Page 486 - Cultures and Organizations

The Evolution of Cultures 451

Bureaucracy is not necessarily popular with those who undergo its
effects. It is thought of as a huge machinery, grinding slowly, with no feel-
ings and no regard for the concerns of individuals—but this is precisely its
strength. Parsons holds that a personalistic governance system can never
control a large polity in a satisfactory way if its citizens are enfranchised.
These citizens will want fair treatment. Bureaucracy detaches people who
are employed in them from the interests that their organizations serve. A
functionary is supposed to treat all customers equally. Of course, the real-
ity is that in most societies some customers are more equal than others;

Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez can fill hour after hour on national TV with
his program “Aló Presidente,” and be admired for it, in a way that Britain’s
Gordon Brown could only dream of. It is clear that in some societies citi-
zens want more enfranchisement than in others. The culture dimension of
power distance explains a lot of the variation. Nevertheless, bureaucratic
organization is still a powerful device for organizing states fairly, in par-
ticular with regard to the provision of public goods.

Money and Markets
Exchange of goods for one another as the main mechanism of trade becomes
impractical in a large state or between states. The use of seashells as cur-
rency probably predates city-states, and money was used in all of them.
Money can travel easily and is not perishable. It provides a mechanism
to assess the utility of very different goods and services. It can buy food,
slaves, or military service. It cannot talk or negotiate, though; for this
purpose, fairs were held regularly in the ancient world, and markets for
common goods emerged.
Money represented a big evolutionary step because it made societ-
ies more adaptive: money can always wait and be used at a propitious

moment for buying the assets that turn out to be most wanted. Traders,

farmers, and states could profit from the flexibility of money. Money,

however, has no memory. It was trade and the need for bookkeeping that
prompted the Sumerians to invent the first written script. Though not

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mentioned by Parsons, written script certainly qualifies as an evolution-

ary universal.
Generalized Universalistic Norms
Bureaucracy, money and markets, and written script all point in the
direction of universalism, of comparability among all people in the case
of bureaucracy, among all things in the case of money and markets, and