ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with those formal organizations that are lodged within the confines of a single building or complex of adjacent buildings, referring to such a walled-in unit, for convenience, as a social establishment, institution, or organization. The settled and established parts of an organization's underlife tend to be composed primarily of contained, not disruptive, adjustments. The chapter considers a set of practices that imply somewhat more aliveness to the legitimated world of the institution. It also considers the sources of materials that patients employ in their secondary adjustments. The chapter describes the role in hospital underlife of the paper and metallic currency officially employed in the wider society. Hospital underlife nicely illustrated some of the characteristic limitations of substitute media of exchange. At some poker games, both coins and cigarettes were used as chips; but the winner of cigarettes tended to keep them to smoke.
