17

THE ACADEMIC COMMUNITY AND THE IMAGE OF LIMITED GOOD1

Janet M. Fitchen
Ithaca College

ABSTRACT

Anthropological analysis of the contemporary U.S.A. should move beyond describing

observed behavior to probing underlying cultural assumptions. But it is particularly
difficult for anthropologists enculturated within the U.S. to confront their own cultural
premises and blindspots. One useful strategy is to analyze American behavioral data in terras
of models developed by anthropologists for describing other cultures. This article takes an
irreverent look at academe, using George M. Foster's model of peasant society.
Participant-observation on campuses shows that the Image of Limited Good, which Foster found
in peasant communities, seems also to underlie and explain everyday behavior in the academic
world.

INTRODUCTION

As anthropologists increasingly undertake the study of cultures of

modern industrial and post-in dust rial societies, we make a strong case that
much of the theory and method developed for studying small-scale tribal
and peasant societies continues to be appropriate. But we often overlook
the fact that even the substantive findings and analytical explanations
derived from the study of non-in dust rial societies may be usefully trans-
ferred to our new field sites. Anthropological analysis of contemporary
U.S. culture is a case in point.
If anthropological study of contemporary U.S.A. is to go beyond the
superficial level of behavioral description and organizational flowcharts, it
must become more bold in seeking to identify and examine underlying cul-
tural assumptions. But this deeper endeavor is precisely what is most dif-
ficult for the anthropologist enculturated within the U.S.—and hence,
quite often avoided. Doing fieldwork at home requires frequent reminding
to look deeper, and involves constant vigil against unconsciously projecting
cultural assumptions and blind spots onto the research setting. A useful
strategy to help indigenous anthropologists surmount these problems when
studying the U.S. is to analyze data derived from this society in terms of
models that anthropologists have developed elsewhere for describing other
cultures. 2
Admittedly, such transfer of analytical models may do violence to our
deeply held sense of context, and to our heritage of historical
particularism, for we are lifting an analytic framework out of the society in
which it was developed, and applying it to a very different socio-cultural
context. The goodness of fit will obviously be problematic, but that is not
the central question. In fact, simply understanding how and where the
model does not fit gives us new insight into the society under scrutiny.
The real justification for the exercise, though, is that such a leap of
18

analytic imagination may raise questions that would otherwise go unasked,

and suggest cultural assumptions that might otherwise remain undetected
and unexamined.
This paper demonstrates the attempt to make sense of a sub-set of
American society and culture by applying an analytical framework develop-
ed to describe a very different societal setting. We propose to take a
slightly irreverent look at American colleges and universities in terms of a
model that was developed by George M. Foster to describe peasant society.
It is suggested that FosterTs cultural model of the peasant world may be
rather broadly applicable in the academic world, and actually may render
intelligible and predictable much of the behavior we "natives" of academe
see around us every day.

COGNITIVE ORIENTATION AND THE PEASANT COMMUNITY

FosterTs theoretical position can be summarized briefly here, based on

his seminal article of 1965:3

1) The "truth" which anthropologists seek in their studies is cul-

ture, defined as a "common cognitive orientation" shared by the
members of a society [p. 293]. The cognitive orientation orga-
nizes peopleTs lives, filters their perceptions, and shapes their
behavior. It defines and brings about normative behavior in the
particular society. Thus, the cognitive orientation is not merely
a description of behavior, but also a model of the orientation un-
derlying behavior.

2) Since the cognitive orientation is mental, but largely below con-

sciousness, it can neither be directly observed nor verbally elic-
ited from informants. The anthropologist therefore must arrive at
a statement of cognitive orientation by a method Foster calls
"triangulation"—compiling observations of behavior, seeking pat-
terns in the behavior, and making hypotheses about common per-
ceptions and assumptions underlying the patterns. The model
thus obtained is then tested and honed by making inferences: if
people do in fact hold this orientation, then certain characteris-
tic behavior patterns should follow.

