The neutered civil servant: Eunuchs, celibates, abductees and the maintenance of organizational loyalty

J. Social

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.WUCI.

1985 8, 313-328

The neutered civil servant: eunuchs, celibates, abductees and the maintenance of organizational loyalty Stephen H. Balch John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, New York, USA

Recent attempts to employ the methods and concepts of sociobiology in the study of human behavior have generated intense controversy. Some of this has arisen because the discipline is viewed by its critics as stressing the competitive, aggressive, hierarchical and basically selfish aspects of social life. (see Allen et al.) While this characterization contains much truth, it overlooks the fact that the most provocative feature of the sociobiological approach is not its tendency toward self-interested assumptions about behavior, but its redefinition of the notion of ‘self. The nature of this conceptual revision and its implications for the study of the sources of cohesion and fragmentation within large human organizations is the subject of this article. The term ‘self is commonly understood to refer to ‘one’s own person’, and being ‘self-interested’ to involve the promotion of personal welfare. Sociobiology, however, does not view the welfare of the person as the ultimate object of individual action. Instead, it assumes that natural selection tends to shape individuals to act in ways likely to maximize the replication of copies of their constituent genes. Since some of these copies will inevitably reside in other individuals, maximizing the replication of one’s own genes requires that an individual construe his ‘self-interest’ to partake in some measure of the interests of ‘other selves’.+ How in the real world can such ‘self-interest’ be pursued? Largely through an awareness of kinship and a readiness to help others in direct proportion to the degree of their perceived consanguinity. This follows from the fact that the number of genes two individuals are likely to share varies in proportion to the closeness of their blood relationship. Thus, it can pay ‘genetic dividends’ to help a close relative despite the personal risk or discomfort that this may entail. To be sure, individuals cannot become indifferent to their own personal fate, for when an organism helps its own person it necessarily assists all its genes. (By comparison a sibling or offspring is only likely to share 50% of the organism’s genes and a cousin only 12.5%). Sacrifice is called for only when calculation suggests that one’s own loss of well-being is exceeded by a kinsman’s gain, with the latter quantity discounted by the proportion of genes likely to be shared + This provides

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in common with him. For example, it will pay for an organism to help a sibling if such help enhances the reproductive prospects of the sibling by more than twice the amount that it diminishes that of the altruist (Dawkins, 1978; 97-102). If attempting to maximize the replication of the copies of one’s genes requires that an individual help its relatives, it also demands that he forebear from giving assistance to the unrelated. To do so is to ignore the same genetic calculus and risk injury to one’s own genes in the service of what are likely to be rival variants. Thus, when cooperative behavior occurs among unrelated individuals sociobiological theory suggests that it is apt to depend on the expectation of mutual advantage, or on reciprocal favor trading, rather than on real interpersonal altruism+. In sum the sociobiological ‘self does not correspond to the individual ‘self but is a layered entity, consisting of concentric spheres of which the individual is but the core. While the core is normally the focus of greatest ‘self-concern’, its enveloping mantles also embody intense, though progressively diminishing levels of commitment to children, siblings, parents, grandchildren, nephews, nieces, and cousins. In the aggregate these mantles may often outweigh the core in their total significance for individual behavior. There are, of course, many complications in the application of this extended notion of the ‘self to the interpretation of social behavior. For one thing it is not always easy for an individual to recognize who its kin are, or to discern the degree of consanguinity or to measure relative risk in particular situations. The cuckoo, as is well known, has long ‘realized’ and capitalized on the fact that other birds can be fooled in such matters, and led to believe that its chicks are their own hatchlings. Since only human beings keep records, other species must make do with cruder rules of thumb, though even humans are more apt to be dependent on simple perceptual cues than they ordinarily realize. Under such limitations the experience of being raised together, physical resemblence, even simple familiarity may serve as the best available clues as to consanguity. though they are obviously far from foolproofl. When seeking to understand human behavior it is also necessary to confront the fact that man is a cultural being as well as a biological animal, and that this duality can make his behavior take unexpected routes. In the view of at least some this requires the conclusion that our species has been largely freed from the pursuit of genetic fitness to which all other creatures are wedded (for example, see Sahlins, 1976: 5661; Harris, 1980: 31 I-315). It is around the issue of the extent to which the cultural capacity liberates mankind from genetic constraints that the current debate over the social science relevance of sociobiology revolves. I will not try to settle this controversy. Certainly both sides have their arguments. For example, on the side of those who stress the transcendent qualities of the capacity for culture is the dramatically visible way in which the products of culture have altered the physical and social environment in which man operates. Since the behavioral expression of a gene is always mediated by its environment many human genes must of necessity manifest themselves in ways quite different from those ‘intended’ when they first became prevalent during the ‘pre’ and ‘protocultural’ phases of human evolution. This further implies that culture has itself become a crucial mechanism in the selection of genes, rather + On this point see Wilson (1978: 155-156). Under certain special conditions. involving competition for resources among whole groups of individuals (interdemic selection) it does become theoretically possible for ‘indiscriminate altruist’ genes to maintain themselves at stable levels within populations. However, the nature of the facilitating conditions makes such outcomes improbable. See Wilson (1975: 107-I 13). t Lumsden and Wilson note that courtship patterns among lsreali Kubbutznik suggest that if children are raised together from early infancy a sense of close kinship can be created, even though actual blood-relatedness is absent (see Lumsden & Wilson, 1981: 86).

