In this article I examine the difference between concepts of culture contained in organizational studies and those in anthropology. The twentieth-century emergence of rationalized organizations poses an unmet challenge to anthropological theory. The unique cultural consequences of the organizational form are found in the cultures of command and authority, adaptation and resistance, alienation and inclusion that are found in every organization. These separate cultures interrogate each other and draw on cultural resources outside the organization. In the final section I examine some of the mechanisms with which organizations manage the ambiguities of boundaries and differentiation. Drawing on theories of rites of passage, personhood, gift-exchange, and totemism, I describe the quotidian practices of staffing, sales, and accounting as symbolic processes for managing ambiguity, [organization, culture, theory] American Anthropologist 102(4):726-740.

Studies of the variation of kinship systems in modern societies ( e g , Bott 1957; Farber 1971; Schneider and Smith 1973; Stack 1974) employ a diverse collection of definitions for a major axis o f variation -social class. The invoking of ecological, psychological, sociological, and an occasional cultural explanation for observations of class variation in kinship suggests that anthropology's understanding of social class lacks the subtlety and precision of its understanding of kinship.In this article I describe the organization and content of kinship relationships in a community in the Appalachian mountains of eastern Kentucky, concentrating on a kinship form the mountain people term the set. These sets are clusters of kinsmen, identified with particular localities and particular ancestors. A small number of them dominate neighborhoods in rural districts. The set, and the behavior associated with it, represents the interpenetration of the domains of kinship, personal identity, and class. I first examine the categories, relationships, and behavior associated by the mountain people with kinship and the inflection of these factors by the conceptions of personal identity and locality. I then argue that the conceptions of locality and the different forms of value attached to land, territory, and place represent a codification of the class status and class struggle of the mountain people. Forms of value themselves have been built up from a series of historical confrontations between the mountain people and other groups in American society, confrontations that had usufructuary rights t o land at their nexus.Whereas the vulgar understanding of class rests solely on one's control of scarce "en-

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Technological gaps in large-scale systems, whether ancient empires or the modern world system, are millenia old and are usually viewed in terms of variable rates of innovation and diffusion. When overlaid with large-scale, tightly coupled systems, such as air transport, pharmaceutical regimes, power grids, industrial supply chains, or food supply networks, these mismatches frequently have adverse consequences for the performance of the system. This article suggests that these gaps are a consequence of the network topologies that produce innovation, and more importantly that the dynamics of these networks progressively amplify the gaps. The dark side of technological acceleration (the geometric growth in technological performance) in core regions is an expanding gap between core and periphery, creating a unique class of hazards outside the core.