I nf or ma I Com m u n icat ion a nd Information- Ma nagement*

R 0 B E R T P A I N E / Memorial University of Newfoundland

Cet essai conceme un des aspects de la gestion de l'information, c'est-A-dire la transmission des messages informels. Une analyse descriptive du village oh nous avons effectd notre terrain dans les anntes 50 indique comment le besoin de m&me que les problkmes de la communication informelle sont accentuCs par le dCveloppement et l'innovation institutionnels.

Nous aimerions toutefois souligner le caractkre priliminaire du schCma thCorique et des conclusions de cette analyse : il serait nCcessaire de les mettre h nouveau A 1'6preuve dans des situations comparables afin de les amCliorer. Comme c'est souvent le cas en anthropologie, les donnees rCcolt&s sur le terrain ont servi de fondement aux idCes que nous avancerons ici. Mais les conceptions ont Ct6 ClaborCes d'une manikre systbmatique quelques annCes aprks l'Ctude sur le terrain. I1 se peut alors qu'h certains endroits les interprktations depassent les faits bruts.

This essay is about one of the rudiments of information-management, that of the transmission of informal messages. A descriptive analysis from the village where I did field work in the '50s shows how both the need and problems of informal communication are exacerbated by institutional development and innovation.

I would stress the exploratory and tentative character of the general scheme and the few conclusions of this analysis - they certainly stand in need of further testing and refinement, particularly of a comparative kind. As tends to be the way of the anthropologist's progress, data collected in the field seeded the ideas expressed here, but it was not until some time after the field work that these ideas were formulated at all systematically, and so in places they may out- distance the data.

I P R O B L E M AND APPROACH

The Field Setting Nordbotn is a fishing village in northern Norway1 whose inhabitants lived in a closely knit network before the last war but in considerable remoteness from the surrounding world. T h e remoteness placed such restrictions on the local economy that households did not engage competitively in a market economy. Today, the village is still one where all know each other, where there is constant kitchen-visiting, and where people are aware who visit

* Earlier versions of this essay were presented at anthropology seminars at the Uni- versity of Bergen (spring 1965) and McGill University (winter 1966). My thanks to Jean Briggs, Clinton Herrick, and Robert Stebbms - all of Memorial - for their critical reading of an earlier draft.

1 See my Coast Lapp Society 11: A Study in Economic Development and Social 172 Values.

Rev. canad. Soc. & Anth./Canad. Rev. Soc. & Anth. 7(3) 1970

or do not visit each other. But now the households are fully engaged in a competitive market economy. Also there are a number of professional and economic associations in the community (local branches of national organizations), although there are less than Bty households.

While these associations were instrumental in increasing economic effi- ciency within the community - and in some instances they were organized as co-operative enterprises - they also contributed to the growing competi- tion between heads of households. Indeed, they served to dramatize this competition, as each association is also a public stage within the com- munity, on which certain decisions must be discussed that may affect the interests of everybody. Thus the establishment of the associations was a twofold innovation. The enterprises they sponsored were innovative, as also was the provision of public forums for decision-making. There were two reactions in the community. Firstly, the village innovators and entre- preneurs, who were the first chairmen of the associations, were prone not to call general membership meetings for discussions of policy.2 Secondly, the memberships of the associations rallied after a few years, and ejected the entrepreneurs from the leadership positions. An exception to the general pattern is, as we shall see, the Fishermen’s Association.8

Otherwise, an entrepreneur would occasionally call a mass meeting. No one in the village would be excluded from such a meeting; rather, those who absented themselves were assumed, by the entrepreneur, to be apathe- tic towards his enterprise or even animated against it. One example is the meeting called jointly by several of these early entrepreneurs to consider the establishment of a second shop in the village (Paine, 1965:92-97). The tactical advantages that the innovators had in mind here included the elimination of any popular charges of secrecy, and also the intimidation of the one private merchant and the core of his clientele. However, here they showed social nakety of a kind that occurred rather frequently in this period of the history of the village. Their action was widely interpreted as “aggressive” and hence as offensive to the local values of neighbourliness (Paine, 1965: 78ff.). The innovators received no dependable assurances from the audience: indeed, different persons in the audience actually understood - or misunderstood - diilerently what had been said at the meeting. For some time after the episode, the men were regarded as con- spirators in league with each other, and they were “frozen” from the informal discussions of the villagers in the aftermath of the mass meeting.

