ABSTRACT
Joseph F. Glidden’s invention of literal barbed wire in 1873 led to a storm of controversy. In fact, the opponents came to call it “the Devil’s Rope.” An overall theory of barbed wire should focus on society, rather than limiting itself to either bureaucracy or a particular bureaucratic function. An anti-administrative approach toward investigating the workings of barbed wire would employ a variety of perspectives like the economic, the psychological, the womanist and rhetorical analysis. Correctional “services” (a bureaucratic euphemism) contain barbed wire. Barbed wire, in the bureaucratic context, has a quality that is often exhibited by a program, a policy, an agency, an individual—or even a theory. Far from the naturally barbed end of the spectrum, barbed wire conjures up the image of a totally inhuman type of barbed wire, the wire of the concentration camp. The economic perspective might notice the susceptibility of economic weaklings to barbed wire.
