People or Personnel

First edition

Author| Paul Goodman
Subject| Sociology
Published| 1965 (Random House)
Pages| 247
OCLC| 918343863
LC Class| HN58 G66

People or Personnel is a critique of centralized power written by Paul Goodman and published by Random House in 1965.

An essay on anarchism in management described the book as being demonstrative of the "practical anarchism" epoch of the 1960s and 1970s.[1]

The author, c. 1964

## Publication

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Some of the book's writing originated in his notes for a seminar in urban affairs at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.[2] These "Notes on Decentralization" were published in Dissent in 1964, republished in his 1977 expanded edition of Drawing the Line, and appeared in other edited volumes.[3]

Random House published People or Personnel: Decentralizing and the Mixed System in 1965.[4] Its appendices contain five previously published articles: "Getting into Power" (Liberation, 1962); "Avoiding Responsibility" (previously "The Establishment as a Moral Illegitimate" in Village Voice, 1964); "A New Deal for the Arts" (Commentary, 1964); "Engaged Editing" (his preface to Seeds of Liberation, 1964); and "An Example of Spontaneous Administration" (previously "Columbia's Unorthodox Seminars" in Harper's, 1964).[5] This edition also includes three public memoranda as appendices: to the Poverty Program, the Office of Education, and the Ford Foundation.[4] The aforementioned articles refer to his then-forthcoming book on decentralization by different titles, including Ways of Running Things and Decentralizing and the Mixed System.[6]

Sections of the book were later reprinted in Frank Tannenbaum's A Community of Scholars: The University Seminars at Columbia (1965), Ronald Gross and Paul Osterman's Individualism: Man in Modern Society (1971), and Liberation magazine.[7] The book's first chapter, originally published as "On Some Prima Facie Objections to Decentralism" (Liberation, 1964), was condensed and reprinted in the 1966 edited volume Patterns of Anarchy.[8] People or Personnel's manuscripts and galley proof are held in Syracuse University's special collections.[4]

Vintage Books published a dual paperback edition in February 1968 combining People or Personnel with Like a Conquered Province, adding additional republished essays for the latter's appendices.[4]

## Reception

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People or Personnel is among Goodman's best known works of social criticism.[9]

## References

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1. ^ Wierman, Brian; Granter, Edward; McCann, Leo (2020). "Anarchy in Management Today". In Parker, Martin; Stoborod, Konstantin; Swann, Thomas (eds.). Anarchism, Organization and Management: Critical Perspectives for Students. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-351-69835-1.
2. ^ Nicely 1979, p. 95.
3. ^ Nicely 1979, pp. 95, 171.
4. ^ a b c d Nicely 1979, p. 105.
5. ^ Nicely 1979, pp. 83, 92, 96, 97, 105.
6. ^ Nicely 1979, pp. 97, 95.
7. ^ Nicely 1979, pp. 106, 107, 157–158.
8. ^ Nicely 1979, pp. 95, 113.
9. ^ Nicely 1979, p. 2.

## Bibliography

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* Nicely, Tom (1979). Adam and His Work: A Bibliography of Sources by and about Paul Goodman (1911–1972). Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-1219-2. OCLC 4832535.

## Further reading

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* Barnard, Roger (February 1, 1973). "Goodman Observed". New Society. Vol. 23, no. 539\. pp. 251–252. ISSN 0028-6729.
* Beichman, Arnold (September 2, 1965). "Bucking the System (Rev. of People or Personnel)". Christian Science Monitor. p. 7\. ISSN 0882-7729.
* Bliven, Naomi (August 21, 1965). "Books: To Set our People Free". The New Yorker. pp. 124–127. ISSN 0028-792X. EBSCOhost 23273815.
* Brower, Brock (June 20, 1965). "Wanted: Less Centralization (Rev. of People or Personnel by Paul Goodman)". The New York Times Book Review. p. BR6. ISSN 0362-4331.
* Davids, Leo (1970). "Rev. of People or Personnel and Like a Conquered Province". International Journal of Comparative Sociology. 11 (1): 73–75. doi:10.1163/156854270X00075. ISSN 0020-7152.
* Epstein, Joseph (June 5, 1965). "Intellectualism in American Life". The New Republic. pp. 21–23. ISSN 0028-6583.
* Goodman, Paul (1968). "Notes on Decentralization". In Kostelanetz, Richard (ed.). Beyond Left & Right: Radical Thought for Our Times. New York: Morrow. pp. 387–. OCLC 442456.
* Green, Philip (1965). "Overorganized and Overroutinized". Dissent. pp. 511–514. ISSN 0012-3846.
* Hassenger, Robert (August 28, 1965). "Rev. of People or Personnel by Paul Goodman". America. 113: 222–223. ISSN 0002-7049.
* Harrington, Michael (August 1965). "On Paul Goodman". The Atlantic Monthly. Vol. 216\. pp. 88–91. ISSN 1072-7825.
* Heilbroner, Robert L. (May 6, 1965). "Utopia or Bust". The New York Review of Books. ISSN 0028-7504. Retrieved July 13, 2017.
* Lasch, Christopher (November 1965). "Getting out of Power (Rev. of People or Personnel)". Commentary. pp. 116–124. ISSN 0010-2601.
* Letwin, Shirley Robin (March 3, 1973). "Shirley Robin Letwin on the hero of the Beat Generation (Book Review)". The Spectator. Vol. 230, no. 7549\. pp. 266–267. ISSN 0038-6952 - via ProQuest.
* "Jeremiah U.S.A. (Rev. of People or Personnel)". Newsweek. Vol. 65\. April 12, 1965. pp. 113C–114. ISSN 0028-9604.
* Krim, Seymour (June 20, 1965). "Calling in a Deficiency Expert (Rev. of People or Personnel)". Book Week. 2 (41): 3, 11. ISSN 0524-059X.
* Woodcock, George (May 1967). "Rev. of People or Personnel and The Moral Ambiguity of America". Our Generation. 5 (1): 116–121. ISSN 0030-686X.

* v
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Paul Goodman

* Bibliography
* Fiction
* Poetry
* Stage works

* The May Pamphlet (1946)
* Kafka's Prayer (1947)
* Communitas (1947)
* Gestalt Therapy (1951)
* Parents' Day (1951)
* The Structure of Literature (1954)
* The Empire City (1959)
* Growing Up Absurd (1960)
* Utopian Essays and Practical Proposals (1962)
* The Community of Scholars (1962)
* The Lordly Hudson (1962)
* The Society I Live in Is Mine (1963)
* Making Do (1963)
* Compulsory Miseducation (1964)
* People or Personnel (1965)
* Five Years (1966)
* Like a Conquered Province (1967)
* "The Politics of Being Queer" (1969)
* New Reformation (1970)
* Speaking and Language (1971)
* Little Prayers and Finite Experience (1972)
* Collected Poems (1973)
* Works edited by Taylor Stoehr

Portals:

* Anarchism
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* United States

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