Research Project in Social Organization Part II.

August 31st, 2007 Posted in Concepts, Research Confusion

Act II. Looking Around, Sensing the Lay of the Land.

The Second World War butted up against the very slowly waining Great Depression. The military draft transported youths who had grown up in lean material environments into a world of plenty. The first massive issue of clothes and equipment for the new Army recruits had the feel of a sudden avalanche of goods. Stunned and staggering the draftees fell into a silence approaching awe. The military supply room, an approximation of the magical cornucopia.

The intuitive understanding of this situation is universal. From the fabulous free lunch at the old pre-prohibition saloon to the gigantic lottery jackpot, whatever the venue, people move toward, long for, pray for, fantasize about the onset of abundance. The treasure at the end of the rainbow, the ship coming in with exotica from foreign ports, Aladdin’s lamp, flotsam and jetsam, windfall.

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The cliff-hanger: I was about to start work on a new job—an unexpected appointment to carry out what appeared to be an important piece of sociological research.

So I went in and without warning entered a place of plenty. Not the endless pile of jewels of Monte Cristo but enough boodle to impress: A desk in a shared office, a private carrel–an unbelievable quiet–at the university library with unlimited borrowing privileges, one lunch at the faculty restaurant, classes at the graduate school, the prospect of a higher degree. Beautiful, intelligent women were smiling in my direction. If not paradise then I was at least into high gear social mobility toward Easy Street.

And Professor X, my new boss, was my benefactor.

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Eventually I will be pressing out some sour grapes, and in anticipation of this I want to enter a disclaimer. The only viewpoint that I can present about what I might, with some exaggeration, call a research fiasco is my own. Undoubtedly I am imprecise and biased. I do not want to be but I am unreliable and forgetful and perhaps a little vindictive. To lay a little protection on yourself think of me as the sixth Marx brother, or maybe as their cousin, the madcap sociologist, Soci Marx. Yet though the complete story may elude me, the broad crude outline I offer is true and it is cautionary.

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The job: I was to use the concept interorganization and apply it to the relationships of all the medical units in the large neighborhood surrounding the university, where I had my office, and the hospital next door. How did these variously sized and focussed agencies interrelate? Simple enough. Sweetheart give me my hat. It is as good as done.

A few provisos.
I was to work alone. Support from X and Solly, who got me the job, minimal—in fact I never saw Solly again. I met X rarely and for only very short sessions. His time was totally scheduled. So I was to work as an independent post-graduate researcher but on someone else’s project as an employee. A mild contradiction. “I can live with it,” I thought.

Interorganization seemed to include what I would now call a naturalistic emergent. Social relations that grow out on their own, not planned or guided by outside directives. Very like an individual responding to a new challenge with a new response. This in contradistinction to the established, imposed, directed relationship from an external source. But interorganization to what purpose? Not clear. The research was supposed to turn it up a la Borges. Something like looking for the Lock Ness monster or Yeti in the Himalayas or UFOs in the desert. I was skeptical One thing certain, I’ll know it when and if I see it. OK but…“Maybe we should think this through a little more,” I said to myself, reluctant to call attention to this large airborne monkey wrench heading toward our pretty balloon. The concept might be pointing to an empty class. Null. A case of misplaced concreteness. A possible problem down the road. The balloon pops and goodbye free lunch

I understood that a government agency supported this research but I never got to meet or talk with the people from this agency so I never got their intention or their understanding of what we were about. I presumed that everyone was after the objective truth and that as long as I moved in that direction I would be on the correct path. Like the soldier moving toward the sound of the guns.

In my opinion now, models and concepts and theories in sociology can be thought of as statements that exist in themselves. They are not subject to an absolute test. The discovery that a sensitizing concept is not to be found here and now in a local setting, a discovered emptiness, is not a universal statement. It might be found in another place and time. Some visionary might contrive to construct it later. This should be obvious.

There were lots of questions but to make a start I began on the foundation—information central to the issue posed, a census of the agencies and a start on their order of relationships. I canvassed the managers and officials and asked them to describe how they related one agency to the another. There were: three hospitals, several homes for the elderly, clinics, and so on. Someone had made a short start on this and had accumulated brochures and directories and I continued this process and began to interview what I hoped would be knowledgeable and cooperative administrators and participants. I did some 45 lengthy informal interviews, plus phone interviews, plus uncounted site visits and casual chats.

I was not finding any naturalistic interorganizational links and I was beginning to worry. I couldn’t find even a blade of grass that I might tease out into a wrinkled natural plant. There might have been somethings I was missing, but it was still early in the study and many organizational sectors still to considered.

For example, my place in the system didn’t give me access to the upper reaches of finance and administration. C. Wright Mills and others suggest an interlocking elite. My method didn’t call them out. My imagination had not been liberated enough yet to pierce through to the backstage, the back room, the covered and denied. One way to see such a formation would be to follow an incident or a crisis—some event that might mobilize the elite and bring them to the public eye. Otherwise information on the elite might be in histories, journalists’ reports, hearings by legislative bodies, police records, trials, reports of social gatherings and banquets. If this elite existed it might supply the informal interorganization key I was seeking.

A similar connect coming down from the money collecting and disbursing charitable organizations of religious groups along with associated plans, relationships and ideologies. A long history here going back toward the origins of modern medical delivery. Perhaps a naturalistic interorganization might be buried here. They, called the voluntaries, and the proprietaries (doctor centered hospitals for profit) and the governmental medical nets represent at the very least important elements in the medical social order.

So a formal interorganization is coming down from the past as tradition and culture and its current administrators and politicals are making financial decisions and allocations . It is not particularly obvious unless one can omnisciently be at the various decision centers and see the sentiment and the money work.

That the neighborhood people have an exclusive relationship with their embedded medical facilities and agencies and vice versa is partly incorrect. Planners at the upper reaches talk about catchment areas and presume that these are local, that people trickle into pools like rain and that these pools are the local hospital and agency centers. Actually people travel out to other neighborhoods for treatment and other people from afar find their way in. The reality is more complex.

The locals were never the preferred clientèle. The school and the hospital seem like castles in the cityscape. Locals are not preferred. Contiguity does mean contact though. Incoming: street crime and rising rates of emergency room visits for regular medical care. These intrusions were visible throughout the lower and middle-class reaches of the entire society at the time. Expansion outward, especially by the school—student and faculty housing, office space—irritated some of the neighbors. Shortly before our research started, a plan to build a gym under a little used public park met considerable resistance—enough to block the project.

At the time I suspected that the question of the naturalistic interorganization might have been motivated by this political and very agitated setting. This might have been the purpose: Another way to mitigate the the community pressures on these encircled agencies. Pure speculation, but the functional consequences gave it some sense.

A concept hiding in the bushes, a politics that challenged my objectivity and my value neutrality. Like Tolly the tout, I began to have increasingly disturbing concerns. I began to look for Schlep, a comrade who might appreciate and understand my situation.

As I made my rounds one informant mentioned a medical doctor at the hospital with interests similar to my own and I put him on my list of potential contacts. The various parts of the search were not falling together and I was determined to track down all sources of advice and insight.

A very cold winter was approaching.

(This is the second of three related posts)