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than merely being passively shaped by them. Finally, the high levels of intellectual self-consciousness attained through cultural development have frequently allowed humans to recognize their own biological predispositions and manipulate them in the service of purposes not anticipated by biological evolution+. Having said all this, however, it is still hard to imagine - short of opting for a ‘creationist’ hypothesis - how the capacity for culture could have appeared, persisted or spread if it did not mightily promote the replication of the genes which made it possible. And it is difficult to conceive how this could have been unless powerful, genetically determined constraints of some kind have acted to influence the ‘whats’, ‘hows’ and ‘whens’ of motivation and learning. Thus, as much as thousands of years of cultural evolution may have complicated both the goals and instrumentalities of human life, it would seem safest to assume that biological constraints continue to have important effects upon the patterns cultural forms assume; effects which can be overlooked by the analyst only at his peril. If sociobiological interpretations of human behavior are therefore likely to take one only so far, it is still apt to be far enough to generate many real insights, particularly with respect to the presence and impact of these ultimate constraints. It is with this limited purpose in mind that the arguments and evidence contained in this paper are presented. I believe that two major inferences about organizational behavior can be made once the tendency to maximize the replication of one’s genes is accepted as a major constraint on human behavior. . The first posits that the lives of most people will be centered around what they regard to be their families, a proposition repeatedly substantiated by ordinary observation. This means that the welfare of recognized kin will usually be of much greater concern to individuals than the welfare of others, with the greatest satisfaction in life flowing from acting in ways which normally serve to enhance the family’s prospects for survival and growth. In addition, feelings of loyalty and concern will be particularly intense when it comes to close kin such as parents, children and siblings. The second inference is perhaps not as obvious as the first, but it stands as its natural corollary. It states that the cohesion and integrity of all organizations consisting of members of many families will be constantly imperiled as a result of the priority generally accorded by their members to family obligations and, as a result, will always be somewhat problematical. The effort to cope with these powerfully disruptive distractions must therefore be a primary organizational task, and a major determinant of the nature of internal organizational arrangements. Moreover, when organizations function in stressful and competitive situations their relative ability to deal with this problem will be one of the key factors in determining their prospects of survival. The pursuit of family oriented agendas to the detriment of organizationally defined roles can take a variety of forms. Corruption, for example, is in essence the diversion of organizational power and possessions to the service of private needsi. Thefts of time, energy and attention officially committed to the organiztion - ‘goofing-off, ‘goldbricking’, ‘malingering’, etc. - while not generally considered to be forms of corruption, basically involve the same type of maneuver. Outright treachery, chronic intrigue, pettiness and backbiting, also often reflect the intrusion of private ambitions into what is ostensibly the realm of teamwork and common purpose. To be sure, corruption, + It is the major goal of this article to show how political be. consciously reshaped to achieve such outcomes. t See, for example, the definitions of corruption reviewed center on the substitution of private roles or responsibilities

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inefficiency and disloyalty do not invariably involve the diversion of resources to family, they may only aim at personal enrichment or they may serve the ends of some rival organization. But they are family driven with sufficient frequency to invite special consideration of the impact of this deep-seated conflict of loyalties on the pathologies of organizational life. Furthermore, certain types of organizational subversion, such as nepotism, are exclusively matters of family preferment. In general then, whenever ambition or greed lead to organizationally disfunctional behavior it is a good bet that the ‘ambitious’ or ‘greedy’ individual is not as literally egotistical as those terms normally imply. The ‘self he is seeking to advance or enrich probably consists not just of the ‘core’ of his own person, but of the ‘enveloping mantles’ of close kin as well. Because family usually provides an individual with the social connections he finds most satisfying, supportive, and trustworthy, it is likely to work to undermine the integrity of large organizations in another way. Quite distinct from its power to engender prior and preferred loyalties, it is also apt to provide alternative networks of social communication which can propagate beliefs, values and identifications inconsistent with organizational tasks. Even contractual obligations with nonkin, such as friendships, and inclusion in patron-client relationships, all of which may cause conflicts with formal organizational membership, are frequently acquired through family. In short, the family provides the individual with a readily available array of channels for plugging into the external world, independent of those afforded by any formal organization to which he may belong. . In the section which follows I will describe examples of some of the more striking techniques used by a sizeable variety of bureaucratic organizations to ensure the loyalty of their officers. As we shall see each of these depends for its effect upon the neutralization and/or redirection of family attachments and feelings. The very extremity of these methods bears a most convincing witness to the underlying gravity of the problem, while their wide historical provenance nicely displays its rather universal character. The examples also suggest how a wide range of seemingly disparate administrative and political practices can be subject to common interpretation when their analysis is informed by sociobiological theory. The majority of these examples are drawn from the practices of preindustrial bureaucracies. There are two chief reasons for this. First, preindustrial societies tended to be characterized by extended rather than nuclear family types, making the clash between public and private obligations more conspicuous, and probably more difficult to manage. Second, the bureaucracies of these societies were not generally encumbered by liberal scruples, hence their ‘solutions’ to the organizational problems raised by this clash, while often brutal, were also vivid and revealing. By choosing these as my examples I do not mean to imply that the potential for conflict of this kind has disappeared, simply that it is now likely to be managed in more roundabout and therefore less dramatically didactic ways. Indeed, in the third and final section of this article I will try to develop a typlogy of techniques for managing this type of conflict which are as applicable to its contemporary as to its historical manifestations. Castration, compulsory celibacy and kidnapping were commonly employed by governments and other public institutions in pre-industrial societies to procure loyal officials for service in high and responsible posts. The object was to destroy existing family attachments, prevent the emergence of new ones (or at least render them less organizationally threatening) and isolate the official from social contacts that might dispute the claims of the bureaucracy in question. In addition, they were sometimes coupled with efforts to contrive a family-like atmosphere within the place of service itself,

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refocusing the intimate loyalties and affections of the official on his colleagues and administrative superiors. Each of these elements of old-fashioned personnel policy, some of which continued in use until the early twentieth century, deserves closer examination.

