Individual v. the bureaucracy
From Volatile places: a sociology of communities and environmental controversies By Valerie Jan Gunter, J. Stephen Kroll-Smith
Communities are
- historical
- emotional
- complex
- multifaceted
bureaucracies are
- narrow
- focused
- hierarchical
- inflexible
- rule-governed arrangements.
These two disparate social configurations can coexist through the routine and mundane affairs of life, each encountering each other briefly, if at all.
But at those crises points, where government or corporate organizations are forced to encounter and respond to local needs in a timely and efficient manner, these two different social configurations --communities and bureaucracies-- are often in tension if not in open conflict with one another.
Structural betrayal results from communities and bureaucracies responding in a normal, expected, and incompatible manner to stressful life events.
