A-J-J 3 "Up the Anthropologist" Revisited, methods & limits for studying "up" =~=~=~=~=~=~=~@ 5/18/2000 I. What does it mean to study "up"? --The title is not meant as an insult (up your rear end), but it means studying the top end of the social hierarchy; the places we find all types of capital: social capital (one's connections and acknowledged status), cultural capital (knowledge and distinctions), and financial capital. Usually anthropologists go to the edges of a society, seeking ways to understand people's lives there. But more and more people are looking in their own societies and are examining dominant persons and organizations there. Instead of avoiding or ignoring the pillars of a society, particularly in one's own community, it is time to look closely at how authority and power is created and expressed. That is exactly what Laura Nader wanted to see in 1970. Now 30 years later, I wonder how far we have come? I will return to that question at the end. The main question I wish to think about here is what methods we can use to study something as large and powerful as a local government, or corporation [b.moeran], for that matter? But before talking about the methods to study a city hall you may wonder why a person would want to do so. What can be learned? II. Why look at city hall? Far from being an invisible or maybe troublesome part of one's fieldwork and home country life, major social institutions like local government play a big part in people's lives. And most people raised in that society do not begin to understand them. Maybe a flow chart about how a bill become a law from school days, or the lore picked up from a tv series about a hospital or law firm might be the limit of a person's knowledge of institutions like medicine, law, finance and investments, social welfare services or tax audits. This seems to mean that institutions like these are not for public access, as Nader put it (296). The public is what these institutions act upon. They handle the public, rather than make themselves open for members of the public to use the organization. So for practical reasons and for research purposes, local government --as obvious and as unknown it is-- is a good subject to think about. For as long as there have been cities, and probably even before that, ritual and technical specialists were organized into a governing machinery. Bureaucratic organizations around the world share a lot in common, but in Japanese life the government plays more than a background, supporting role. It also takes the most important place in all matters of public interest. So in a literal sense, when we say public discourse in Japan, it is exactly that: the words and ideas of government spokespersons. There are also voices of journalists and academic experts, as well. And sometimes a citizen group will speak up, too. But usually the "front stage" of public matters is dominated by public servants. This authorial role of the authorities can sometimes be authoritarian. That is, private citizens and businesses and voluntary organizations will feel unable to challenge the government's word; at least directly and in open debate. So _shimin sanka_ or citizen participation has been very limited until now. My goal is to learn how the attitudes and relationship between townspeople and their local government is reproduced. In particular I want to see how effective the city hall's own internal reform efforts have been in activating citizen participation. But as an outsider this is not always easy. And a subject as big and diverse as several hundred civil servants brings other difficulties. In cities around Japan the rules, decisions and records of city hall affect people's lives directly: in school, media, work, health. But city hall also overshadows citizen led initiatives. The close up look of anthropology can show how city hall continues to dominate public life. So with a view to understanding community building and citizen leadership in Japan, I am now studying the city hall in Takefu, Fukui-ken in order to learn its culture. Why study the regional town of Takefu, population 72,000? There are a couple of reasons: --I have done fieldwork there in the past and so have a small amount of social capital. --The current mayor is reform minded and came to office as part of the citizen group I studied 5 years ago. So I have felt more or less welcome to study and contribute what I can to the changes in town government --Since this mayor was elected after a large scandal with the former mayor, townspeople and civil servants expected to see changes. Then the economic downturn nationally has led to close examination of the government's way of doing business until now. So there is momentum at all levels of government for self-examination. That makes it much easier to probe the status quo now. In fact there are many examples of changes underway: * Information disclosure laws, and development of cable and Internet channels for city information * Ethics codes for civil servants * Energy reduction and waste reduction efforts, including household compost program, school books, trash study * Elderly and handicapped infrastructure being developed * Training and development of the town's civil servants and a management practices review * Remaking the next 10 year plan by using citizen subcommittees * Planning and infrastructure to help advance the