Castration

Eunuch officials played key roles in the state services of a majority of the imperial bureaucracies which flourished throughout the world during the twenty-five hundred years preceding the Industrial Revolution. Their use as administrators and trusted royal servants originated in the ancient Near-East, possibly in Assyria or Persia, and then rapidly spread both west and east (Mitamura, 1970: 26). They were conspicuous figures in the Greek kingdoms of Hellenistic times (ibid.: 22) the Roman Empire (ibid.) and the Byzantine state (Runciman, 1933: 8485, 92). Virtually all the Moslem polities found employment for them, most especially the greatest of these, the Empire of the Ottoman Turks (Mitamura, 1970: 17). In China eunuchs constituted a distinct and powerful administrative cadre for two thousand years (ibid.: 153). Perhaps it is significant that in two of the civilized areas where eunuchs were not commonly utilized, western Europe and Japan, feudal rather than bureaucratic regimes were more the norm. Popular imagination usually conceives of the eunuch as a muscle-bound harem guard, secured against temptation by the nature of his disability. There is, of course, some truth in this stereotype, as the protection of the sovereign’s concubines was invariably entrusted to them. But this hardly defined the limit of their functions. In fact, in some of the societies where eunuchs were found, such as Byzantium, the sovereign was not polygamous and harems did not exist. Generally speaking, eunuchs were most liable to be employed in those positions having intimate access to the physical person of the ruler, posts in which the ruler had to have the utmost confidence in the loyalty of his servant. Thus in Byzantium, Turkey and China eunuchs managed the inner palace services (which encompassed such sensitive operations as the preparation of the sovereign’s meals) acted as a royal bodyguard and messenger corps, and kept custody of the ruler’s personal possessions. Even supervision of the harem entailed more than the guardianship of female virtue, it also frequently involved the oversight and tutelage of the younger royal princes. In an era where the phrase ‘back-stairs intrigue’ could usually be understood quite literally, household management and political responsibility were inseparable. Within this realm the eunuch had unsurpassed advantages. Often, however, his activities ranged well beyond the domain of the privy chambers. Under the Ottomans, for instance, the corps of white eunuchs was responsible for running the academy which trained the youths (not themselves eunuchs) destined to be future pashas and viziers (Shaw, 1976: 114). In the Byzantine Empire the office of Grand Chamberlain, originally a major domo whose role evolved into roughly that of Prime Minister, was for a long period reserved for eunuchs (Runciman, 1933: 92). During the Han, Tang and Ming dynasties eunuchs were usually predominant among the highest state officials, much to the chagrin of their leading rivals for court power, the Confucian scholars (Mitamura, 1970: 1488153). This was particularly true during the Ming period when eunuchs ran imperial agencies entrusted with functions equivalent to those of the Army Corps of Engineers, the FBI, the IRS and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (ibid.: 105-I 15). Finally, whatever might be thought about their machismo, eunuchs also received major military commands. The eunuch Narses, for example, who completed the Emperor Justinian’s reconquet of Italy during the sixth century, belongs among the great captains

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of Western military history (Jacobs, 1973: 19). Similarly, Cheng-Ho, known to historians as ‘Three-Jewelled Eunuch’, assuredly deserves a place among the world’s greatest admirals, having led a vast tribute-gathering expedition of scores of ships and thousands of soldiers across the Indian Ocean to Arabia and Africa in the early fifteenth century. Eunuchs could win military distinction at lower levels as well. Within the Ming army, for example, the only units allowed to use firearms were those composed of Eunuchs (Mitamura. 1970: 108). What special virtues recommended the eunuch official to so many different rulers in so many distinct realms? There were probably several, but the most obvious was the eunuch’s status as a man without the capacity to found a family of his own+. Sovereigns could be quite conscious of the advantages that accrued from this fact. The Han Emperor Hsuan, the example, is reputed to have decided to rest his power on eunuch officials following the detection of a plot against his son and heir hatched by the highly placed relatives of his second wife. Having executed the culprits, he concluded that he would only be safe in the future so long as his ministers lacked relatives and other undesirable ties (Mitamura, 1970: 145). According to Xenophon, Cyrus the Great of Persia came to recruit eunuchs as his bodyguards through a similar process of reasoning. Cyrus, writes Xenophon. . came to the conclusion that no man could ever be trusted, who should love another more than the person who wanted his protection. Such men therefore, as had sons or wives, that were agreeable to them, or youths that were objects of their affection, he deemed to be under the natural necessityof loving them best, but observing that eunuchs were destitute of all these ties, he thought that they would have the greatest affection for those that were able to enrich them the most, to vindicate them if they were wronged, and to bestow honors upon them [Xenophon, (trs Watson & Dale, 1898). VII, 5: 2291.

Cyropaedia

Whatever else it might do, castration did preclude a subordinate from entertaining the idea of establishing a dynasty of his own, though to be sure, the social origins of the typical eunuch were usually (but not always) lowly enough to by themselves bar such dreams. An example of what could happen when a ruler ignored the directions that the ambitions of ‘intact’ officials might take is illustrated by the case of the Byzantine Emperor Michael III (known as ‘the Drunkard’). It was Michael’s folly to ignore established administrative precedent by filling the office of Grand Chamberlain with a unmutilated personal favorite. Not long thereafter he was deposed and murdered by this protCg& who as the new Emperor, Basil I, founded one of the longest lasting and most distinguished dynasties in the annals of Byzantium (Runciman, 1933: 92; Ostrogorsky, 1969: 232). Even where usurpation was not in the cards, castration eased the danger, or at least lowered the cost of other bureaucratic evils. Corruption in office was less likely because the eunuch generally lacked dependents for whom he had to provide. Furthermore, as was the case with Turkish eunuchs, wealth accrued during a lifetime of high service frequently reverted to the monarch after the official’s death (Penzer, 1936: 131). Thus, if corruption did occur, the loss to the crown was only temporary. Needless to say, eunuchs were not a foolproof administrative device. The razor could not completely shear off a man’s ambition, guile or capacity for treason. Moreover, it could not even eliminate all family attachments. Although unable to father children, eunuchs had parents, siblings, nephews, etc. When eunuchs were able to retain contact with their families serious problems could arise (Mitamura, 1970: 38, 148). As we shall + Deficient in testosterone,eunuchs Observers

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pliable as well. 1970: 35-38).

