Government of Paper

Government of Paper PDF Author: Matthew S. Hull
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520272145
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
“Drawing inspiration from actor-network theory, science studies, and semiotics, this brilliant book makes us completely rethink the workings of bureaucracy as analyzed by Max Weber and James Scott. Matthew Hull demonstrates convincingly how the materiality of signs truly matters for understanding the projects of ‘the state.’” - Katherine Verdery, author of What was Socialism, and What Comes Next? “We are used to studies of roads and rails as central material infrastructure for the making of modern states. But what of records, the reams and reams of paper that inscribe the state-in-making? This brilliant book inquires into the materiality of information in colonial and postcolonial Pakistan. This is a work of signal importance for our understanding of the everyday graphic artifacts of authority.” - Bill Maurer, author of Mutual Life, Limited: Islamic Banking, Alternative Currencies, Lateral Reason "This is an excellent and truly exceptional ethnography. Hull presents a theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich reading that will be an invaluable resource to scholars in the field of Anthropology and South Asian studies. The author’s focus on bureaucracy, “corruption," writing systems and urban studies (Islamabad) in a post-colonial context makes for a unique ethnographic engagement with contemporary Pakistan. In addition, Hull’s study is a refreshing voice that breaks the mold of current representation of Pakistan through the security studies paradigm." - Kamran Asdar Ali, Director, South Asia Institute, University of Texas

Government of Paper

Government of Paper PDF Author: Matthew S. Hull
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520272145
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Get Book Here

Book Description
“Drawing inspiration from actor-network theory, science studies, and semiotics, this brilliant book makes us completely rethink the workings of bureaucracy as analyzed by Max Weber and James Scott. Matthew Hull demonstrates convincingly how the materiality of signs truly matters for understanding the projects of ‘the state.’” - Katherine Verdery, author of What was Socialism, and What Comes Next? “We are used to studies of roads and rails as central material infrastructure for the making of modern states. But what of records, the reams and reams of paper that inscribe the state-in-making? This brilliant book inquires into the materiality of information in colonial and postcolonial Pakistan. This is a work of signal importance for our understanding of the everyday graphic artifacts of authority.” - Bill Maurer, author of Mutual Life, Limited: Islamic Banking, Alternative Currencies, Lateral Reason "This is an excellent and truly exceptional ethnography. Hull presents a theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich reading that will be an invaluable resource to scholars in the field of Anthropology and South Asian studies. The author’s focus on bureaucracy, “corruption," writing systems and urban studies (Islamabad) in a post-colonial context makes for a unique ethnographic engagement with contemporary Pakistan. In addition, Hull’s study is a refreshing voice that breaks the mold of current representation of Pakistan through the security studies paradigm." - Kamran Asdar Ali, Director, South Asia Institute, University of Texas

Colonial Bureaucracies

Colonial Bureaucracies PDF Author: Habib Zafarullah
Publisher: Universal-Publishers
ISBN: 1627340211
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
This book attempts to understand the nature and course of change and reform in the bureaucracies of the six colonies in Australia following the launching of responsible government in the 1850s. The trends in the development of the six colonial bureaucracies are examined to illustrate the similarity in the politics involved and problems encountered from colony to colony in initiating and managing change in colonial administration. Between 1856 and 1905, 15 inquiries encompassing the entire public service structure were undertaken in the six Australian colonies. By using a set of seven variables (context, objectives, the degree of political commitment, membership, methods and problems, nature of recommendations, and the extent of adoption/implementation of reports of commissions), each of these inquiries is analysed independently to highlight the peculiarities of its working and the implications of its results for the bureaucracy. Cross-inquiry and cross-colony comparisons are made, and judgments offered which to some degree challenged existing assumptions about the process of change in nineteenth century Australian public administration. The major issues that emerged in each colony during the first three decades of responsible government were political influence in personnel administration, the effects of 'departmentalism', the development of career principles, economy and efficiency. By the early 1880s administrative reform began to take a different course; most colonies had either accepted or began to accept new ideas---independent non-political control of the public service, open competition in the staffing process, recognition of merit and ability, and classification of positions according to value of work. Taken as a whole, the commissions of inquiry made substantial contribution to these reforms. Some were successful in terms of implementation of their recommendations; others were notable for the intrinsic value of their reports; some, admittedly, were undertaken to postpone reform while others were instituted merely to validate predetermined governmental policies. Only a few had no apparent political overtones behind their establishment. However, generally, speaking, most inquiries did make significant contribution to the administrative reform process in nineteenth century Australia and they compared favorably with similar efforts overseas.

Bureaucratic Archaeology

Bureaucratic Archaeology PDF Author: Ashish Avikunthak
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009082000
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Bureaucratic Archaeology is a multi-faceted ethnography of quotidian practices of archaeology, bureaucracy and science in postcolonial India, concentrating on the workings of Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). This book uncovers an endemic link between micro-practice of archaeology in the trenches of the ASI to the manufacture of archaeological knowledge, wielded in the making of political and religious identity and summoned as indelible evidence in the juridical adjudication in the highest courts of India. This book is a rare ethnography of the daily practice of a postcolonial bureaucracy from within rather than from the outside. It meticulously uncovers the social, cultural, political and epistemological ecology of ASI archaeologists to show how postcolonial state assembles and produces knowledge. This is the first book length monograph on the workings of archaeology in a non-western world, which meticulously shows how theory of archaeological practice deviates, transforms and generates knowledge outside the Euro-American epistemological tradition.

