Anthropologists have recently stressed two points of theory; first, that people must all carry a home-made model of the society in which they live in order to be able to conduct social relations at all; and secondly, that it is often illuminating to analyse social behaviour in terms of the manipulation, conscious or otherwise, of the social system for private ends. These two points taken together have a corollary. The more inaccurate the home-made model the less successful will be the manipulating. One consequence for villagers of their simplifying of urban society is their inability to control and manipulate it. In general we may often be able to understand puzzling conduct in these terms; namely, that people are seeking to manipulate but failing. To be sure of this we must know exactly how they view the structure in which they live and be able to show how this view influences conduct. Unsuccessful attempts at manipulation may be difficult to detect.
Most villagers' views of how the administration works are inaccurate. The less sophisticated are more or less completely baffled, and in spite of the existence of a modern type of state in which theoretically everyone has the right to approach the administration as an individual, most of them keep clear of it if they can, and thus to some extent leave the village leaders with their traditional role of go-between. Even the more sophisticated have a strictly limited grasp of the working of the bureaucracy. This ignorance limits the effects which follow from the direct relationships which now legally exist in theory between each villager as a citizen and officials as representatives of the state.
In these Turkish villages the social controls are as strong as one would expect. Any signs of unusual conduct will