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see, however, these difficulties were avoided by the general practice of importing new eunuchs from far-off regions. On the other hand, rulers sometimes indulged prominent eunuchs by allowing them to acquire small symbolic harems of their own, or even, in China. to adopt children (Jacobs, 1973: 44-51). This gave them more social respectability and helped to fulfill their remaining emotional needs. Undoubtedly, though, it also trifled with the underlying logic of the eunuch system.

Celibacy Celibacy means abstinance from marriage and strictly speaking is not the same thing as chastity, which requires sexual continence +. Various public and quasi public authorities have attempted to impose these conditions upon their officials without resorting to actual castration, though celibacy, involving modifications of the law rather than of temperament, has been easier to enforce than chastity. Celibacy, coupled with the ideal of chastity, has been at least a nominal obligation for the Roman Catholic priesthood for about fifteen hundred years. Its first conception as an aspect of Christian calling, however, dates back to the time of St. Paul who imagined the celibate as a kind of spiritual eunuch able to concentrate on service to God because he did not have to think about a family [I Cor: 7: 2635 (NEB)]. Throughout the history of the Church this rationale has been reiterated. In 1563, for example, the Council of Trent reaffirmed the rule of clerical celibacy on the grounds that, among other things, a married minister of religion would be too preoccupied with his wife and family to give proper service to God*. A spokesman for the American Church, Father John L. McKenzie, set it forth again in 1969, asserting that celibacy frees ‘the priest for the service of others. There are no family claims on his time, nor . . . demands on his income, . . thus he can be supported at a low rate’ (McKenzie, 1969: 93). The Roman Catholic Church is the oldest bureaucracy in the western world, with a continuity unbroken since the time of the Caesars. During the general fragmentation and breakdown of political institutions that marked the transition to the Middle Ages, it alone retained intact the ability to enforce some measure of administrative discipline over wide areas. Since a key manifestation of the decay of centralized authority in early medieval Europe was the pervasive tendency of originally appointive positions to become hereditary it is probable that the rule of celibacy, though imperfectly enforced, had much to do with preserving the Church’s cohesion. Significantly, the initial efforts to bind the entire priesthood to celibacy did not begin until shortly after Christianity had been elevated to the status of the official religion of the Roman Empire, an event which for the first time conferred upon the Church vast wealth and extensive wordly power. Possessing such institutional commodities obliged the Church to find the means to protect them, particularly because the ambitious and covetous might now be attracted to religious careers. According to the historian of this subject, Henry C. Lea, the original decrees on celibacy issued by Pope Siricius in the fourth century were designed to respond to this danger in two ways: by relieving the priest or bishop of the temptation to alienate Church properties in favor of wife or offspring, and by detering from entry into the Church those who were unfit to accept its demanding disciplines (Lea, 1932: 43). Propounding such strictures was, however, far easier than making them stick and during most of the early Middle Ages concubinage + Wehs~er Lv Third New Inrernurionol Dic/ionory, s.v., ‘chastity’ z New Curholic Encylopedia. 1967 ed.. S.V. ‘celibacy’.

and ‘celibacy’.

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and even marriage were hardly rarities among the Roman clergy. Moreover, clergy who did marry frequently fulfilled the doleful prophesies of the early fathers, enriching their dependents at the expense of the Church, and even passing their benefices as inheritances to their children (ibid.: 115-125). Despite repeated efforts, clerical marriage was not wholly stamped out in the western church until the beginning of the thirteenth century, and then only after a two-hundredyear effort by a series of reformist Popes intent upon making the Church the most powerful institution in Christendom (ibid.: 279). These Pontiffs opposed clerical marriage for the same reasons that they denounced the purchase of benefices and the investiture of priests and bishops by laymen: each threatened to deprive the Church (and God) of what was rightfully theirs (Ullmann, 1955: 297n). Concubinage, on the other hand, was more tolerable because bastards and mistresses did not customarily possess rights of inheritance or a claim to the status of their fathers. The underlying nature of the issue was perhaps most clearly indicated by a decree promulgated in IO 18 by Benedict VIII, which not only strengthened the penalties imposed on clergy who married, but also declared that their children were forever to be considered serfs of the Church, to be denied all rights to own or inherit property+. Because ecclesiastical domains, unlike secular ones, did not normally pass from father to son, lay rulers were tempted to extricate them from the sway of the Church and bring them within their own patronage. Once control had been lost over duchies and counties, bishoprics frequently represented the only local jurisdictions in which a king or emperor could place a reliable agent, assuming Rome could be compelled to acquieset . During the height of its medieval power the Roman Church was able to defend most of its perogatives in such struggles, (the most dramatic of which led the German Emperor Henry IV to his humiliation at Canossa by Pope Gregory VII). but the rise of absolutism and the coming of the Reformation eventually turned the tables. Churchman, of course, were frequently employed by western monarchs in court as well as seigneurial function, a fact generally attributed to their literacy but probably also related to their status as celibates. Administrative celibacy crops up in several other settings. During their heyday as a fighting unit, for example, the members of the Janissary carp, the picked troops of the Ottoman Empire, were bound to a life of celibacy and presumably selfless devotion to their sultan (Shaw, 1976: 123). The despotism of the Zulu kings depended upon the temporary celibacy of successive generations of Zulu youth, who might be compelled to live in barracks until nearly forty awaiting their masters’ call to arms (Wilson & Thompson, Eds, 1969: I, 342-343). In the West African kingdom of Dahomey, also a strongly centralized state, virtually the entire palace staff, eight thousand strong, consisted of women, who though figuaratively married to the king were, given their numbers, effectively married to no one. To some of these women was entrusted the task of supervising the behavior of royal officials in outlying areas, while the larger number, masculine in physique, formed the royal bodyguard of Amazons whose loyalty to the king was reputed to be unswerving (Hallett, 1970: 309).