2 The Co-operative Association serves as a good example. During its first 13 years, only 11 membership meetings over 39 committee meetings were held. However, 19 of the committee meetings were in the year of crisis, the eighth year in the history of this Co-operative, when its founding chairman was ejected from its leadership. During the seven years of his reign, he convened only 3 membership meetings and 6 committee meetings (Paine,1965: 82-91).

3 Its chairman and secretary were repeatedly re-elected, and the membership active in the deliberations of the association. In the seven years 1945-51, there were 16 membership meetings and 9 committee meetings; in the six years 1952-57, there were ten general membership meetings and 20 committee meetings (Paine,1965: 112 f., 128 f.). 173

The Problem The local situation was characterized by the lack of trust in the innovations and innovators on the part of the rank-and-file of the community, and by the innovators’ reluctance to share their responsibility for the enterprises with the other inhabitants. Which is cause and which is effect here, is not easily decided. However, it is clear that there is a particular problem with the establishment of reciprocity in connection with enterprises that are innovative. On the one hand, the innovations will sometimes be considered as offensive to the prevailing arrangements and values, and, on the other hand, the innovators will have a tendency to consider the traditional way of doing things as irrelevant to their projected enterprises. Neither party, then, is easily able to find a normative basis for reciprocal interaction.

In this essay, the problem is considered as one of communication and information-management. Here one notes that, in addition to mistrusting the innovators, the rank-and-file showed a reluctance to assume a share of the responsibility in the conduct of associational business in the early years. What usually happened was this: “When a person h d s himself in disagreement with fellow-members or with the leadership, he is expected to argue his case himself. But he loathes doing this; he is more likely either to submit frustratedly to what he regards as an unsympathetic hegemony or to withdraw his membership” (Paine, 1965: 134). Taking this point further one notes how the decision to participate in discussions in the formal and public setting of membership meetings can have great social costs unless one comes prepared with some knowledge of the views of others, and also some knowledge of how one’s own views are likely to be received. This was the main lesson of information-management that the people of Nordbotn, and their entrepreneurs in particular, faced after the war. Spelled out, it is that the need for informal and sometimes private modes and avenues of communication in the decision-making process may be exacerbated by an increase in formal and public decision-making institutions.

Informal Relationships It is proper to suggest here some distinguishing marks of the notion “informal.” Although informal relationships may be accidental, our interest lies with informal relationships where persons select each other. These relationships may be of either short or long duration; they may be between persons who also share a formal relationship, in which case the status positions of each of the persons could be placed more or less in abeyance; or they may be between persons who share together no other relationship, in which case the informal relationship could be still further removed from the ambient of status.

Here one notices the factor of uncertainty about informal relationships, e.g. it can be independent of relative status but is not necessarily so. This kind of uncertainty is far less evident with formal relationships as they are 174

defined primarily through reference to jural constraints that have an invari- able context. The nature of informal relationships, however, is heavily contextual and its content is predicated as much by strategy as by charter (cf. Paine, 1969: 509f.). Thus, while an informal relationship is not neces- sarily beyond jural reach, the rights and obligations incumbent in the relationship are not evident a priori. It would seem advisable to include this uncertainty factor in the definition of informal.

Ideally, persons in an informal relationship change positions regarding their mutual task or preoccupation more easily than is the case in formal relationships. Even the definition of the task itself may be open to mani- pulation to an extent rarely experienced in the world of formal relation- ships. Because of all these factors and others, role behaviour in an informal relationship is flexible and variable; it can encompass (perhaps simply at the pleasure of the individuals) anonymity or publicity, secrecy or display, deception or openness. Thus the striking operational aspect to an informal relationship is the difficulty persons outside it may have in acquiring knowl- edge about it. By contrast, a formal relationship is based upon a known network of restricions to interaction which enables one to make predictions about the meaning and structure, substance and sentiment of individual formal relationships. Such predictions are usually not possible in the case of informal relationships.

It would be misleading to suggest that informal relations are uninstitu- tionalized (contra formal relations); but they are institutionalized in a different way to formal relations, and the analyst’s task - which we do not presume to undertake here (but see the writings of Erving Gofhnan, 1959) - is to conceptualize the difference. Nor should it be forgotten that both informal and formal behaviour are, quite commody, necessary interdepen- dent components of social interaction; this is most evident in the material we are considering from Nordbotn.

