The anthropology of power, agency, and morality : the enduring legacy of F. G. Bailey

F.G. Bailey’s contributions to anthropological theory and method are illuminated in this edited volume. Chapters variously present, apply, and trace the origins of Bailey’s seminal ideas regarding power’s place in the relationship between agency and structure, and the way that people tactically deploy emotions and cultural norms for personal gain. -- . The enduring legacy of F. G. Bailey Front matter 1 Cover 1 Half Title 2 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Contents 6 Contributors 8 Preface 14 Introduction, or: ‘Yes that’s it!’ 18 Part I: Contributions to the discipline 36 F. G. Bailey’s political anthropology and its malcontents 38 Morality, truth, and power in F. G. Bailey’s ethnography of politics 55 Politics as theatrical performance and backstage pragmatism: work and legacy of F. G. Bailey 70 Part II: Professorial mentoring 84 Leadership influence: an aperture on ‘character’ 86 A personal memory of F. G. Bailey 102 Mancunian Realism and Melanesian anthropology 115 Part III: Individuals in situations 132 Negotiating the gap between the ‘ought’ and the ‘is’: older Americans’ strategies 134 Conundrums of caste, history, and truth: Hindu Nadar identities in urban South India 149 The moral guises of injustice: from Bisipara to Aotearoa 166 Part IV: Rules and roles of conflict 182 The social construction of the Washington Consensus on international trade policy 184 ‘Rules are weapons’: can F. G. Bailey’s toolbox aid our understanding of irrigation bureaucracies? 199 Politics and administration in the narrow neck of the hourglass: an account of normative and pragmatic rules in Norwegian local politics 215 Tertius gaudens aut tertium numen? Third-party roles in conflict and conflict resolution 231 Part V: Social change 250 Tribe, (caste) and nation in the Balkans: contradiction and change in Yugoslavia and Croatia 252 Old boys or a new middle class? Defining leadership through bridge-actions in a Fijian Pentecostal church 267 ‘The need for enemies’: modernity and malevolence in Tribal India 281 Index 298