Kidnapping

A man can be prevented from becoming a father but he can hardly be stopped from being + New Carbolic Encylopedio, 1967 ed.. s.v. ‘celibacy’. 1 The historian Hajo Holborn views the origins of the great medieval investiture controversy the German Emperor Henry IV against Pope Gregory VII in precisely these terms (see Holborn.

which pitted 1967: 17-19).

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a son. brother, or cousin. Nonetheless even those ties can be severed given a sufficient degree of ruthlessness. A number of ancient and medieval states employed abduction as a means of acquiring recruits for their military and civil services. The practice was particularly widespread in the Islamic world. Essentially, boys and young adolescent males captured in war or purchased from professional slave traders would be forcibly carried great distances from their homelands and inducted into government service in preference to, or even to the exclusion of free, native-born personnel. Each of the major Islamic dynasties had its own particular favorite source of slave cadets. The Abbasid Caliphs, for example. who appear to have pioneered the practice in the ninth century, favored the Turkish regions of Central Asia where the people were known for their hardiness and warlike temper (Forand. 1961: 17-18). The Fatimid and Ayyubid rulers of Egypt also used Turks, but had other slave corps as well. consisting of Sudanese, Slavs, Greeks and Italians (Hrbek, 1977: 12). The Omayyads of Spain imported many of their slave recruits from among the Black and Berber populations of Northern Africa (Pipes, 1979: 193n). The Mamluk regime of Egypt, which went as far as to choose its sultan from the ranks of former slaves. renewed its cadres first from Turkish Central Asia and later from Circassia in the northern Caucuses (Hbrek, 1977: 39-40). The Ottoman Turks, following a variation of this system acquired many of their slave soldiers and administrators via a regularly levied ‘child tax’ assessed upon the Christian communities of the Balkans (Shaw, 1976: 113-I 14). This form of recruitment served several objectives. It permitted, for instance, the raising of soldiery from among the unspoiled and martial peoples of barbarous lands rather than the relatively effete populous of the metropole (Pipes, 1979: 75-76, 153). But, more to the purpose of this article, it also allowed a ruler to avoid dependence on persons entangled in the tribal and kinship networks of his own domain who thus might have the social status and connections to threaten his power (ibid.: 84; Little, 1984: 400-401). As strangers in a foreign land, cut off forever from their natural social alliances, slave soldiers and officials were potentially more pliable. In the words of the Arab historian Ibn Khaldun, ‘. . . to prevent them [his people] from seizing power, and in order to keep them away from participation [in power], the ruler needs other friends not of his own skin, whom he can use against [his own people] and who will be his friends in their place. These [new friends] become closer to him than anyone else’ (quoted in Pipes, 1979: 83). In addition, slave soldiers and officials were purposely procured at an age when they were both still emotionally and intellectually impressionable enough to be given a new psychological identity, language, culture and religion, as well as a sense of group affiliation entirely centered on their masters and colleagues in servitude (Pipes, 1979: 8; Ayalon, 1953: 206). To ensure that this occured, the young slave was exposed to a lengthy course of training and resocialization before he could assume significant responsibilities (Pipes, 1979: 9, 90). Eunuchs, as a rule, were also imported from afar as youngsters. Their lives were thus apt to be completely afamilial. Ottoman eunuchs, for instance, were recruited from two sources: the country of the upper Nile, which supplied the black eunuchs of the seraglio, and the Caucases, which provided the white eunuchs of the palace school (Penzer, 1936: I 19-l 5 I ). Though the Islamic forms of slave service were not duplicated in Imperial China, Chinese eunuchs were also typically recruited from points distant from the capital. and often from among groups who were not ethnically Chinese (Mitamura, 1970: 53). for military or civil service were manumitted Many slaves recruited after finishing their schooling, but the relationship of social dependence upon their