Znformal Communication One reason why informal communication is so important is that in many situations there do not exist appropriate formal channels of communication. Secondly, each person has access to informal channels in what are ordi- narily termed his interpersonal relations.

To expand these points a little further. In every culture, a degree of ordered and persisting distribution of information is a prerequisite to social life, and there will be found clearly-marked channels for its flow. However, as these channels are, so to speak, the common highways, they will often be inadequate in the service of individual interests. The channels are beyond the control of most individuals and they carry public traffic, or private traffic in a manner that is more or less open to public scrutiny. As a result, individuals compete for possession of the control of channels independent of those of the formal structure.

Of course, it is often quite within the power of persons, in an informal 175

relationship, to communicate to others the substance and sentiment of their relationship. As we said, secrecy or privacy is not a prescriptive quality of informal relationships; rather it becomes a matter in regard to which the persons concerned exercise an unusual degree of option. This is another reason why informal communication is so important in informa- tion-management, When speaking of informal communication it should be remembered, of course, that what is informal about it is not the information but the mode of its communication, i.e. the relationship between those in communication.

Routing of Messages It is the logical options that are available in Nordbotn for the routing of informal messages that I propose to consider in some detail. While I can- not include here a consideration of the content of the messages (but see Paine, 1965: especially chapter N) attention will be given to the provision of the alternative routes of feedback (of return information on the message sent). We will concentrate upon the message-sending activity of local entrepreneurs, as the persons most involved in decision-making. In what follows, then, NN is any of the local entrepreneurs, and he is concerned with the transmission of messages for the accomplishment of one or several of these purposes: (1 ) to maintain a general flow of information back to himself; (2) to impart particular information or assurances to particular persons; (3) to receive particular information or assurances from particular persons; (4) to test opinion on matters of importance to him, e.g. about a projected course of action; and ( 5 ) to raise misgivings about a rival.

II A N A L Y S I S

Private Meetings While the entrepreneur of the Nordbotn co-operative neglected the rank- and-file membership and really only called committee meetings on the insistence of the committee members, he periodically held meetings in his home. These may be termed “private” as they were behind closed doors and the two or three persons who attended them did so by invitation from NN. Further, NN always insisted that the discussions at these meetings be kept codidential, and no minutes were recorded.

Here NN is exercising selective communication, but his information- management, is, nevertheless, crude, and it is responsible for his ultimate failure as an entrepreneur in Nordbotn. This may be seen, Grst of all, in relation to the local ecology and value system.

Put briefly, the privacy of these meetings in the home of the entre- preneur gave rise to critical and speculative comments in the village. His house was one of the very few that had a private room (a “study” he called it); otherwise men and women in Nordbotn gather freely in each other’s kitchens and the conversations there are widely disseminated. In this 176

manner, then, NN’S behaviour, with its overtones of secrecy and exclusion, served only to confirm the belief in the village that he was concerned with his own aggrandizement, probably at the expense of each of them. NN’s

“error” was compounded by the limited notion that he had of information- management. For one thing, his insistence that nothing be said in the village about what was discussed at these private meetings, burdened his com- panions with social costs that eventually they were not prepared to accept. In the end, he had to keep his own company. Also, NN used these private meetings only to impart particuIar information to particuIar persons; he neglected the other tasks of information-management we enumerated earlier. Thus, he took no trouble to distribute any edited version of his activities that would be more or less acceptable in the village; and, he had quite inadequate information about how his activities, or even the idea of a Co-operative itself, were held in the village.4

One may also note the limits placed on information-management by the formal properties of the private meeting. Consider Figure I: the cost to NN of talking to A, B and c together is that they are able to discuss together

C

FIGURE I

what NN tells them (either with NN or without him). Among its implica- tions is the reduced likelihood of NN obtaining separate and independent feedbacks from each of A, B and c. Furthermore, “team collusion” between A, B and c can prejudice NN’S control of the definition of the situation (Goffman, 1959). It is when NN is supported by differential status, enabling him to hold his team under control, that a private meeting is a reliable stratagem - e.g., military o groups. This condition is not present in Nordbotn.