The particular cognitive orientation Foster found in a Mexican commu-

nity and proposed as a model for peasant society in general, was entitled
"the Image of Limited Good." Peasants, says Foster, perceive their commu-
nity as a closed system in which all desired things in life "exist in finite
quantity and are always in short supply" [p. 296]. Furthermore, "there is
no way directly within peasant power to increase the available quantities"
of the good or desired things in life [p. 296]. Therefore, "an individual
can improve a position only at the expense of others" [p. 297], since his
own gain reduces the total available in the finite, limited pool of the Good.
This Image of Limited Good both underlies and explains the patterns
of social institutions, economic actions, and personal behavior observed in
 19

the peasant community. Common patterns shaped by this orientation in-

clude: suspicion and mutual distrust; reluctance to accept leadership roles;
general absence of compliments; and desire to look and act like everybody
else, so as not to attract suspicion of having obtained more than one's
share of the Good. Another pattern flowing from this cognitive orientation
is reliance on luck, fate, treasure, and outside sources to increase oneTs
goods (so as neither to deplete the finite local supply nor to preempt the
share available to any fellow member). This characteristic behavior
set—and much more—is seen by Foster as rational and consistent in the
context of the peasants* view that the good things in life are limited and
inexpandable. According to Foster, the important context which shapes the
behavior and makes it rational is not the actual "real" world (in which
goods may or may not, in fact, be limited) but the locals1 view of the
world.

FOSTERIAN ANALYSIS APPLIED TO THE ACADEMIC COMMUNITY

The remainder of this paper will demonstrate that Foster's Image of

Limited Good can also help us understand a type of community found in
contemporary U.S.A.—namely, the college or university of the 1980s.
"Fieldwork" for this analysis has consisted of many years spent as a
participant/observer in two academic institutions, occupying various roles
as student, professor, colleague, committee member, interested bystander,
faculty spouse, parent, friend, and commentator.1* This case study, like
Foster's, has been expanded and corroborated by more limited observation
of a number of other field sites, by familiarity with the literature, and by
commentary from other anthropologists. 5 It is suggested that
anthropologist/readers enrich their reading of this paper by supplying
their own observations from their own vantage points in academe.
The ethnographic observations from the academic field sites can be
grouped under the same four headings used by Foster, with only slight
rewording of his phrases, since each of the four categories he uses to de-
scribe the Mexican peasant community also represents a culturally recog-
nized type of Good in the academic communities described here:
1. Resources (Foster refers to "wealth");
2. Warm personal relationships (FosterTs words are "friendship,
love, and affection");
3. Well-being (Foster uses the more restricted term "health");
4. Personal honors (FosterTs term is "personal honor").
In each of the four areas of the Good, observed behavior patterns from
the academic community will be presented and examined in terms of the hy-
pothesized underlying cognitive orientation.

1. Resources

Examination of behavior in the academic community of the 1980s seems

to indicate a cultural orientation of Limited Good with respect to access to
and control over resources. This worldview is most clearly seen in the ad-
ministration, where it underlies decisions made at various levels, but it is
20

also obvious among faculty and students. The worldview pertains to many
types of resources valued in the academic economy, only three of which
will be discussed here.
Resource A: Money. Money is the most obvious resource, and is
deemed to be in scarce supply (which at present seems to be an accurate
perception). This scarcity view is exhibited throughout the budget-making
process. For example, there is only so much money allocated to faculty
salaries. If faculty salaries are to be increased across the board to reflect
inflation (or to remain competitive with other universities, or to be even
marginally competitive with non-academic employment), the money "has to
come out of" some other part of the institution^ overall budget—perhaps
library acquisitions, renovation of classroom buildings, or visual aids. But
deliberations and decisions about these allocations are carried on outside of
faculty awareness, lest faculty become aware that the share of the pie
destined for faculty salaries is not absolutely fixed. Within the salaries
budget, too, there is regulated competition between departments for scarce
dollar resources: if a department manages to persuade a dean or provost
to allow a 10% salary raise for that particular department, this raise may
come out of the budget monies that would have been allocated to some oth-
er department—obviously a department with less clout. Similarly, Depart-
ment X may obtain authorization to hire a sabbatic replacement, while De-
partment Y, which is regarded by administration as less central to the
mission of the institution, is denied such funds, and is left to shuffle
teaching loads as best it can. Within a department, where there may be
some discretion over allocation of salary dollars, earmarking funds for
raising entry-level salaries (in hopes of attracting bright young scholars)
will preclude their being spent to improve the salary range for tenured
professors. Department administrators, as well as deans and provosts,
must constantly make such trade-offs in the allocation of finite, limited
monetary resources, knowing always that with a fixed pie, enlargement of
one person1 s or departments serving will proportionately reduce the size
of serving available for someone else.
This competition for scarce dollars must be controlled, however. The
academic community must limit self-aggrandizement and selfishness on the
part of its component parts and individuals. Rife competition, bald grab-
bing for dollars, and flagrant "empire building" or showing-off of wealth
are held in check. Various Fosterian "self-correcting mechanisms" [p. 302]
operate to keep any segment from drawing a disporportionate share of re-
sources. Inequalities that do occur in the allocation of institutional dollars
should not be flaunted, and generally are obscured by the decision-making
process itself. When the dean meets separately with each department chair
in pre-budget discussions, the sense of department autonomy engendered
may be secondary to the promotion of ignorance by each unit concerning
the budget of every other unit and of the institution as a whole. The
questions a chair may ask, the issues s/he may raise with the dean, have
been limited beforehand by preventing her/him from knowing the overall
big picture. Potential intra-faculty conflict over money is also minimized by
a variety of fiscal and management techniques: for example, if all faculty
salaries are allowed gradually to sink together vis a vis the inflationary
 21