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patrons nonetheless remained (Pipes, 1979: 21-22). This special status allowed the private details of their adult as well as their youthful lives to be regulated in the interests of the sovereign. Marriage, for example, could be entirely forbidden to them, as was true of the Ottoman Janissaries during the first two centuries of their corporate existence (Shaw, 1976: 143). Alternatively, they could be prohibited from marrying into native families, or compelled to accept brides bestowed upon them by the ruler (Forand, 1961: 146). They could also be confined to certain quarters of the capital and discouraged from mixing with the general population (ibid.: 49; Shaw. 1976: 123). The whole system was wont to decay when slave soldiers and administrators managed to escape these disciplines. Thus, if allowed to marry, they might come to demand that their locally born sons be admitted into their regiments and accorded the same rights to hold high civil office that they possessed. The gradual extension of such privileges to the Turkish Janissaries was an important factor in undermining their military readiness and loyalty to the sultan (Kinross, 1977: 285). Following the Ottoman conquest of Egypt the Mamluks also gained for their sons the right to be eligible for the highest state preferments. As a result they were gradually transformed from an externally renewed cadre into an internally renewed caste with their solidarity increasingly disturbed by the contentions of rival Mamluk ‘houses’ perpetuated by heredity (Little, 1984: 401). For Egypt this meant a long period of chronic instability and petty civil wars that was not brought to an end until the extermination of the Mamluks by a westernizing ruler in I8 I I (Holt, 1975: 1439). Problems also arose when one caliph, sultan or emir was succeeded by another. The loyalties acquired by a slave cadet were often more personal than dynastic and were not always readily transferable to a new sovereign (Ayalon, 1978: 99; Pipes, 1979: 2 I ). Weak, effete or indolent successors, in particular, had difficulty in commanding the respect of this class. Furthermore, in some regimes slave soldiers were purchased not only by the sovereign, but by his senior officials as well, acting in their own right. The system could therefore operate to create a constellation of tightly knit cliques holding each other in the most suspicious regard. (Little, 1984: 399-401). What the use of slave soldiers and officials did tend to brake, however, was the wholesale dispersal of political power beyond the confines of the central apparatus, since the apparatus itself was insulated from the rest of society. Consequently, while the pattern of political conflict in these states was often sharply factious and bloody, it was less likely to be either as loosely feudal or broadly pluralistic as was the case in the Christian West.

Adoption

Depriving an individual of the possibility of normal family attachments creates an emotional vacuum at the center of his life. Filling this vacuum by giving him a new sense of family which redirects the feelings typically reserved for kin toward organizational superiors and colleagues, can offer further possibilities of strengthening group cohesion. The evidence suggests that the architects of the administrative systems to which we have been referring shared some intuitive awareness of this. Thus, measures taken to disrupt the existing family ties of officials were frequently coupled with others designed to engender a family atmosphere within the organization itself. This frequently appears in the forms of address and titles used among organizational colleagues. The Roman Catholic Church provides the most obvious case, headed by a Pope (a ‘Holy Father’), and filled with other ‘fathers’, ‘mothers’, ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’. Similarly Moslem legal texts frequently speak of the slave, or former slave, and being the

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‘son’ of his master (Forand. 1961: 75). Thus we read in documents dating from the Abbasid dynasty that, leaving upon a pilgrimage to Mecca, a Turkish freedman-general saluted the caliph as high ‘father’, while another is quoted as saying that the services owed to the caliph are those owed by ‘sons to fathers’ (ibid.: 76). Moreover, the newly recruited slave, upon conversion to Islam, usually adopted his master’s nisba (or kin name) thereby gaining symbolic entry into his family (Pipes, 1979: 89-90). Examples also exist of eunuchs being accorded some of the privileges of kin. During the Ming dynasty, for instance, the palace eunuchs were allowed to address the Emperor as ‘Old Master’, and the Empress as ‘Old Madam’, terms normally only reserved for use within ordinary families (Mitamura. 1970: 99). The ‘marriage’ of the king of Dahomey to his bodyguard and principal court functionaries would also appear to fit into his pattern. The ability to produce a family-like atmosphere inside an organization may also depend upon the kind of functions individuals are assigned to perform and the quality of the relationships they assume with one another. The performance of highly personal, even intimate services, together with a high level of preoccupation with the guidance and nurturing of the young, for example, would seem more like those expected of kin than would execution of clerical or technical tasks. While the categories of officials we have been discussing did indeed carry out many assignments of clerical, technical and even military nature, it is interesting how often the intimate and nurturing aspects of service did come to the forefront. Child-care and education, for instance. were almost always among the key responsibilities of eunuchs, as was also, of course, personal attendance upon the adult members of the master’s family. Thus in China eunuchs frequently acted as the ‘nannies’ and ‘governesses’ of the royal children. including the heir apparent. gaining thereby a great psychological hold over them in later life (ibid.: I IO-1 15). In Ottoman Turkey the black eunuchs surrounded the young princes in the harem and managed the access of its members to the sultan (Penzer, 1936: 128-133). while the white eunuchs spent their time training and supervising the slave cadets (ibid.: 98-99). In most other Islamic courts eunuchs also played a major role in educating slave cadres (Pipes, 1979: 98-99). Members of the Christian clergy, for their part, have traditionally spent much of their time dispensing education, acts of charity and good advice among thermselves and their parishioners. and many of the celibate Catholic religious orders have been especially dedicated to such service. Relationships of an overtly sexual character could arise in these settings too. Eunuchs not infrequently served as sexual objects for their masters (Jacobs, 1973: 19). The young slave-cadet of the Islamic world, if sufficiently good-looking, could also rise to influence on the basis of homosexual liasons with the ruler or other well-placed patrons (Pipes, 1979: 98-99). In fact, as a result of the practice of secluding women, homosexual attachments were fairly prevalent and generally tolerated in the typical Moslem court, with slave recruits comprising a chief source of the ‘beardless ones’ most prized as lovers (ibid.).