Chains A feature of social life, whether in villages or towns, is what we may term the linear chain or communication whereby a message is passed by word of mouth from person to person (Figure 11). There is the possibility or probability (depending on circumstances) of feedback to NN from each 4 This entrepreneur himself told me that he held the people of Nordbotn in con-

tempt: they were all “gossips.” He represents a type of entrepreneur described elsewhere as free-enterpriser: “he does not accept the restrictions the community wishes to place on him concerning the means for the achievement of goals. ... He dares to create the need for his leadership: if he stays put in one community it is because he considers he has a chance of obtaining bureaucratic status and financial increment. ... But these are precisely the rewards inhabitants do not wish to dispense.” (Paine, 1965: 760-7). 177

link in the chain; this is depicted on accompanying figures by the broken arrows. Information of all kinds frequently traversed the scattered settle-

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ment of the Nordbotn village in this way. It would be passed between women from kitchen to kitchen and between men working on the beach or in the fields. Thus a housewife living on the physical periphery of the village would receive news (assuming she herself dispensed news from time to time) from other corners of the village without necessarily leaving her kitchen.

However, is this kind of communication network suitable for use by entrepreneurs? We now consider this question in some detail, and in doing so, make a distinction between signed and unsigned chains.

In the signed chain, authorship of a message is indicated at each link of its chain (though it is not at all uncommon, on several accounts, for fic- tional authorship to be indicated). Thus, one may say that the message is “signed” and on the accompanying figures the letter(s) over each link in the chain indicates the “signature” of the message at that particular stage. Alternatively, chain communications may pass from person to person with- out any indication whatsoever of authorship. What we are going to consider

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+ - J4- - I+ - - I+ -J FIGURE I11

are the factors, in a community of close-knit networks and multiplex rela- tionships, which influence local entrepreneurs in their decisions to use, or

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178 not to use, signed chains (Figure 111) and/or unsigned chains (Figure IV).

Signed Chains This kind of communication structure is suitable where the persons who are to receive the message all share an exclusive interest, or are recognizable by a common trait, to which (in either case) the message unmistakingly refers (e.g., messages passed through a stratum of a corporate group). Signed chain communications are also characteristic of secret societies, whose social structure usually provides elaborate controls on the chain mechanism (Simmel, 1950). In the Nordbotn setting, by contrast, it is not possible to exercise much control at all over the passage of a signed chain communication. Ordinarily, this is perhaps a matter of little concern to the inhabitant but it is usually a crucial issue for the entrepreneur.

N N " A " B B C B D

1171 I I I I

The purity of the message may be corrupted in transmission either wil- fully or by accident. Worse still, the message may be delivered into the hands of a rival of NN; or, its authorship may be stolen from NN by, say, B (Figure v). What is even more likely is that the message never actually reaches B on account of A'S refusal to countenance the risk of handling a signed message; the message becomes blocked. This risk can arise in several ways, one of which is through A'S fear of becoming popularly identified with the author and the sentiment of his message. Alternatively, there is the risk, in the mind of A, that the author may wish later to dissociate himself from his message (the author lets it be known that the message was falsely attributed to him, or that his message was relayed inaccurately, by, e.g., A or B or c ) .

Unsigried Chains Reduction of the risk factor is one of the common reasons for the choice of an unsigned message over a signed one. The entrepreneur may choose to originate an unsigned message (Figure IV), or a message that starts as a signed one may become unsigned somewhere along the line (Figure VI) .

N N " A N N B ? C ' D

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When purveying signed messages, the carrier must state, "so and so told me that ..." and any disclaimer which he may add, e.g., "... of course there 179

may be nothing to it,” may be of only limited protective effect; whereas the carrier of unsigned messages .is able to protect himself nearly completely by opening with a disclaimer like “I forget who told me but. ...”

However, in order to conceal his authorship (or his knowledge of it), the person choosing this alternative will usually have to couch his message in hypothetical or general terms. This increases the likelihood of the mes- sage becoming garbled and distorted. It may also mean that the returns of information on the message, inasmuch as they are now responses to &&rent messages than the one initiated, may be worthless. Further, the distribution of an unsigned message is likely to be more random (though not necessarily wholly random) than is ever the case with a signed message, so the possibility of the message falling into the wrong hands is also greatest with an unsigned message; on the other hand, the implication is probably less serious here.

