingonly in one limited capacity with anyparticularalter. The result of this kind of

organization has been characterizedas anopen network and been associated withtendencies to subjective isolation andalienation.(b) Perhapsmorecharacteristic fthe life situation of many membersof suchsocieties is the emergence of cliques andclasses through a process whereby personswith partly similar repertoires seek eachother out as interaction partners. Suchpartnerswill find that they potentially arti-culate in terms of a number of differentstatus sets, and they seem to create op-portunities for active switching betweensituation definitions rather handistinctforafor each separate set. Yet, these sets andstatuses retain some definitional distinctive-ness, since two persons' repertoiresnevercompletely replicateeach other, circlesonlypartly overlap, and formal occasions withheavy constraints on switching are alsomaintained.The networkpatternthat resultsis more highly connected than in (a), but inmy view the more significantaspect is theactivity of swift and transientdefinitionandredefinitionof situationsin encounterswiththe same personnel creating the many-stranded informalized relationships offriendship.These again,as in the discussionof caste, need to be categorically dis-tinguishedfrom the many-strandedelationsbetween members of simple societies, be-cause they are a part of very different totalsystemsand are maintainedby verydifferentsocial processes, though showing clearfeaturesof overtsimilarity.With respect to career forms, contractsocieties are characterizedby variable andcomplex career structures in whichsequences of statuses are assumedand shedby personsin patternshighly significanttothe organizationof society.

The thrust of this way of depictingsociety is generative,seeking to show howmore complex features are aggregated romsimpleelements. It further assumes hat thisaggregation s, in real life, effected by theprocess of social interaction.The transfor-


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214 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [74,1972mation rules of the model, leading fromelements to aggregatesocial forms, musttherefore be such as rest on concepts likestrategy and resource management,choiceand opportunity. These parts of the argu-ment I have allowed myself to treatsketchily and implicitly, since they havebeen expounded at greater ength elsewhere(Barth 1966). I have ratherconcentratedonclarifying he elements on which the processacts. It should be noted that our empiricaltask is to identify and describe theseelements, not to invent them. They are notheuristic devices or intermediate variablesconstructedto explain the recorded eaturesof aggregatesocial form; on the contrary,once they have been specified they shouldalso be availableto observationas concretefeatures of actors and encounters on themicro-level.Thisopens the way for empiricaltestingof each main sector of the model: theelements, the transformationrules, and theaggregate orms. The use of such a model asa framework for comparativestudy shouldtherebybecomeparticularlyruitful.

This perspective,then, opens the way foridentifying, in the constitution of personsand encounters, the correlates of majormorphological eaturesof the macro-system.A crucial concept in this connection is theconcept of the definitionof situation,whichdepicts how cultural factors of a variety ofkinds are transformedby the actors intoconstraintswhich operateon the processofinteraction. The comparison of some dif-ferent types of society shouldhave servedtoemphasize the great differences in theapparatus for defining situations whichactors in different cultures have at theircommand. The means whereby actors cancreate social organizationis by their con-ceptually differentiating kinds of socialpersons and kinds of occasions; it is theirsuccess in reachingagreementon some suchdistinctions that makes a degree of orderpossible.The conceptual tools at the actors'disposal for these purposes severely affectthe kinds of socialsituationsthey can defineand, thereby, the patterns of organizationthey can establish.

The poverty of components in thedefinition of situations n societiesof types Iand II I would connect with the totemisticuse of taboo as a major idiom for definingsocial persons. While taboo is an aptmechanism for using distinctions in natureto create and define social distinctions, itsimultaneously mpliesa denial that someofa person's identities can be latent andsituationally segregated: taboos apply towhole, indivisible persons. During recentfieldwork in a marginal,newly contactedNew Guineacommunity I was very struck,coming from work in more complexsocieties, by the constraints on status dif-ferentiation and the simplicityof repertoireswhich characterize a system of social dif-ferentiation based on taboo. In suchsystems,differentpersonalcapacities end tocoalesce;situational restrictionsof relevanceare difficult to conceptualizefor actors,andthe facility to switch between conceptuallydistinct definitions of the situation islacking.The most primitive distinction in thedefinition of situations is that between thesacred and the profane.By meansof taboosand other cumbersomeand contrived diomsa supreme effort is made to conceptualizeand distinguish the sacred situation fromprofanelife. Perhapssome of our bewilder-ment with much primitiveritual stems fromthe fact that social anthropologistshavenotbeen sufficiently aware of this absence ofsophistication in the manipulation ofdefinitions of the situation within manynative social systems. The organizationalmessageof the idioms seemsclearenoughtous, and we are tempted to dismiss as re-dundancy an elaborationof messagewhichparticipantsexperience as highly necessaryfor so problematical a distinction. Wegenerally meet members of such societiesafter a recenthistoryof coercivecontact hastaught them to enter into interaction withstrangerson the premisesof the dominantWesterner and they have as individualsachieved some sophistication in switchingbetween whole social systems. We mustrecognize the cultural limitations found in


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Barth] COMPARISON AND ANAL YSIS 215the traditionalapparatusfor definingsocialsituations and analyzeeach system in termsonly of those mechanismson which it is infact based.