Resolving organization - family conflicts I have been attempting to demonstrate the extent to which the architects of a variety of pre-modern bureaucracies regarded the family ties of their subordinates as potential threats to organizational strength and discipline. I have also been trying to show the similarity of the solutions devised to meet this threat in societies that otherwise had little in common. One may well ask, however, what all these rather baroque devices have to

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do with the problems of running large organizations in the modern world? Even if it is admitted that preoccupations with family are still central to the lives of most individuals, it is clear that modern mores will no longer tolerate the use of castration, kidnapping and slavery as routine administrative measures. On the other hand, there do exist alternative methods by which modern organizations can try to defeat, contain or constructively rechannel the fragmenting forces engendered by familial bonds, and while these are less drastic than those we have just reviewed, they operate on the basis of the same principles. In the following section I will try to give an inventory of them and briefly suggest their possibilities. I would argue that there are four basic techniques open to the leadership of large organizations for dealing with disruptive effects of family obligations: serverance, harmonization, mimicry and restitution. Severance in its extreme forms involves the disruption of an individual’s family attachments, though it can also be expressed as a preference for recruiting persons who, for reasons of their own, are not closely attached to families. As we have seen castration, celibacy, and kidnapping, stand as the most vivid historical example of this practice. Where these severe practices flourished they were generally dependent not only on the existence of despotism but also upon acceptance of the legitimacy of slavery. Thus in liberal societies the extreme forms of severance are rarely encountered. Partial forms of severance are, in contrast, still fairly numerous. For example, compulsory public education laws, insofar as their object is to transfer a significant part of the socialization function from the family to the state fall into this category. Indeed, the argument for public education has very frequently involved the explicit assertion that it promotes a sense of solidarity with the larger community and an adherence to national ideals that would not otherwise be transmitted through purely private socialization+. It is probably of more than passing significance that public education was first introduced in many European nations precisely when the creation of a national consciousness to transcend the particularistic mentality of earlier times was beginning to be perceived as an important political objective (Reisna, 1922: 12; Good & Teller, 1969: 295-300). The widespread tendency to favor males over females in filling organizational positions of all sorts also probably expresses a desire to capitalize on the ‘natural’ differences between the sexes in degree of commitment to family. Because women have traditionally been more closely tied to the routines of childbearing and rearing than men, they have also been regarded as less committed to nonfamily tasks. As a result many organizations willing to take a chance on a male recruit are more hesitant with females even if in all other ways they are equally qualified. Moreover, military organizations, whose tasks demand an unusually high level of group cohesion and loyalty have not only preferred young male recruits, but when they have had choice, unmarried ones. Harmonization represents a second technique by which organizations seek to cope with the disruptive effects of family. It involves not a severing of family ties in the interest of the organization but an effort to ensure that a members family interests are as compatible as possible with its overall goals and operating style. This is essentially a matter of

t See,for example,the languageof the provisionof the French Constitution of 1791 dealing with education: ‘There shall be created and organized a system of instruction common to all citizens and gratuitous in respect to those subjects of instruction that are indispcnsible to all men. Schools of various grades shall be supplied according to need over the entire kingdom. Commemorative days shall be designated for the purpose of preserving the memory of the French Revolution of developing the spirit of fraternity among all citizens, and of attaching them to the Constitution, the country and its laws’ (quoted in Reisner. 1922: 12).

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selective recruitment with an eye to family background, but it may also involve guiding members with respect to key life decisions. Both churches and highly ideological political movements, for example, have often insisted that adherents marry partners within the fold. Class origin is frequently the critical datum in implementing a harmonizing strategy since a family’s ascribed class status is generally a strong indicator of its basic interests. Thus Marxist organizations aim to attain the solidarity and dedication necessary to make a revolution by filling the ranks with persons of classes likely to gain when it comes. The European monarchs of an earlier period who sought to build their power by bestowing high offices on bourgeois parvenues, instead of aristocrats, were following a similar logic. Organizations may also assess the suitability of a prospective member’s spouse before admitting him or her to the ranks, or make their suitability a condition for advancement within the hierarchy. Some American firms have made this a regular practice by taking into account the extent an executive’s wife exemplifies the company image or fits into its social life when hiring and promoting senior personnel (Whyte, 1951: 109-158). The creation of women’s auxilary groups, paralleling otherwise all-male organizations, is yet another means of facilitating harmonization. When an organization tries to give its members the sense that it is their real family, or at least an extension of their flesh and blood families, it is using the technique of mimicry. Its object is to allow the organization to derive benefit from the feelings people normally reserved for their kin. The process of psychological adoption undergone by slave-cadets in the Islamic world was a rather extreme and successful example of this strategy, relying upon a power sufficient to totally control the individual’s environment. Where such sweeping power is unavailable, or where large masses of people rather than small secluded cadres constitute the target populations the results achieved are likely to be a lot less impressive. Since mimicry can tap some of the deepest sources of devotion even limited results are worth the effort, particularly where organizational responsibilities involve lifetime commitment or physical peril. The titles awarded to leaders and the terminology employed to describe relationships among organization members frequently betrays the use of this technique. As has already been observed such titles are most conspicuous within the Roman Catholic Church. They are, however, also a mainstay of the modern national state and virtually all nationalist movements as is attested by terms like ‘motherland’, ‘fatherland’, ‘founding father’, and ‘father of the country’, which abound in nationalist literature and propaganda. In addition, members of secret societies, and college fraternities refer to themselves as brothers, soldiers on the eve of battle become ‘a band of brothers’ or ‘brothers in arms’. Black Americans, feeling embattled, take to calling each other ‘soul brother’ or ‘sister’, while members of the federal bench refer to themselves as brethren. Appealing to the intellect at a somewhat higher level are group myths which attempt to assert a common descent or biological relationship for collections of people whose ancestry, in fact, is diverse. Jews, Arabs and ancient Romans, for example, have all imagined themselves as descended from a common ancestor, as have other less prominent groups. Modern ideologies of racism also fortify group cohesion by spurious assertions of a common biological ancestry. It is interesting that Plato in the first extended treatise on the nature of the ideal state thought it necessary in the interests of unity to obscure from the inhabitants of his Republic the true facts of their parentage, encouraging them to regard each member of the older generation of citizens as a parent