Obviously, it is the first link (from NN to A) that is crucial in the trans- mission of unsigned messages. The difliculty of NN’S task here - which is to convince A that he is not the author of the message, is in direct proportion to his reputation as an initiator on the community scene. It is also greater in a structurally simple community than in a structurally complex one - mere size of the community is not at all a reliable variable. Indeed, material from Nordbotn suggests that where a person is known for his entrepreneurial proclivities, it is necessary for him to arrange for collusion between himself and another person in the launching of such a message (Figure VII) . Thii means entering a confidential relationship with the other person.

In structurally complex communities, there is a greater chance that the

I I

FIGURE VII

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180 FIGURE VIII

anonymity necessary for the launching of an unsigned message can be attained without the elaboration of a relationship of cordidence. Where this is so, it is also easier to launch it simultaneously through several dif€erent persons (Figure WI); and this may be done in a way that actually reduces the risk of the message being traced back to its source. In a community of the Nordbotn type, however, such a stratagem would tend to increase the risk of detection. This is because one is not able to assume that none of the confidential relationships that are necessary here, will be broken (see below).

The Choice of Chains The question we put was, is chain communication likely to be used by local entrepreneurs? As agents and purveyors of innovation, entrepreneurs face unavoidably a number of risks, and so, they are likely to choose com- munication structures that may be expected to add least to the already- existing risk factor. The general conclusion is that the entrepreneurs in Nordbotn make only rather limited use of chain communication. However, a number of factors that guide the choice of the entrepreneur have emerged from the discussion, and I now summarize these. Note may be taken, first of all, of the meaning of risk in this context. It may refer to one or all of these factors: unwanted exposure of the author or carrier of a message, loss of authorship of a message, lack of control over the passage of a mes- sage through a community, and corruption (including here ambiguous renderings) of message content. Now let us consider the factors entering the choice between a signed and an unsigned chain message.

We have suggested how unsigned messages may reduce the risk factor for both author and carrier - where risk is phrased as a matter of unwanted exposure. An unsigned message is also an appropriate choice when a person wishes his message to be spread quickly. On the other hand, the price that an author pays for these elements of camouflage and speed, includes (i) diminished control over the course of the message through the community, and (ii) increased likelihood of its content becoming garbled.

As one might expect then, the Nordbotn data show that the choice of an unsigned chain is likely to be limited to occasions where an entrepreneur is uncertain of what a signed communication may cost him. This is the most likely in an early phase of an enterprise, even in its planning phase. In this context, the unsigned message functions for the entrepreneur as a tentative probe of community opinion, or as a means of “acclimatizing” its opinion to developments planned by the entrepreneur. On the other hand, the data indicate - as is also to be expected - a greater frequency of signed messages in relation to enterprises that are already underway. The content of the signed message is likely to be quite straightforward, and the commonest example, in Nordbotn, is announcements of meetings; village events are quite often announced only in this way.

In all chain communications of this verbal kind, one serious aspect to 181

the lack of control over its transmission, at least in the kind of social setting before us in this essay, is the order in which individual persons may receive a message. While a chain communication may spread successfully through- out a population, there are few controls available to ensure that, say, M and N receive a message prior to Q and P. This is a factor that further reduces its strategic utility for entrepreneurs.

On the other hand, signed and unsigned messages are ordinarily mutually convertible by their authors at any time. Thus where an entrepreneur receives an unfavourable return of information from a signed message, he may (as was suggested) protest, with some credibility, that it was sheer “rumour.” Conversely, NN may capitalize on an encouraging return from an unsigned message by letting it be known that the message came from him. However, should his opponents expose him as the author of an unsigned message that has aroused protest in the village, NN can draw little comfort from the option open to him of saying that it was a signed message he sent. It is especially this kind of exposure, as author of an imprudent unsigned message, that can be lethal for a person’s social reputation, or entrepreneurial career, in a small community.

Confidences and Dyads The argument so far suggests that rather than using a chain communication, it is in the best interests of the entrepreneur in Nordbotn to attempt to communicate with others in a series of single dyads of confidential messages

A

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(Figure M). This may be put as an hypothesis: that there are more confi- dential messages in this kind of society, than is warranted by their content alone. Instead, many messages are given in confidence primarily for reasons of information-management; that is to say, in order to overcome the short- comings in the use of chain communications in informal communication, while still presenting a number of other people with some version of what one is about.