In addition to the active manipulationofsituations characteristically practiced inmany societies, some complex systems arealso prominentlyorganizedby meansof thespecial kind of situational distinction thatseparate bureaucratic and personalcapacities. Complexity results in part fromthe addition of this organizationalmech-anism to the others; and different domainsof social interaction within one populationcan become differently structured. Westernsociety is thus simultaneously built oncertain basic identities maintainedby taboos(suchas sex, andoften confessionalmember-ship in universal hurches),on a widevarietyof statuses which are very freely mani-pulatedsituationally,as well as on offices ofinnumerable kinds which are delegated toencumbentswho may act in these capacitiesonly for certain purposes and may haveprestigereflected on themfor occupyingtheoffices but do not command them as anintegralresource. The social person in suchsystems is at best constituted as a highlystratified repertoire of statuses includingimperative or inalienable identities,situation-specific apacities,andoffices.

The incompleteand provisional ypologyof social systems sketched in this paperhighlightsthe need for furtheranalysis,in acommon basic vocabulary, of the organ-ization of encounters in a wide range ofdifferentsocial systems. The concept of thedefinition of the situationmay be utilized todescribe the limitations which differentcultural traditions impose on the actors'control and ability to manipulate suchdefinitions. One can thereby depict theessential duality of social organizationas asimultaneous ordering of activity both inrelations and tasks,and the greatdifferencesin how such ordering s achieved n differentsocial systems. Empirical comparisonsandanalyses n this framework hould contributeboth to ourunderstanding f the macro-level

of social institutions and the micro-levelofinteraction.To provide an adequate basis for com-parative analysis, however, the frameworkthat has been developed above needs to berelieved of at least two naive assumptionswhich have been implicit in my argument:(1) the empiricalcharacterof pure types,and (2) the irrelevance f scale.I shalltry toshow that these provisional simplificationscan be eliminated without seriously com-plicatingthe analysis.(1) I have already emphasized that thetypological dimensions developed in thispaper do not apply to the description ofwhole societiesas abstractentities but to thedifferent ways in which social organizationsare constituted. The evidence seems over-whelming that communities around theworld differ in the way social personsarecomposed and social encounters are con-summated.Yet it is not equallyobvioushowone could go about classifying he social lifeof any particularplace with referenceto thepure types generatedby a few abstractdimensions. As was perhaps first shownclearly in the Analysisof a SocialSituationin Modern Zululand (Gluckman 1940),social life at any one place encompasseselements of very diverse origins based onvery different sanctions. This has partlycome about through the colonialism andother spectacular expansionism of a parti-cular, and many places recent, phase ofhistory; descriptive accounts have oftendepicted this as the clash of two worldswhile concentratingon one or another ofthese worlds: the traditional or themodernized. But the life situation of anyone person in the communityis compoundand confusingandis rarelycomposedof twosuch tidy sectors; also brokers and entre-preneurs by their activities create socialsystems that are compound in their veryconstitution. On a widerscale, such activityties essentially all local communitiestogether in a kind of complex global pluralsociety, and every basis for isolating andclassifyinga part of this network seems tohavebeenlost.


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216 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [74,1972What then is the utility of the typologicaldistinctions I have suggested between dif-ferently constituted systems? The fact oflocal variationremainsand shows no signof

