The Office Workplace: Communitas and Hierarchical Social Structures

Abstract

Keywords: workplace, occupation, symbolism, ritual, communitas, Heirarchy IntroductionIn this case study I present interview-based narrative indicating experiences of communitas in a small civil service office in Alberta. This is not intended as a review of ongoing theoretical discussions of Turner's concept, or as a comprehensive ethnographic description of an organization. However, while interviewing unemployed and still working members of a Regional Land Use Planning Office in Alberta, it became obvious that these people had lost much more than their and colleagues. Their narratives show a loss of occupational and social community so personalized as to constitute a bond they commonly refer to as one of family. These responses imply a loss of communitas, as defined by Turner and a rich body of related theoretical and case study research, which I build upon here.Victor Turner's (1977, 1974, 1969) concepts of spontaneous, and communitas continue to be used to discuss intense feelings of togetherness in a wide variety of social groups and societal categories. Communitas means a sense of common purpose and communion (Turner, 1969: 95-97) similar to collective human bond that is thematic (or existential) basis of ideal notion of community. As succinctly interpreted by Newton (1988: 65) and Deflem (1991: 15), Turner conceived of spontaneous or existential communitas as an emotional bond arising from shared experiences that allow a sense of transcending emphasis on sociostructural positioning. However, Turner (1982, 1974, 1969) thought of experience as part of a process. As such, collective feeling of transcendence becomes a framed theme of mutual purpose around which a social organization develops, (thus normative communitas), followed by an (logically structured) base and further development of social structuring (or ideological communitas). Eventually, communitas is assimilated and subsumed by social structure and broader foundations of larger society (Turner, 1969: 132). As in ritual, (Kelly and Caplan, 1990: 126) this is both a liberating and conservative process, one of social change as well as maintenance of social order (Schneider, 1998: 299).It is unusual to assert existence of communitas in workplace contexts. Most contemporary case studies illustrate communitas within a liminal antistructure as absence, suspension or inversion of hierarchical structural and status distinctions that are viewed primarily as constraining (e.g. Bettis, 1996; Granzberg, 1989; Kemp, 1999; Kisiara, 1998; Woods, 1993). Consequently, communitas is generally defined in opposition to, and as liberation from hierarchical social structure (Deflem, 1991: 14). This approach emphasizes Turner's distinction between, rather than his equally compelling blending of social structure and processes of communitas. I emphasize associative properties in this study, and although workplace in which my respondents had or did work is certainly not representative, its significance lies in demonstrable awareness of a communitas intertwined by clearly established hierarchical and status based distinctions.It is inherently problematic to assert a situational absence of sociostructural (in sense of hierarchical or status) distinctions. Such analyses connect communitas to social contexts in which the roles and statuses connected with class and gender in larger society are not operative (Kemp, 1999: 81) or a lack of social hierarchy (Bettis, 1996: 116) or context that exists outside structure of roles, statuses and positions (McLaren, 1986: 259). Such claims of situational egalitarianism inevitably require qualification. The common interpretation of a liminal communitas as betwixt and between mainstream social structure derives from Turner's analysis of very specific ritual contexts in which temporary suspension or inversion of hierarchical and status-based distinctions are properties of ceremony. …