Documents and Bureaucracy

This review surveys anthropological and other social research on bureaucratic documents. The fundamental insight of this literature is that documents are not simply instruments of bureaucratic organizations, but rather are constitutive of bureaucratic rules, ideologies, knowledge, practices, subject...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Annual review of anthropology 2012-01, Vol.41 (1), p.251-267
Main Author: Hull, Matthew S
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anthropological research
Anthropology
Bureaucracy
Cultural anthropology
Discourse
Documents
Ethnography
Ethnology
Evidence
Formal organization
Government bureaucracy
Ideologies
Ideology
Knowledge
materiality
Organizations
Political anthropology
Political corruption
Political discourse
representation
Risk
Social organization, political organization and power, relations with the State
Social research
Social structure and social relations
State
Subjectivity
Values
Writing
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Summary:This review surveys anthropological and other social research on bureaucratic documents. The fundamental insight of this literature is that documents are not simply instruments of bureaucratic organizations, but rather are constitutive of bureaucratic rules, ideologies, knowledge, practices, subjectivities, objects, outcomes, even the organizations themselves. It explores the reasons why documents have been late to come under ethnographic scrutiny and the implications for our theoretical understandings of organizations and methods for studying them. The review argues for the great value of the study of paper-mediated documentation to the study of electronic forms, but it also highlights the risk of an exclusive focus on paper, making anthropology marginal to the study of core bureaucratic practices in the manner of earlier anthropology.
ISSN:0084-6570
1545-4290
DOI:10.1146/annurev.anthro.012809.104953