being ephemeral.Membersof a Melanesianand an Indianand a Norwegiancommunitymay interact in ways that are similarlyconstrained by the rules and agents ofmodern bureaucracyor internationalbusi-ness, but the ideas and capacitiesthat theythemselvesbring to their life situation, andthat they have confirmedand maintained nit, areradicallydifferent andvariouslygener-ate social systems with elementary,replicating, nvolute or other characteristics.Ourproblem,in otherwords,lies in definingthe kind of abstractionto which the typo-logical propertiesof inventories,repertoires,and components for definingsituations canbe ascribed.Given the empiricalcontinuumof one global society, these propertiesaremost reasonably ascribed to systems oforganization that have such separateidentities as the actorsthemselvesgive them,and are often encapsulatedone within theother (Bailey 1957, 1960, 1969). Therebywe avoid the need to dichotomize modemand traditional nstitutionalcomplexes,or tocommit the simplificationof distinguishingbetween total societies as distinct bodies ofpeople. Rather, we can utilize the relativediscontinuities n the networksandpremisesof interaction to delimit social systemswithin their larger environment. Suchencapsulated systems can be characterizedwith respect to their internal constitutionandworkings,without ignoring he processeswhereby they articulate with theirenvironment (see especially Bailey1969:146ff.)The delimitation of the social system towhich particularcharacteristicsare ascribedthus needs to be analytically validated ineach particular case. This requires adescription of social organizationin inter-actional terms. Such a descriptionmust reston a demonstrationon the one hand of thestructure of encounters that provide thevessels for internalsocialactivity and,on theother hand, the encounters and roles that

effect boundarymaintenanceandbrokerage.This should reveal the character of thediscontinuitiesthat separateembracingandencapsulatedsystems in terms of the socialprocesses that maintain, and change, theinstitutionalmacro-systems.Eidheim(1971)presents one of the few case studies withsuch intentions (see also Barth,Ed. 1969).(2) By focusing the comparisonon theway in which social interaction is con-stituted and channeledin differentsystemsratherthan on the institutional features ofdifferentsocieties, it is possibleto ignorethequestion of scale in membershipwhen con-structing the dimensions for comparison.But it is of interest to considerthe questionof the organizationalcapacity of these dif-ferent social systems with respect to scale.One tends to take for grantedthat simplesocieties cannot organize argepopulations-though it is difficult to demonstratewhythis should be so. Conversely, here seem tobe certainfunctionaldifficulties n maintain-ing the viability of small and peripheralcommunities n industrialsocieties. Buildingon the analytical rameworkdevelopedhere,such questions can best be approachedthrougha discussion of information.I havespoken as if personsin social systems sharecodes andevaluationsbut have no significantpreviousinformationabout each other--i.e.,as if they have to arriveat a definition of thesituation by signallingwheneverthey meet.Firstly, codes may be imperfectlysharedand only superficially understood, generat-ing both unpredictabilityand dynamismaswell as surface agreement.With respect toinformation in general much social inter-action is in fact routinizedin that previousinformation makes signaling unnecessary,and even may constrain or invalidateeffortsto signal other definitions of the situation.The amount of such previous informationthat is needed,or tolerated, n any particularorganizationwill dependon the constitutionof that organization.On the otherhand,theamount of such information that is actuallyavailablewill depend in part on the size ofthe interacting population. The capacity ofdifferentsocial systems to organize ocieties


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Barth] COMPARISON AND ANALYSIS 217of different scale, i.e., to order the life ofdifferent sized total populations, is thusclosely connected with the amount ofprevious information about persons that isrequiredfor interaction. This againdependsprominently on the techniquesutilized bythe actors to define situations.The story ofAustralian aborigines killing a stranger ifthey cannot establish a kinship connectionwith him (Radcliffe-Brown1913) indicatesthe necessity of certainvital items of infor-mation for interaction in such a society.Withoutinformation on moiety andclass,orperhapscertainindicative otems, thereis noway of ascribing any particularstatus andthus no basis for an ordered social inter-action. A few such limited items of infor-mation, on the other hand, suffice toidentify a whole social person and specifyhis relations to all available alters in areplicating ype social system.By contrast, the involute systems requiremore careful information management ofmembers. Indian villagersmay interact forcertain purposes across caste lines withoutany previous information and merelythrough a preliminary signalling of casteidentities. Such interaction, then, may takeplace with a very greatnumber of potentialpartners and can organize relations in alarge-scale network. In other spheres ofactivity, moreinformation s requiredbeforethe suitabilityof the personas an interactionpartner s established,as, for example,if thepossibilityof marriages at issue. The widestpotential scale of the kinship network isconsequently much more limited than thatbased on some of the other status sets. Thecapacity of such a social system to organizelarge populations thus varies, in animmediate way, with the status sets andkinds of assets involved in the encounters.The limits of the more narrow range net-works are set by the availability of infor-mation, while the wider scale networks arelimited only by the limits of sharedcodesand evaluations.That the establishmentandmaintenanceof such sharedpremisesplaysaprominent part in the life of thesetraditional civilizations has become very