rise in cost of living, competition for the salary budget may be minimized.
Maintaining such community balance is in large part the job of higher level
administrators, especially provosts, and is the foundation of their deci-
sion-making power.
Another way in which the academic community controls intracommunity
competition over limited dollar resources is by encouraging its members to
seek more of this limited good from outside the system. Thus individual
faculty members seek external contracts, grants, and fellowships, which
augment the institution^ allocations for staff and faculty salary and over-
head. Various officers of the institution seek sponsored research from both
government and the private sector; administrators lobby in the Statehouse
and Congress for student tuition-assistance; and the alumni office and de-
velopment office utilize ever more sophisticated public relations campaigns
to solicit private donations. From whichever source, as long as these dol-
lars come from outside the system, those who secure them are not reducing
anyone's share of the local pie—they are merely nibbling from an external
pie (where they are competing more with outsiders than with colleagues in
the home institution). They may be envied for eating better, but as long
as they consume no more than their share of the local pie, they pose no
threat to the well-being of others in the local institution. Success in such
ventures can therefore be openly proclaimed and mildly praised.
Resource B: Students. Students, particularly undergraduate stu-
dents, have increasingly come to be defined as a resource in the academic
community—and a limited, finite one at that. With one eye on the demo-
graphics of the post-baby boom decades, and another on the institutions
limited monetary resources, the academic community nowadays actively so-
licits, recruits, woos, entices, and enrolls as many students as possible.
Before the period of fat years grinds to a halt, the institution wants to
store up reserves (tuition dollars) for the prophesied lean years ahead.
And so freshmen are "tripled" in double dorm rooms; courses are
scheduled at odd hours and places; class size is increased; and students
are thrown into competition with each other for registration in popular
courses, for space in libraries and study carrels, and for time on playing
fields or ice rinks. This crowding results from the fact that the institu-
tion, through the arm of its admissions office, is pushing to increase its
"yield" or "take"—hoping to harvest the largest possible number of
paid-up entrants from the yearTs total accepted applicants. These phenome-
na seem to result from the application of the Image of Limited Good to the
student-as-resource.
Even after they are safely harvested, students continue to be viewed
as a limited resource, competed for as course enrollees and department ma-
jors. With a finite total number of students, the number available to any
single professor or department can be expanded only by taking them away
from enrollment and majors elsewhere on campus. Administrators play a
"numbers game" that rewards professors and departments with large course
enrollments and penalizes those having fewer students—with both the car-
rot and the club being allocation of dollars for faculty lines in depart-
mental budgets. Department competes with department, individual professor
with professor, to come out "looking good in the numbers game." With a
22