Empires and Bureaucracy in World History

Empires and Bureaucracy in World History PDF Author: Peter Crooks
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 131672106X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
How did empires rule different peoples across vast expanses of space and time? And how did small numbers of imperial bureaucrats govern large numbers of subordinated peoples? Empires and Bureaucracy in World History seeks answers to these fundamental problems in imperial studies by exploring the power and limits of bureaucracy. The book is pioneering in bringing together historians of antiquity and the Middle Ages with scholars of post-medieval European empires, while a genuinely world-historical perspective is provided by chapters on China, the Incas and the Ottomans. The editors identify a paradox in how bureaucracy operated on the scale of empires and so help explain why some empires endured for centuries while, in the contemporary world, empires fail almost before they begin. By adopting a cross-chronological and world-historical approach, the book challenges the abiding association of bureaucratic rationality with 'modernity' and the so-called 'Rise of the West'.

Handbook of Bureaucracy

Handbook of Bureaucracy PDF Author: Ali Farazmand
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351564668
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 724

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Book Description
This encyclopedic reference/text provides an analysis of the basic issues and major aspects of bureaucracy, bureaucratic politics and administrative theory, public policy, and public administration in historical and contemporary perspectives. Examining theoretical, philosophical, and empirical interpretations, as well as the intricate position of b

Colonial Bureaucracy and Contemporary Citizenship

Colonial Bureaucracy and Contemporary Citizenship PDF Author: Yael Berda
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009062417
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
Colonial Bureaucracy and Contemporary Citizenship examines how the legacies of colonial bureaucracy continue to shape political life after empire. Focusing on the former British colonies of India, Cyprus, and Israel/Palestine, the book explores how post-colonial states use their inherited administrative legacies to classify and distinguish between loyal and suspicious subjects and manage the movement of populations, thus shaping the practical meaning of citizenship and belonging within their new boundaries. The book offers a novel institutional theory of 'hybrid bureaucracy' to explain how racialized bureaucratic practices were used by powerful administrators in state organizations to shape the making of political identity and belonging in the new states. Combining sociology and anthropology of the state with the study of institutions, this book offers new knowledge to overturn conventional understandings of bureaucracy, demonstrating that routine bureaucratic practices and persistent colonial logics continue to shape unequal political status to this day.

The Civilizing Mission in the Metropole

The Civilizing Mission in the Metropole PDF Author: Amelia H. Lyons
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 080478714X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
France, which has the largest Muslim minority community in Europe, has been in the news in recent years because of perceptions that Muslims have not integrated into French society. The Civilizing Mission in the Metropole explores the roots of these debates through an examination of the history of social welfare programs for Algerian migrants from the end of World War II until Algeria gained independence in 1962. After its colonization in 1830, Algeria fought a bloody war of decolonization against France, as France desperately fought to maintain control over its most prized imperial possession. In the midst of this violence, some 350,000 Algerians settled in France. This study examines the complex and often-contradictory goals of a welfare network that sought to provide services and monitor Algerian migrants' activities. Lyons particularly highlights family settlement and the central place Algerian women held in French efforts to transform the settled community. Lyons questions myths about Algerian immigration history and exposes numerous paradoxes surrounding the fraught relationship between France and Algeria—many of which echo in French debates about Muslims today.

Resisting the Rule of Law in Nineteenth-Century Ceylon

Resisting the Rule of Law in Nineteenth-Century Ceylon PDF Author: James S. Duncan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000089827
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
This book offers in-depth insights on the struggles implementing the rule of law in nineteenth century Ceylon, introduced into the colonies by the British as their “greatest gift.” The book argues that resistance can be understood as a form of negotiation to lessen oppressive colonial conditions, and that the cumulative impact caused continual adjustments to the criminal justice system, weighing it down and distorting it. The tactical use of rule of law is explored within the three bureaucracies: the police, the courts and the prisons. Policing was often “governed at a distance” due to fiscal constraints and economic priorities and the enforcement of law was often delegated to underpaid Ceylonese. Spaces of resistance opened up as Ceylon was largely left to manage its own affairs. Villagers, minor officials, as well as senior British government officials, alternately used or subverted the rule of law to achieve their own goals. In the courts, the imported system lacked political legitimacy and consequently the Ceylonese undermined it by embracing it with false cases and information, in the interests of achieving justice as they saw it. In the prisons, administrators developed numerous biopolitical techniques and medical experiments in order to punish prisoners’ bodies to their absolute lawful limit. This limit was one which prison officials, prisoners, and doctors negotiated continuously over the decades. The book argues that the struggles around rule of law can best be understood not in terms of a dualism of bureaucrats versus the public, but rather as a set of shifting alliances across permeable bureaucratic boundaries. It offers innovative perspectives, comparing the Ceylonese experiences to those of Britain and India, and where appropriate to other European colonies. This book will appeal to those interested in law, history, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, cultural and political geography.

Introducing Comparative Politics

Introducing Comparative Politics PDF Author: Stephen Orvis
Publisher: CQ Press
ISBN: 1506385702
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
For Introducing Comparative Politics: The Essentials, the driving force is the pluralist, objective stance on introducing students to core concepts in Comparative Politics. Authors Stephen Orvis and Carol Ann Drogus introduce key comparative questions while providing equal strengths and weaknesses of commonly debated theories, structures, and beliefs that push students beyond memorization of country profiles and ever-changing statistics and generate in-class debate over key concepts used in the science of comparative politics. While detailed case studies can go in-depth on specific countries and political systems, Introducing Comparative Politics: The Essentials, distills its country material into paragraph-long examples woven seamlessly into the narrative of the text, increasing diverse global awareness, current-event literacy, and critical-thinking skills.

Nigerian Bureaucracy in an African Democracy

Nigerian Bureaucracy in an African Democracy PDF Author: Bola Dauda
Publisher: Cambria African Studies
ISBN: 9781604979312
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
This interdisciplinary and comparative study examines the Nigerian political system as a template for a historical and contemporary global comparative review and understanding of democracy-bureaucracy relations.