clear throughstudies in India (cf. Marriott1959 and Vidyarthi1961).For a varietyof interactions n industrialWesternsociety, no previous nformation srequired, and the mere signalling of thepresence of an asset as an object of trans-actions is sufficient to elicit a status set andorganizean encounter. The social organiza-tion also contains a great number offunctionallyspecific statussets in whichoneof the positions is opento near universalencumbency, as in the case of the doctor-nurse-patient et. Interaction s prominentlyorganized by the fleeting mobilization ofsuch sets by a multitude of otherwiseanonymous persons who merely demon-strate their command of the minimalqualifications to be passenger, audience,citizen, etc. Such an organizationhas thecapacity to structure immensely wide net-works. The realization of this potential isfurtherenhancedby the remarkablereedomof each individual person to accumulateinformationand act upon it by diversifyingsocial relations and involving himself indeeper commitmentswith a particularalterbased on this information. Whereasmostsocieties require such information to bewidely shared and legitimized, Westernsociety largely allows it to be privateandknown only to the parties directly con-cerned, while remainingunknown to theirmany other alters. The contrast to othermoderately large scale societies of involutetype is striking, where an initial lack ofinformationabout a person giveshim accessonly to a provisional stranger/guest tatus,which, though limited in various ways, ismultiplexand involvescomplexreciprocitiesof a problematical kind and also sharedobligations n a widercommunity.The effects of imposing a Westernformof contractandsituation-switching rganiza-tion on a smallscalepopulationarehoweverfamiliar and disastrous. The mere fact oflimited personnel creates difficulty inmaintaining an organization based onspecialization and division of labor: thelimitation of the total inventoryof statusesthat can be filled by the availablemembers


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218 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [74,1972of the community here leads to a failure ofvital functions. Small scale also has animmediateeffect on the previousknowledgeactors bringto theirencounters.The overlapof personnel n different status sets leads toa surfeit of information and the coalescenceof separate occasions: persons have dif-ficulties segregating social situations andparticularly separating out their bureau-cratically defined capacities. Existingrelations are made more constrainingandgiven additional sanctions by the person'sloss of freedom to withdraw romparticularalters,while the safeguards o privacywhichmultiple potential partners and formalorganizations provide in large scale com-munities are lost without the compensationof adjustmentsand tolerancewhich multi-plex small scale organizationsmay provide.It has been suggested that a function ofritual in the social systems of small scalesocieties is precisely to overcome some ofthese difficulties (Gluckman1962:26). Mostcertainly the manipulationof the organiza-tion by situational redefinition and switch-ing presupposesopen networks and limitedinformation,and is defeated by small scale(cf., e.g., Paine 1957 and 1965 for anempiricaldescriptionof theseeffects).

It should perhapsbe emphasized hat thisperspective on scale does not attempt toderive structural principles by abstractingfrom network form. Rather, it seeks toidentify the kinds of network that can be,and will tend to be, generatedby actorsinteractingby meansof certainorganization-al aids.I would argue hat it is not necessary,or indeed possible, to reconstruct theseorganizationalelements from a mere recordof network form in a community. Toprovide such data in a systematic way ismost difficult and in itself insufficient,whereas the organizational elements aremore readily identified by a close micro-analysis of encounters where theopportunity situation of each actor can beobserved. The analytical perspective ex-pounded here should providean alternativeand more feasiblesimulation-typeapproach

to the analysis of networks, in place ofstructuralistmacro-analysis.This discussionof interactionundervary-ing conditions of population size andorganization also brings out anotherimportant implication of this comparativeattempt: that the very concept of statusin these different social systems refers torather different kinds of things. In thesimpler societies status refers to a sum ofmultiplexcapacitiesvis-a-vis lterswith com-prehensive previous information about aperson. In involute systems it refers toa-perhaps compromising-component of astereotypedcluster of capacities.In moderncontract society it may refermerely to theability to demonstratevis-d-vis trangers hecommand of a very limited and specificasset. In other words it variesbetweenbeinga total social identity, a compellingstrait-jacket, and an incidental option. The dif-ference may be highlightedby the realiza-tion that a conceptlike thatof role distance,based on the distinctionbetween subjectiveself andobjectivestatus(cf. Goffman1961),which seems very usefulandfundamental oan understandingof status in our society,becomes totally inapplicable in a socialsystem of elementary type, based on onlyvery few status sets. Comparabilityn termsof a concept of status is also seriouslyimpaired by the presence or absence ofmodes of communication as different asface-to-face interaction, writing, and tele-communication, and fora as differentlyconstituted as domestic units, lecturehalls,meetingsof parliament,andartexhibits.With the tools so far developed, anyattempt at all-embracingcomparativeex-ercises are consequently predestined tofailure in a number of grossways, but mayyet be of some value in the anthropologicaldebate. I would particularlyemphasizetheneed, in any comparativereasoning, o castone's analytical net somewhat wider thanhas been the practice and give attentionsimultaneouslyboth to the wider organiza-tion of personsand of tasks and also to thestructure of the encounters throughwhichany interactionmust be consummated.