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and all those of the same generation as siblings [Plato, The Republic (tr. Shorey, 1930). I, v: 4634691. In fact, a great many projected utopias derive their emotional appeal by positing societies in which brotherly feelings would everywhere reign supreme, and authority would be exercised in a compassionately paternalistic manner. Conjecturally, an artificial sense of kinship may also be fostered by measures designed to make unrelated individuals look similar or failing that, at least familiar in appearance, thereby mimicking a common attribute of close relatives. Military uniforms are a case in point. Though they are usually thought of as providing a means of instant identification on the battlefield, they may be of equal importance in camp and on parade for the sense of likeness and group solidarity that they create. Indeed, uniforms are worn by a variety of organizations that never venture near a field of battle, but nonetheless seek to foster a strong sense of esprit de corps. Members of religious communities. for instance, dress in habits and vestments. Boy and Girl Scouts garb themselves as little troopers, students wear standardized blazers and blouses, Elk, Moose and Masons sport outlandish apparel, and many branches of the civil service are uniformed. The fourth technique for resolving organization-family conflict could simply be called restitution. Here no attempt at all is made to reduce. co-opt or redirect family loyalties. Instead, the organization enlists the energies of its members through a series of contractual exchanges in which specific sacrifices for the organization are swapped for things of benefit to the family. Essentially this is a system of payments for services rendered which remains wholly independent of the feelings of the participants. It is also the approach most typical of modern organizations, particularly those of a private character which are primarily economic in nature. The major advantage of this strategy is its great flexibility. The rights and obligations of both members and organization can be specified in detail through contractual agreements, with individuals being easily dropped, added or shifted within the organization’s roster as the occasion dictates. In a sense, the strength of the method lies in the very transience and finiteness of the bond it produces. This is, of course, also a source of grave potential weaknesses, especially for those organizations which require their members to act swiftly, without calculation and at substantial risk to themselves. Organizations whose activities require a high degree of secrecy, and thus cannot tolerate the free exit of knowledgeable members are also likely to find restitution unacceptable. at least insofar as it is not accompanied by other loyalty-engendering techniques. Finally, any organization relying on restitution must have both the capability and the self-discipline to carefully monitor the performance of its staff and make the appropriate responses. All these factors tend to make restitution the preferred instrument, in liberal societies, of business organizations which operate in environments of limited conflict, are subject to the disciplines of the market, and lack the powers to adopt more sweeping measures. Modern organizations of a military or political character, on the other hand, are more likely to couple restitution with severance, harmonization, and mimicry. Restitution in pre-modern settings often created special problems, due to the absence of fully monetized economy. When wages are paid in the form of cash an organization can trade benefits for services in a neat and simple way liable to cause little deformation to its formal structure or goals. An employee thus transforms his cash payment into goods and services for himself and his family without reference to the functions he performs on the job. In contrast. restitution in pre-industrial settings often had to be less in the form of cash and more in the perogatives of the post itself. In other words the official was frequently authorized. or at least encouraged, to use the powers under his

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command not only to discharge his duties but to provide for himself as well (Heidelheimer, 1970: 1 l-12; Haselitz, 1970: 79). Accordingly, a tax collector could be allowed a share of the take en lieu of an adequate salary, a judge permitted to charge fees or take gifts for doing justice, and a govemer given the opportunity to appoint relatives, friends and personal followers to positions within his command. The problem was that such modes of payment clearly impinged upon the ability of the organization to discharge its mission, and obstructed the answerability of subordinates to superiors. Yet such expedients were necessary where funds could not be easily disbursed, or possessed limited purchasing power. Certain kinds of restitution do not require tangible benefits, to be effective. Just as organizations can foster the illusion of family bonds where they do not exist, they can also create the semblance of incentive systems where they do not ‘really’ exist. When religion is called to the service of the state, either through a ruler announcing that he has a divine mandate, or possesses the status of a god himself, this sort of thing is usually being attempted. To the degree his subordinates are convinced his reputation for being able to help or harm will be substantially enhanced, as well as the feeling that he hears, sees, and understands all that lesser beings may intend or attempt. Through the clever manipulation of the symbols of Voodoo folk religion, for example, Francois Duvalier was able to achieve, in tandem with more prosaic methods, just this sort of result in Haiti only recently (Heinl & Heinl, 1978: 586587, 664.). In more secular societies, the imputation to a leader of extraordinary political prescience, through the careful and sustained orchestration of a ‘cult of personality’ may have similar consequences.

Conclusion Sociobiology suggests that human beings, like other living creatures, have been designed by evolution to replicate as many of their genes as possible. Since this implies a strong predisposition to give unreserved cooperation only to those perceived as being closely related, the cohesion of organizations made up of many ‘unrelated’ individuals should always be problematic. Several thousand years of administrative experimentation, however, have led to the development of a variety of organizational strategies aimed at diminishing these centrifugal influences. This is not to say, of course, that tensions within large organizations have only derived from the pursuit of family interests. Real differences in judgment and values, to say nothing of loyalties to other large organizations are also potent causes of conflict among the members of groups. But all large organizations, whatever their purposes and in whatever social or cultural setting they may be found, must solve the delimma posed by their members’ private concerns before they can productively confront any of the others. Because this problem is so ancient and elemental it can easily be overlooked. This, however, is very unwise. While any enduring organization must perforce have worked out some method of dealing with its member’s private concerns, these will generally vary greatly in effectiveness. Such differences will in turn lead to differences in organizational strength, competitive advantages and prospects for long-term survival. Anyone wishing to understand why some organizations fail and others prevail must therefore be mindful of relative efficacy of these methods. Moreover, since alterations in technology, cultural norms, economic conditions, and family characteristics will change the utility of different solutions only an alertness to the underlying issue will allow the process of organizational growth and decay to be understood in all its aspects. While any ambitious theory of organizational stability and performance must therefore contain more than just an

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appreciation of the phenomena described here, without this appreciation adequate to its task.

it will not be

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