Among the common reasons that NN has for sending a communication is to make a specific proposal, or to offer assurances, to particular persons. 182

We noted earlier the shortcomings in the use of the private meeting by the chairman of the Co-operative for these purposes (Figure I ) . Now the chairman of the Fishermen’s Association, who was the most successful officeholder in the village and the one most sensitized to information-man- agement, based his information-management upon the use of association membership and committee meetings (formal communication) in conjunc- tion with dyadic confidences. Indeed, he operated a continuous cycle of expenditure and renewal of dyadic confidences on specific matters as they occurred. By this means he maintained a fund of trust, and could draw upon it strategically for information. However, each of the messages within a dyad is delivered by its author personally (unlike the system whereby chain messages traverse the village) , and the implications of this have to be taken into account by him. In a village like Nordbotn, where there are no telephones between the houses and where people notice who visits one another, it means that particular care has to be taken not to foster the impression that one is manipulating his own closed network of communica- tion. Thus we find that the chairman of the Fishermen’s Association frequently took the trouble of providing persons P and Q, say, with some reassurance about what had recently transpired between himself and, say, person A ( NN * A ) ; sometimes he would encourage A to do the same. Such a reassurance itself might be an occasion for a confidential message; it was also made in the calculated expectancy of comments regarding the inter- action between NN and A (Figure x) .

N N A

FIGURE X

It is in this way that the chairman of the Fishermen’s Association not only remained in office, but kept the Association, and himself, at the centre of the affairs of the village. When renewing his network of dyadic confi- dences: he had to face the problem of selecting one person rather than another. Here, he would pay attention to lines of propinquity and con- tiguity that joined villagers to each other (rather than simply to himself) - or loosely arranged them in different interactive groups; he also took account of the circumstances and events of the moment. Where necessary, he would make a rapprochement with an old enemy (e.g., the private merchant) and he would exclude from his network of confidences those who implacably opposed him (e.g., even where they were his wife’s brothers). 183

This kind of information-management is not based on any firm or a priori assumption that confidences are not broken. In communities like Nordbotn, personal loyalties, beyond those owed to the household, are unlikely to be exclusive and a person may well find himself with commit- ments to different people who are themselves rivals. The keeping of a con- fidence becomes a pragmatic matter, and it will be kept the longest by a person when he recognizes that to break it would mean a serious diminu- tion in the general flow of information to him. Now this rule of thumb is sensitive to various information-management practices, like those we have considered here. The chairman of the Co-operative, in his inattentiveness to the need of maintaining a network of communication, within which information and assurances and confidences are traded, eventually imposed upon himself an isolated position even while he was in office; and the value of his confidences declined. The reverse process was true of the chair- man of the Fishermen’s Association. The confidences of the Co-operative chairman could eventually be broken with impunity; but in the case of the Fishermen’s Association chairman, such action could be sanctioned by him through exclusion of the offender from his village-wide information network.

Here one notices how this chairman managed to link his input and out- put of information regeneratively. On the one hand, his security in the office of chairman was founded upon his ability to distribute information strategically and with economy, and on the other hand, his source for much of this information was the office itself. One may note, too, that this process is, at the same time, one in which a component of an informal social system (information-management in the village) is interconnected with one from a formal social system (the office of chairman) in such a way that the maximum utility is derived from each.

Confidante There is at least one person in Nordbotn for whom it is lethal to trade con- fidences, and correspondingly difficult for him to link his input and output of information regeneratively. He is the private shopkeeper.

Most heads of household visit the local shop regularly. All know that the merchant “knows” a lot through his dealings with a variety of persons and agencies outside the community as well as inside the village; and it is generally conceded that, should he care, the merchant would be able to help a local person in a number of ways. For his part, the merchant is interested in adding to the number and kind of transactions he has with the local people in order to bind them closer to him as his exclusive clientele.

It is on this basis that periodically a customer crosses over from the front of the counter and goes “back-stage” (Gofhnan, 1959) with the merchant, on his own or the merchant’s suggestion (Figure xr). In this way, the merchant’s fund of knowledge about the village and the villagers grows 184

A

FIGURE XI

constantly. The conditions under which this happens, however, may pro- hibit him from redistributing any of this knowledge among his clients - even though his shop counter may be a venue for information exchange among the clients themselves. Normally when a confidence is broken in the village, it is difficult to discover who broke it, as the same piece of information has probably been imparted to several people (cf. Figure IX) ; protection is also found by changing the confidence into an unsigned message when sending it further. The merchant, however, will be detected in any breach of con- fidence inasmuch as it was only the merchant that the person took into his confidence in this particular matter (Figure XII) .