place of the city's women in leadership roles --I already know some of the civil servants and I enjoy living in Takefu --which makes the work go more smoothly! --Sociologically the town is interesting as well: lots of foreign laborers (mostly Brazilian, also Chinese), it is the leading manufacturer in the prefecture, it is very traditional or conservative in its ways. So changes here should be possible just about anywhere else, too. OK. So now we know the big role that government plays in community life, not only "minding the store," but also "having the first word and the last word, and for that matter the middle word, too. Now we can go ahead and ask about methods. How do we approach the problem, define it, and face the restrictions we run into when studying "up"? Here is a list of things I want to find out. Maybe you can think of other things to add, as well. _____________________________________ 1. How do citizens and their organizations fit in to matters of public (everybody's) concern, since the city leads most things? 2.How to sketch the textures and patterns of work habits and experience that has been built up over many years? In short, what exactly IS the culture of city hall? 3. What attitudes and values are embedded in the standard practices at city hall? How are these learned and reproduced among staff and among the general public? And how do these meanings affect citizen participation in town developments? 4. What changes is Mayor Miki promoting and what obstacles does he run in to; how does he overcome the problems? 5. What effect are these initiatives having on citizen involvement in the town's community life? III. What kind of a place is city hall? What does the subject consist of? ---P I C T U R E S O N S C R E E N Anthropologists don't usually study something as wide ranging as the local government workplaces. Like Nader says, we like residental settings with a single focal point that allows direct methods of participant observation, not subjects that are spread out over several locations and times, in which participant observation plays only a small part. We like to be in an equal or privileged position in terms of knowledge, authority, technology or net-worth; for example, not to be faced with a subject with more of this capital than ourselves. And finally, even though anthropologists have faced extreme hardships in faraway and unfamiliar places, when it comes to something normally taken for granted like one's local government, they seem timid in approaching the subject (p.302). So, city hall is big and spread out in several departments and locations. The workers have power, are busy, and normally do not particularly welcome scrutiny. The subjects can be defensive, uncooperative, misleading or disinforming. They can be threatening to one's reputation and prospects of doing good work. Or even if well meaning, they can provide too much information, so that one becomes overwhelmed. Then there is the institutional memory to account for; and in fact many subcultures within the larger organization: built around age, gender, friendships and shared interests, subject matter of responsibility or level of responsibility (title). Finally the edges of the organization are fuzzy. The city government blurs with city council, city appointed citizen committees, quasi-public organizations including cultural and sports facilities, loaner employees from the other towns, businesses, the prefecture or national government. But when a person speaks of "the city," "the government," or "city hall" (shi, gyosei, shi yakusho) the main subject is the aggregate of workers, forms, permissions and fees controlled in the name of local government. And this aggregate is what I want to describe. What are the limitations that I bring to "studying UP" at city hall? First of all, I am not a native speaker of Japanese. Nor did I grow up in the town of Takefu. So I know very little about all of the family histories and personalities connected to city government past and present. And although the loads of printed material contains precious information, I can only work through small amounts at a time. Likewise I can only monitor local news events via friends there, since reading the newspaper every day, watching the cable TV broadcasts, and so forth is not the best use of my time. On the other hand, working in my favor, I am not a Japanese, so I take different things for granted than would a social scientist raised and trained in the country. Many things I simplify terribly, but by the same token this streamlined view of matters makes it easier to focus on the research question at hand. Being an outsider, I am something of an unknown quantity, potentially helpful, potentially awkward. But in fact my past record during the past 15 years has been good. So I am not a total stranger, either. As such I have cultivated rapport little by little with some of the (mostly male) workers at city hall. IV. What are the methods available to describe the city hall culture? Citizen relationship to and regard for city hall? In 1970 the experiences working in the USA led Nader and her students to use indirect methods to study UP. They looked at public relations documents for understanding the preferred self-image of the organization, and at internal documents on the structure and statistics of work planned and accomplished by the organization (308). They looked at who uses the organization and how they perceive it. (295). Then to get some sense of the people in the organization across a longer time frame they collected personal documents and memoirs (307). They also relied on interviews of various sorts, both formal and informal, face-to-face and by telephone (308). Of course today they would also have the hybrid medium of oral and written communication, the email message, too. In the 1990s a variety of books have appeared by anthropologists about the varieties of corporate culture. The full range of concepts are brought to bear, from collective identity in jokes, stories, and symbols to ritual-like phases a person passes through during a career. In my study of Takefu City Hall I have looked at stories about the organization from the local press, conveniently clipped and sorted for reference by the press club on city premises (kisha club). I looked at stories generated by the organization's own publications, too. I have interviewed a handful of people in depth and others casually. To get a quantitative picture I wrote a multiple choice survey, checked it with a Japanese speaker and with a city hall contact and then with the blessing of the general affairs section, distributed it as part of a much larger battery of questions sent out by the city's management consultants. To track organizational changes over time, I consulted archival material showing maps of the various sections as the expanded or merged with other units. I looked at tables that show number of workers per section to see the growth of the city hall overall and its expanding range of public services. To get a glimpse of new staff enculturation I participated in the 1999 orientation sessions, both as observer and as a speaker at one point. For a taste of the culture of meetintgs, I have attended some of the city-sponsored panel discussions and symposia, as well as a couple of the citizen staffed committees. Of particular interest were the annual reports by each years topical "project team" study group. The dozen or so members are a mix of volunteers with interest to staff assigned to be a conduit to their home section. And to learn about the activities of citizen groups, I have been involved with a couple of groups each month, as well as by local email newsletter lists. Then conversations with acquaintances and friends round out the picture I am forming of the city's style of governing. Throughout, I have looked for ways to provide some benefit or usefulness to the city hall. So, for example, I have pursued some of their reform initiatives comparatively in the USA via the Internet. That way I can offer counter examples for their reference and consideration: Freedom of Information Act, waste management, and applications for the city webpage have been some examples. Other clues to the culture of city hall I want to collect include material culture such as meeting spaces, public counters, and staff desk and work areas. If possible I will seek permission to observe some of the routine weekly meetings of sections and departments, too. V. What is the overall quality of the portrait of city hall I will paint? What is missing is the depth that daily first-hand work with the public and with colleagues would give. But then a full time staff job would not allow time to collect the range of things I am seeking. So there is a trade-off. An insider is entrusted with work. This brings feelings of importance, group membership and loyalty. Wearing the badge and doing the city's work carries responsibility and perhaps the tension from expectations. So this weightiness and meaningfulness is lacking from my onlooker's vantagepoint. Men and women have very different outlooks both inside city hall and looking in from the outside. Being an outsider and outlander makes my view more partial still. But even though the mix of individual experiences and organizational processes is not a precise science, hopefully patterns will emerge and an overall culture of city hall be visible. By studying "up" and describing the culture of city hall, the groundwork will be laid to look at the rest of the project about how citizens interact with the local government and regard it. And by thinking about the special problems of studying "up" I hope others will be encouraged to study other parts of the society in Japan that have been taken for granted as merely "background" to people's lives. For the social commentary we write, we have always been dependent on the help of others who know other things than we can know. This is true of classic participant observation studies as well as this more diffuse subject matter of organizations. The cooperation and guidance of local knowledge makes our work possible. But when we "study UP" then it seems we have little to offer in return for this assistance. To some extent our academic titles or the introductions made by a colleague may lend some symbolic cache. And anything to make oneself useful will be appreciated. Even if we produce nothing of immediate use, then at least the effort demonstrates sincerity. This honest show of good intention is highly regarded, as long as it is tempered by good sense and discretion. After all paying one's attentions is a kind of flattery, as long as attention does not cross the line into hard scrutiny. Look if you will, but don't look too closely.