Bureaucrats as Para-Ethnologists: The Use of Culture in State Practices

Afterword: Brokerage as social practice

“…From another perspective, Epple's southern Ethiopian bureaucrats are also paraethnologists, a characteristic they share with many other interface officials (Beek and Bierschenk, 2020;Kolloch, 2021). In situations of high cultural diversity, bureaucrats, whether working directly for the state or in a mediated capacity, for example in an NGO on behalf of the state, develop their own ad hoc cultural theories to explain the behaviour of the clientele with which they deal in their professional everyday life.…”

“…Bierschenk et al, 2000Bierschenk et al, , 2002 as well as by discussions with my colleagues in the on-going research project on 'Police-translations. Multilingualism and the everyday production of cultural difference' (https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/40411 3487?language=en) in which brokers, translators and other intermediaries, including para-ethnologists (Beek and Bierschenk, 2020), play an important role.…”

When ‘street-level bureaucrats’ act as cultural brokers: The normative dilemmas and personal commitment of government officials in southern Ethiopia

“…Actually, they need to productively make use of such knowledge to be able to establish a relationship of trust with their clients even in situations where the state aims to overcome custom. As such, as Beek and Bierschenk (2020) show, bureaucrats are using their work experience to create cultural categories and can be considered as 'para-ethnologists', that is, they develop their own theories and stereotypes about the cultural background, interest and behaviour of the clientele they work with in their daily jobs. While native officials have the advantage of in-depth knowledge of both sides from the beginning, this knowledge comes together with extra expectations and burden.…”

“…They may even have to breach the law themselves, for example, by marrying two wives to please their families. Following Beek and Bierschenk's (2020) terminology, they could be termed 'native para-ethnologists'.…”

Police Prejudice or Logics?

“…It does so to be able to further refl ect on why the Danish police chose not to pursue a hate crime charge. Indeed, as other police researchers and anthropologists have also argued (see Beek and Bierschenk 2020;Lipsky 2010;Maguire 2014;McLaughlin and Levi 1995;Mutsaers 2019;Reiner 1995), street-level bureaucrats like the police have a largely self-referential way of thinking about their work-a bureaucratic way of thought that to the system itself appears completely rational while appearing irrational if not prejudiced to those peripheral to it. In this way, the existence of a certain mode of investigational rationality certainly makes the police culprits of insular thinking, but the question is, does it necessarily make for racist thinking?…”