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message i n confidence f // open l i n e s of communication

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Significantly, it was the disregard shown by the Nordbotn merchant to this restriction on information-management - arising out of the special role of a merchant in a rural community - that helped to precipitate the series of setbacks that he suffered, culminating in a temporary bankruptcy. 185

III FURTHER DISCUSSION

Gossip etc. m Strategies of Information-Management We have used terms like signed and unsigned chains so that strategies of information-management could be presented with the least possible seman- tic and value ambiguity. However, we may now consider the relation of these strategies to behavioural processes known popularly as gossip, rumour, scandal, etc.

Although there may be a measure of disagreement over the meanings and functions of this last set of terms, it is surely recognizable that they are - whatever else besides - artifices of informal communication (cf. Gluckman, 1963; Hannerz, 1967; Hotchkiss, 1967; Paine, 1967; Roberts, 1964; Szwed, 1966). There is also a great deal of overlap in dehitions of gossip and rumour; this is unlikely to change, nor does it seem a very serious matter so long as the overlap is more semantic in character than anything else. On the other hand, a number of the distinctions that have been made about gossip and rumour are dubious at the best, in my estima- tion, and have little significance for the analysis of communication. For example: surely both gossip and rumour may be factually true or untrue? Surely a person may gossip, or send out a rumour, about himself as well as about others? And surely both gossip and rumour can involve either a small or a large number of people? (Cf. Allport and Postman, 1965; Firth, 1956; Hannerz, 1967; Shibutani, 1966.)

Rather, one should notice carefully the circumstances of the use of various kinds of camouflage available in communication, and the credibility accorded to them. Here I think it legitimate and useful to distinguish rumour as one kind of gossip - the unsigned kind, and gossip (as opposed to rumour; the semantic overlap is still evident) as the common artifice by which signed chain communications are forwarded. Scandal finds its place in this scheme as communication in the form of gossip or rumour (signed or unsigned messages) whose purpose is to denigrate or maliciously raise misgivings about a person.

Information and Knowledge, Brokers and Confidantes Information, in the view taken in this essay, is knowledge in motion be- tween persons. In other words, knowledge itself is an inert capital fund in a culture, but when subjected to certain manipulations, it flows as information through the relationships between members of the culture. One aspect of information-management is therefore that some people make raids on the private and corporate banks of knowledge within a community, and dis- tribute among others what they learn - on the calculation of a profit to themselves.

Basically, what a person does here is to contrive an association between knowledge and current situations, personalities and events (Paine, 1967). It is by this process that a person lessens the restrictions to information that are placed upon him by his specific locations in the community in time and 186

space, as well as by his specific status. We recognize here the role of information broker.

But in many instances it is not socially safe for a person to assume this role on account of restrictions (concerning information-management) placed by other persons upon his own position in the community. In this situation a great deal of information flows to the person only to be with- drawn by him from further circulation - temporarily or possibly even permanently. Is not this the case with the professions (law, church, and medicine), where clients present information about themselves on a con- fidential basis? Here, then, there is a change of information-management roles. Rather than broker, now it is confidante. Applying our distinc- tion between information and knowledge, we label this role tentatively, knowledge banker.

In Nordbotn, people wished to use the private shopkeeper in this way - as is not uncommon in the countryside. He was not meant to trade informa- tion, with other clients, that had been passed to him confidentially by one of them. Instead, he was to “bank” the knowledge of it, cither indefinitely or until an occasion arose in which it would be socially inoffensive, and also relevant, to allow it to flow again. And we saw how his clients could sanction his behaviour here.

This directs attention to the general problem of role discrepancy in idormation-management; it is one that entrepreneurs are especially likely to face. Literature on brokerage (e.g., Campbell, 1964; chapter M) shows how such professional people as lawyers are likely to embrace the roles of information-broker and confidante. Both are necessary but, obviously, con- siderable skill must be exercised in their manipulation, probably to the extent of handling the two - or appearing to do so - as socially separated roles. In the smaller world of village politics, however, the di5culties encountered with these two roles are probably the undoing of many local entrepreneurial careers, as in the case of the Nordbotn shopkeeper.

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