limited pool of students, each one who majors in Department A will thereby
reduce the number available to major in Department B; a pre-med student
who takes an elective history course is unlikely to also enroll in a political
science course. If a sociology course is taken to satisfy a business stu-
dents distribution or core requirement, s/he probably will not sign up for
an anthropology course. Somewhere in the administration, computers regu-
larly compile records on how many majors each department has and how
many students each faculty member teaches per term. These statistical
"body counts" are used by administration decision-makers in allocating dol-
lar resources (including merit raises), often with no apparent weight as-
signed to the quality of teaching. (If this is so, then faculty members who
give in to the temptations of popularized lectures and easy grades as a
way to attract more students are correct when they claim to be doing so
"for the benefit of the department.") In faculty perception, the "numbers
game" confirms the belief that the administration defines undergraduate
students mainly as bodies with tuition dollars attached—and as a finite,
limited resource.
Resource C: Power. Power, as in decision-making power, is another
resources that is perceived by each constituency or segment of the institu-
tion as a Limited Good. Power may be centralized and closely guarded at
the top levels of the academy, lest lower-level administrators and common
faculty usurp and retain for themselves too much of it. However, even up-
per-level administrators complain that they have no power to get anything
done. 6 Power appears to be closely entwined with money: it is demonstrat-
ed through decisions in the allocation of scarce funds; and it is often de-
rived from control over money. Power also derives from having control
over or attracting a large share of that other scarce resource, students.
Schools, units, programs, or departments with greater student appeal may
gain both more money and more power because of it.
On paper, power is represented by the flow charts of institutional
governance that depict faculty council, standing committees, ad hoc com-
mittees, and student senate. But the impotence of such bodies is widely
recognized by most constituencies: although they may busy themselves with
the affairs of campus life, the parameters of their decisions are already
determined from above. The frustrations of their personnel, and the diffi-
culty in obtaining new recruits to serve on these bodies (often mislabelled
as apathy), may result from the fact that people perceive "power" as a
limited, finite resource on campus, and that relatively little of it comes
within the grasp of such formal bodies.
Thus, whether we consider dollars, students, or power, it appears
that behavior in the academic community is based on a perception that re-
sources are limited. 7 It should be added that in recent years the actuality
and the perception have been closely correlated, both moving further in
the direction of the Limited Good. The halcyon days of unlimited resources
are over. With resources becoming more scarce, decisions must often be
made among several compelling alternatives. To minimize competition and
hard feelings among the contenders for diminishing resources, administra-
tors pull in the reins of power even tighter. In their best hydraulic
hyperbole, administrators marshall frightening figures to emphasize that
 23

the pool of students is shrinking and outside financial support is drying

up. An Image of Limited Good becomes the metaphor for our time.

2. Warm Personal Relationships

The second of FosterTs four categories of cultural Good will be treated

very briefly here—but would make fruitful research for participant-
observation on campus. Given the just described cognitive orientation with
respect to resources, it is obvious that close personal relationships will
also be perceived as limited, finite, and inexpandable—with resulting
interaction predictably cool. Departments and faculty competing for re-
sources are unlikely to interact cozily, even when their subject matter
overlaps. Among both faculty and graduate students, close relationships
may be avoided as a means of protecting oneTs rights over research pro-
posals and findings—which also may be thought of as a limited, finite
good. 8 And so we find that across department boundaries—and even within
departments—socializing, fraternizing, or even intellectual discoursing may
be rare. Cards are played close to the chest, office doors kept shut, and
cordial formality may prevail. While the institutionalized explanation for
this lack of warm personal interaction is that everyone is too busy, it may
well be that the real reason is that people believe there is only so much
interpersonal warmth available in the system. To exhibit a lot of it would
be suspect.

3. Well-being

This Good is also culturally defined by the academic community as ex-

isting in limited quantity. The markers of well-being are a diverse col-
lection, varying from campus to campus and among the several component
parts of a single institution. For faculty, well-being may include such
perks as an office with a view, a parking space in the central campus, ac-
ceptance into a special program or research facility, or never having to
teach an eight oTclock class. For students, well-being may include such
items as tickets to a performance by the Grateful Dead or to the hockey
play-offs, a good number in the housing lottery, the opportunity to be
seen by fellow students at a "facetime" event, and not having to wait in
line (for a tennis court, course registration, or lunch). Here again, in
perception even more than in reality, the total amount of well-being avail-
able in the system appears limited. In the students* view, any increase in
JoeTs well-being diminishes JohnTs or JaneTs well-being proportionately. In
faculty perception, the possible expansion of the secretaries* lounge quick-
ly generates increased vigilance over their own office-space turf. Such
perceptions, if widely held, may further limit the warm personal relation-
ships available within the system. Again, this is a fruitful area for more
research: to what extent does behavior observed on other campuses con-
firm the existence of an Image of Limited Good with respect to perceived
well-being?
24