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Barth] COMPARISON AND ANALYSIS 219NOTES

11I have elsewhere (Barth 1966) pleadedthe utility of retaining the distinctionbetween status and role and will here applyNadel's arguments to the status level ofanalysis.2Merton speaks also of role sectors forthese different faces, and introduced theconcept of role set for the whole inter-locking system seen from the point of viewof one ego. For the purpose of comparingwhole systems it is better to avoid theegocentric perspective and focus on the totalset of interrelated roles. Merton further usesstatus set for the array of statusesoccupied by one individual, i.e., whatRadcliffe-Brown had already given the moreuseful name (social) person. It seems tome that the term status set can muchmore usefully be reserved for the wholeinterlocking system of positions, as I dohere, and role set be used to refer to theinterlocking system of behavior or activities(cf. Barth 1966).

REFERENCES CITEDBailey, F. G.1957 Caste and the Economic Frontier.

Manchester: Manchester UniversityPress.1960 Tribe, Caste and Nation. Man-chester: Manchester University Press.1969 Strategems and Spoils. Oxford:Blackwell.Barth, F.1966 Models of Social Organization.London: Occasional Papers of theRoyal Anthropological Institute, No.23.1969 (Ed.) Ethnic Groups and Bound-aries. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.Eidheim, H.1971 Aspects of the Lappish MinoritySituation. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.Fortes, M.1953 The Structure of Unilineal DescentGroups. American Anthropologist55:17-40.Gluckman, M.1955 The Judicial Process Among theBarotse. Manchester: ManchesterUniversity Press.1958 Analysis of a Social Situation inModern Zululand. Rhodes-LivingstonePapers 28. Manchester: ManchesterUniversity Press. (Papers originallypublished in Bantu Studies 1940, andin African Studies 1942).

1962 Essays in the Ritual of SocialRelations. Manchester: ManchesterUniversity Press.Goodenough, W. H.1965 Rethinking Status and Role :Toward a General Model of theCultural Organization of Social Re-lationships. In The Relevance ofModels for Social Anthropology.Michael Banton, Ed. ASA MonographNo. 1. London: Tavistock.Goffman, E.1959 The Presentation of Self in Every-day Life. New York: DoubledayAnchor Books.1961 Role Distance. In Encounters,Two Studies in the Sociology of Inter-action. Minneapolis and New York:Bobbs-Merrill.Leach, E. R.1960 (Ed.) Aspects of Caste in SouthIndia, Ceylon, and North-WestPakistan. Cambridge Papers in SocialAnthropology No. 2. Cambridge:Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.1961 Rethinking Anthropology.London School of Economics Mono-graphs in Social Anthropology No. 22.London: Athlone Press.

IAvi-Strauss, C.1963 The Bear and the Barber. TheHenry Myers Memorial Lecture, 1962.The Journal of the Royal Anthro-pological Institute 93:1-11.Marriott, McKim1959 Changing Channels of CulturalTransmission in Indian Civilization.Chicago: The University of ChicagoCommittee on South Asian StudiesReprint Series No. 7.Mayer, A. C.1966 The Significance of Quasi-Groupsin the Study of Complex Societies. InThe Social Anthropology of ComplexSocieites. Michael Banton, Ed. ASAMonograph No. 4. London: Tavistock.Merton, R. K.1957 Social Theory and Social Struc-ture. Revised and Enlarged Edition.New York: Free Press.Nadel, S. F.1957 The Theory of Social Structure.London: Cohen and West.Paine, R.1957 Coast Lapp Society, I. A Study ofNeighbourhood in Revsbotn Fjord.Troms6: Troms5 Museums Skrifter,Vol. IV.1965 Coast Lapp Society, II. Oslo: Uni-versitetsforlaget.


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220 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [74,1972Radcliffe-Brown, A. R.1913 Three Tribes of Western Australia.Journal of the Royal AnthropologicalInstitute 43:143-194.1958 Method in Social Anthropology.M. N. Srinivas, Ed. Chicago: TheUniversity of Chicago Press.

deReuck, A., and J. Knight, eds.1967 Caste and Race: ComparativeApproaches. A CIBA Foundationvolume. London: Churchill.Vidyarthi, L. P.1961 The Sacred Complex in HinduGaya. Bombay: Asia.

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Barth 1972 Analytical Dimensions in the Comparison of Social Organizations