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Community Action and Organizational Change

Southern Illinois University Press

Contents

List of Figures.....................................................................viiAcknowledgments.....................................................................ix1. Introduction: Rodeo..............................................................12. Reading the Stories of Change....................................................193. Time, Habits, and Change: Brokers, Bankers, and the Old West.....................444. Narratives and Organizational Change: Stories from Academe.......................695. Image: Power, Rhetoric, and Change...............................................1086. Discordance and Realignment: Stories from the Final Frontier.....................1387. Organizational Change as Community Action........................................166Notes...............................................................................199Bibliography........................................................................207Index...............................................................................215

Chapter One

I know these are only words, but all the same ... (I am moved as though these words were uttering a reality). -R. Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text

"If it's taken a hundred years to get this far, what's another forty-five minutes?" The summer sun has faded to a yellow and purple glow reflecting between the clouds and the Wasatch mountains encircling the valley. Rebecca and I are among a crowd of celebrants waiting outside the Utah state capitol buildings for centennial year fireworks. The show was to start at 8:00, but a rumor circulating through the crowd suggests that we are waiting for the governor to return from a social function. Standing shoulder to shoulder with native Utahns, people with names like Hatch, Heber, Kimball, and of course Young, we are interlopers. Unlike the ancestry celebrated tonight, we flew here a mere year and a half ago when I enrolled at the University of Utah for my graduate studies. While the Mormons' route was west, mine was southeast, from Vancouver, British Columbia, and Rebecca, whom I met in Vancouver, eventually found her way here after a research trip to London, England.

Our interloper status hasn't prevented us from experiencing and enjoying Utah's centennial celebrations. For the past ten months or so, we've been taking advantage of this centennial landmark to explore our temporary home and surrounding state. Tonight's fireworks are a prelude to tomorrow's weekend trip to a town fair and rodeo in central Utah. We've made it to three of these western festivals so far and have several more etched on the calendar. Despite our attempts to pass as locals, we always miss the subtle and not so subtle signs of membership exchanged in rural America. Our jeans carry the wrong designer label and have faded too much in the wrong places; my hands aren't calloused enough; my shirt is wrong. Even with Rebecca's authentic red cowboy boots (mine are brown), we simply don't fit in.

Several days after the delayed fireworks finally dazzled above the state capitol, we are now at a very different venue. Seated along wooded planks overlooking the sandy pit of the rodeo grounds, we watch and admire the clamor of neighbors and relatives waving, talking, selling summer crafts and produce, buying hot dogs and ice cream, and rescuing children who have wandered too close to the bulls. A woman in a floral dress passes me a picnic basket. "Here, can you pass that up the line?" she implores, pointing to a group of children seated three rows above us. I pass the dinner on to a burly farmer, who finds its rightful owners. Drinks are next, followed by apple pie and ice cream for dessert.

We are seated among 250 or so fans in the stands of the town's dedicated rodeo grounds. At first glance, one would think this is a baseball diamond; however, mazes of weathered wooden rails that fence in cattle pens, horse shelters, and animal runs distinguish tonight's endeavors from solely human contests. As the boy next to me keeps repeating, mimicking a radio deejay's intonation, "Tonight, the animals get even." Like most small-town rodeos, tonight's event is the capstone of a full week's activities. Week-long exhibitions have featured the judging of local animals, vegetables, and baking. The chamber of commerce has sponsored a community merchant display in front of the school, and there has been a beauty contest to name the rodeo princess. The town's pageant is the first stage in a series of regional, statewide, and then national contests that will eventually lead to the crowning of Miss America. Today's events included a pancake breakfast, parade, and amusement rides at the fairgrounds, and tonight, the big rodeo. We left our apartment in Salt Lake at six this morning and unfortunately missed the big breakfast; however, we've hit the parade, seen the fairgrounds, lost some money throwing plastic rings at milk bottles, and now we're at the big event.

To start things off, a group of eleven cowgirls riding quarter horses gallop into the ring carrying an assortment of colored flags. They clip around the dirt stage in two opposing circles, raising the dust into a dense, choking cloud. On their final pass, they stop to form a single jagged line. Then, in what seems like a silent ritual, the men remove their hats, and the crowd stands up to greet the town's rodeo princess atop a huge white horse. She's carrying the Star-Spangled Banner, and the national anthem begins to boom through the loudspeakers. As the anthem plays, the conquering horse high-steps through the clouds of dust now settling around the ring. The princess, dressed in white, stares straight ahead, keeping a firm grip on the reins. No one waves, no one takes a picture, no one sings.

At the conclusion of the anthem, to the whoops and cheers of the crowd, all twelve women spur their horses, and the princess leads a chain of unbridled energy around and around the ring before bolting out of the arena. The dirt is phenomenal; the crowd, insane. They've come to rodeo. The loudspeakers switch to America's current Francis Scott Key, Garth Brooks, and the announcer preps the crowd for the first event, the bareback ride. The actual event is a bit anticlimactic as six of the eight cowboys get thrown early. The audience does not mind; they've settled in, passing hot dogs, beer, and soda pop back and forth along the rows. By this point, most of the teenagers have taken Daddy's money and are beginning to congregate around the competitors, trying desperately to be seen while feigning dispassionate coolness.

Between the bare backs and the saddle backs, the announcer wins the audience's attention and polite applause by announcing local birthdays. Then he directs our attention to the far end of the ring, "just above the Dodge truck sign," and asks an elderly couple to stand. "I'd like to introduce a special couple who you probably all already know." The crowd begins to hush as the announcer starts to tell us a story: "Ted and Mary Heber met each other at this rodeo fifty-five years ago today. I don't know why it took them so long, but five years later they were married, and for their honeymoon they came right back to those two seats. And folks, they've been coming back to those two rodeo seats...