4. Personal Honors

The fourth category of cultural Good, FosterTs personal honor, is, in

the academic community, usually equated with and measured in terms of
personal honors. 9 In the campus worldview, honors are achieved, usually
in small quantities, from a limited supply. Individuals exhibit a pervasive
concern with receiving honors, and an anxiety that someone else may con-
sume more than his/her share of personal honors from the limited public
trough. The institution as a whole also perceives honors as an inexpand-
able and limited good, as is clearly indicated by its abiding concern with
national prominence of the institution and reputation of its component de-
partments, teams, and professorial notables. For example, only a few col-
leges will receive the maximum number of stars in a prominent guide to
colleges. Only ten institutions can have chemistry departments ranked in
the top ten nationwide: if another chemistry department should gain a
berth near the top, then the one at the home university might be bumped
off the list. Only one school can claim to be the national football champion
in its division; there is only one number one basketball team, only one top
team in ultimate frisbee.
The operation of a principle of Limited Good in the realm of personal
honors is clearly demonstrated with regard to promotion and tenure of fac-
ulty. If there are only a limited number of tenure slots available (as with
an explicit or implicit ceiling on the percentage of a department or school
that may be tenured), then one professorTs attainment of tenure is another
professorTs notice to start job hunting again. Those professors who fail to
obtain as much recognition within the system as they feel they deserve
may complain about or disparage other individuals thought to be consuming
more than their fair share. Alternatively, they may seek more honors from
the public arena beyond the academy. Not only journal articles, but also
popularized writing, television appearances, fame, even notoriety, may be
coveted by faculty as outside sources of personal honors. (Of course, an-
other alternative for the person unable to gain a satisfying share of hon-
ors is to exit from the institution entirely, either joining a parallel institu-
tion elsewhere, or going into private practice as a consultant, writer, en-
gineer, or entrepreneur.)
Among students, too, there is much obvious concern with personal
honors. In the student worldview, social standing and reputation among
peers is of utmost importance—probably often surpassing intellectual devel-
opment. But even academic standing is culturally recognized by students
as a Good. Concern with protecting oneTs cumulative gradepoint average (a
measure of personal honors) may influence a studentTs selection of courses,
sometimes leading upperclass students to take a disproportionate number of
100-level courses. The underlying student belief that grades are a measure
of personal worth is illustrated in various forms of grade competition (in-
cluding exam cheating, use of other peopleTs term papers, and sabotaging
the work of fellow lab students). Students also quite clearly believe that
there is only a limited, finite supply of "good" grades. They "know" that
when a professor "gives" grades, s/he superimposes a bell curve so that
the number of As has to be much less than the number of Bs or Cs.
 25

Therefore, one students A on a term paper means one less A available to

other class members.
But unbridled competition for limited personal honors is not allowed to
tear the institution apart. To some extent, competition is regulated by a
cultural convention that competitors must appear not to be competing. And
when they do in fact draw a hefty share of honors from the public pool,
they must appear surprised, and should attribute their success to luck,
rather than to their own efforts. This convention shows up frequently in
faculty behavior, but is especially prevalent among students. The student
who "aces" an exam will attribute his/her performance to luck ("I lucked
out"), so as to avoid suspicion from other students that he/she actively
sought it and crammed for it—and in so doing perpetuates the student
myth that studying has relatively little to do with achievement. (This pat-
tern sounds very much like FosterTs peasants!)
Competition for personal honors is also regulated by a variety of lev-
eling mechanisms. One such mechanism among the faculty involves commit-
tee assignments. A bright young assistant professor may be appointed to
head up some campus committee (for example, the committee on core cur-
riculum, which involves tremendous work but results only in "proposals"
which may be shot down in faculty meeting). The committee responsibility
saddles this person with duties that will consume time and talent suffi-
ciently to remove him/her from effective competition in the quest for ten-
ure, promotion, and other personal honors. Perhaps this latent function of
committee assignments explains the common reluctance, particularly among
non-tenured faculty, to assume leadership roles in campus governance and
academic committees, despite the opposing belief that serving on committees
"looks good" on oneTs record for promotion and tenure review.
In these patterns of leveling mechanisms, regulation of competition,
and reluctance to exercise leadership, one sees many similarities between
the U.S. academic community and FosterTs peasants. One is reminded par-
ticularly of the Mexican cargo system, in which a man who has accumulated
some savings is prevented from accumulating more by being elevated to a
position of mayordomo, in which he must use up his own wealth in the
conduct of office. There may also be other suggestive comparisons: Fos-
t e r s description of the peasant community mentions "sensitiveness to real
or imagined insults to personal honor" [p. 300], and also "absence of com-
pliments" [p. 304]. Still another similarity to FosterTs description of peas-
ant society is uniformity of clothing styles, among students and among fac-
ulty, which may be an institutionalized means of covering up the active
pursuit of limited honors.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

Taken together, observed behaviors in these four categories of cul-

turally defined "Goods" seem to substantiate the hypothesis that the un-
derlying cognitive orientation of the academic community is an Image of
Limited Good. In fact, it might be suggested that the most startling
finding of this analysis is that the model of Limited Good, taken from a
closed corporate peasant village and dropped onto the data of U.S.
26

colleges and universities, seems to fit better than one might at first have
expected. Foster's analysis appears to be applicable as both description
and model; able both to integrate and to explain the behavior of the
component parts of the system: administration, faculty, and students. The
model might well have applicability, with some alterations, to American
academia in general. Though it may not be the only fitting model, and the
fit may not everywhere be perfect, its application promises heuristic
benefits in helping to explain one segment of U.S. society to itself.
If this exercise in analytical imagination strikes some readers as
far-fetched, they are urged to consider what Foster said about the very
village in which his model was developed:

At no point has an informant even remotely suggested that this is his vision
of his universe....
[However]...the model of Limited Good, when "fed back" to behavior in
Tzintzuntzan, proved remarkably productive in revealing hitherto unsuspected
structural regularities.... [p. 297].

When we turn our attention to U.S. academic institutions of the present,

even though the natives of academe may be unaware of it and could not
explicitly state it, a cognitive orientation of Limited Good seems indeed to
underlie and shape much of their behavior.
A tongue-in-cheek implication of this analysis seems inescapable: if
the essence of a culture is its cognitive orientation, and if the academic
community rests on the same cognitive orientation as that of the peasant
community, then perhaps, after all, we academics really are "just a bunch
of peasants"!
In a more serious vein, if the two types of communities, peasant and
academic, are shown to rest on essentially similar cognitive orientations,
then it should follow that many other behavior patterns in academia would
also resemble characteristic peasant behavior. Thus, it should be expected
that in academic institutions, as in Foster's peasant society, behavior
would be characteristically tradition-bound, non-risk-taking, lacking in co-
operation, and stressing extreme individualism to the extent that "each
minimal social unit...sees itself in perpetual, unrelenting struggle with its
fellows for possession of or control over what it considers to be its share
of scarce values" [p. 302]. Although this is hardly the self-image academi-
cians would like to believe in, or the image they would like to project to
the wider society, the parallel is compelling. Awareness of the similarity
could lead the academy to a re-examination of its underlying cognitive ori-
entations.
Following Foster a step farther, we can enter the realm of applied an-
thropology and raise some questions about the future. Foster's prescription
for peasants is that if they desire to become participants in the modern
progress of their nations, they must begin to perceive themselves as part
of a much larger, open system in which the good things in life are not
limited in supply, but ever-expandable. While perhaps not a sufficient
condition to bring about development, abandoning the Image of Limited
Good is a necessary condition for development to occur. Apparently, the
 27

transformation is already underway: Foster reports that Limited Good be-

havior in Tzintzuntzan has decreased as people perceive opportunities
available to them. 10
The parallel question for academiaTs future is whether the perception
of Limited Good will remain entrenched as the institution^ operative, be-
havior-shaping definition of the world. If the future should bring a signif-
icant change in the external reality, for instance a return of the more
plentiful resource situation of earlier decades, would the academic commu-
nity adjust its worldview—and its behavior—accordingly? It is possible that
the academy might cling to its Limited Good assumption, despite changed
circumstances in the external reality, perhaps because such an orientation
serves positive functions for an institution that puts a premium on smooth
operation and preservation of status quo. The Image of Limited Good, for
example, may enhance overall productivity of the system by fostering—but
also regulating—competition within and between its component segments.
If, on the other hand, the denizens of academe followed the Mexican peas-
antsT example and changed their cognitive orientation to one of unlimited
good, the various members of the institution would no longer have to be
concerned about protecting their "relative position(s) in the traditional or-
der of things" [p. 301], and could begin to "feel safe in displaying initia-
tive" [p. 310]. If the academic institution were to take this latter course,
productivity might actually increase, and by FosterTs prediction, future
progress and vitality would become possible.
Finally, this analysis calls into question some assumptions widely held
by many of us in academe. According to accepted tradition, the ultimate
basis for existence of the academy is Knowledge—which is surely an
unlimited Good. The pursuit and transmission of Knowledge has tradition-
ally been the core of the institution^ identity and purpose, the determin-
ing motive in its actions. But the foregoing anthropological analysis of
academe leads one to ask whether Knowledge and the teaching/learning
process still function today as the dominant underlying force driving the
system and its component parts. Perhaps a less lofty orientation, born of
the practical necessity of dealing with a limited-resource external reality,
has gradually gained ascendancy in the cognitive orientation of the aca-
demic institution of the 1980s. Has the Image of Limited Good superseded
Knowledge as the mainstay of academic existence? Is "pursuit of Knowl-
edge" in danger of becoming merely a comfortable myth in our belief sys-
tem—or will it regain its centrality in our cognitive orientation, once again
shaping our perceptions of the world around us and our behaviors in it?

NOTES

1. This paper Is an expanded and revised version of one read at the Annual Meeting of the
American Anthropological Association, Washington, D.C., December 1982. I gratefully ac-
knowledge the thoughtful commentary of George M. Foster in response to earlier versions
of this paper.

2. The strategy of analysis by analogy has been used by several anthropologists to yield
insight and analytical leverage for understanding U.S. culture. Burnett [1969] and Fiske
28

[1972] effectively interpret football and associated activities in American high schools
and colleges in terms of Van Gennep's model of rites of passage. In a popular-audience
article, Kottak [1978] uses a model of religious activity to describe McDonald's restau-
rants; while Dubisch [1981] uses the model of religion to analyze participation in the
health food movement. But none of these analyses of U.S. culture utilizes a specific
model derived from a particular non-U.S. society in the analysis of a U.S. institution.

3. George M. Foster, "Peasant Society and the Image of Limited Good." AMERICAN
ANTHROPOLOGIST, 67(2):293-315, April 1965. All page references in this paper are to this
source. Parenthetically, it was Foster himself who suggested that the Image of Limited
Good might also be characteristic of other non-peasant societies [see Note 5, p. 311].
Concerning the particular Mexican peasant community on which Foster's model was built, a
more complete and updated study is Foster's TZINTZUNTZAN: MEXICAN PEASANTS IN A CHANGING
WORLD [1979 edition].

4. "Research" for this paper received no financial support from either the U.S. government
or its agencies, private foundations, or the institutions under study.

5. I thank those individuals whose comments after hearing the original version of this pa-
per gave additional support to the thesis. I am indebted to Daniela Weinberg for her
questions and reflections.

6. See Warren Bennis' article on academia: "Why Leaders Can't Lead" [1979].

7. Foster has suggested (personal communication) that time may also be a recognized good on
campus—and is clearly perceived as a resource that is limited and finite.

8. That research hypotheses and findings may be considered by graduate students as a Limit-
ed Good is a suggestion made by Foster (personal communication).

9. I'm grateful to George Foster for making this point (personal communication).

10. Foster, personal communication.

REFERENCES CITED

Bennis, Warren
1979 "Why Leaders Can't Lead." In LIFE IN ORGANIZATIONS. Rosabeth Moss Ranter and Barry
A. Stein, eds. New York: Basic Books.
Burnett, Jacquetta Hill
1969 "Ceremony, Rites, and Economy in the Student System of an American High School."
HUMAN ORGANIZATION 28(1):1-10.

Dubisch, Jill
1981 "You Are What You Eat: Religious Aspects of the Health Food Movement." In THE AMER-
ICAN DIMENSION. W. Arens and Susan P. Montague, eds. Sherman Oaks, CA: ""Alfred Pub-
lishing Co.

Fiske, Shirley
1972 "Pigskin Review: an American Initiation." In SPORT IN THE SOCIO-CULTURAL PROCESS.
M. Marie Hart, ed. Dubuque, IA: Wm. C. Brown.
 29

Foster, George M.
1965 "Peasant Society and the Image of Limited Good." AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST
67(2):293-315.
Foster, George M.
1979 TZINTZUNTZAN: MEXICAN PEASANTS IN A CHANGING WORLD. Rev. ed. New York: Elsevier.
Kottak, Conrad P.
1978 "Rituals at McDonald's." NATURAL HISTORY 87(1):75-82.