Commentary: ethnography, critique and the state. Some thoughts on “fiscal anthropological insights into the heart of contemporary statehood”<sup>1</sup>

Bierschenk, Thomas

doi:10.1080/07329113.2018.1558964

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…In many cases, it is a form of studying sideways, or across (Ortner, 2010). In public and private organisational settings, the anthropologist encounters persons whose status is, like his/her own, based on the formalised acquisition of disciplinary knowledge, and who share his/her middle-class background (Bierschenk, 2018).…”

Section: Bureaucrats Professionals and Expertsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to study bureaucracies ethnographically?

Bierschenk

Sardan

2019

Critique of Anthropology

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We propose a short epistemological and methodological reflection on the challenges of doing ethnographical research on public services (‘bureaucracies’) from the inside. We start from the recognition of the double face of bureaucracy, as a form of domination and oppression as well as of protection and liberation, and all the ambivalences this dialectic entails. We argue that, in classical Malinowskian fashion, the anthropology of bureaucracy should take bureaucrat as the ‘natives’, and acknowledge their agency. This means adopting basic anthropological postures: the natives (i.e. the bureaucrats) must have good reasons for their seemingly ‘absurd’ (or arbitrary) practices, once you understand the context in which they act. Based on intensive fieldwork and understanding ethnography as a form of grounded-theory production, to explore this ‘rationality in context’ of bureaucrats should be a major research objective. As in day-to-day intra-organisational practice and in internal interactions between bureaucrats, state bureaucracies function largely as any other modern organisation, the anthropology of bureaucracy does not differ that much from the anthropology of organisations. One of the major achievements of the latter has been to focus on the dialectics of formal organisation and real practices, official regulations and informal norms in organisations ‘at work’. This focus on informal practices, pragmatic rules and practical norms provides the main justification for the utilisation of ethnographic methods. In fact, it is difficult to see how informal norms and practices could be studied otherwise, as ethnography is the only methodology to deal with the informal and the unexpected.

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Section: Bureaucrats Professionals and Expertsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to study bureaucracies ethnographically?

Bierschenk

Sardan

2019

Critique of Anthropology

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“…They pointed to a lack of dialogue between the disciplines, an excessive focus on reform proposals to the detriment of understanding the bureaucracy, in addition to the difficulty of relating bureaucratic capacity to results in public policies. The scarcity of anthropological studies on bureaucracy was found in other reviews on the area (Hoag & Hull, 2017;Heyman, 2012;Bierschenk, 2018).…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Taking state actions as the result of the intertwining of different action logics allows us to abandon the monocausal explanations (Olivier de Sardan, 2014;Blundo, 2014;Bierschenk, 2018) and contest a common explanation for the Brazilian problems through an alleged "inheritance Iberian. "…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Logics of action in the Brazilian bureaucracy - the case of the INCRA

Melo

2022

RSP

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In order to assess the most prevalent logics of action in the Brazilian land agency, INCRA, we focus on the administrative processes of development and education partnerships, management reports, control bodies, documents of many superintendencies, and ethnography of bureaucracy in two of the 30 superintendencies. Were build typologies and evaluate the actions, discourses, and loyalty chains of strategic groups in the dispute arena. As a result of the overlapping of non-universalistic logics of action -like neo-patrimonialism, clientelism, team spirit -with universalistic logics, we observe a low delivery of goods and services to society. Despite a discourse emphasizing a lack of personnel and resources, the settlement titling, an institutional priority that doesn't need a lot of resources to be completed, shows the management difficulties. In order to change this situation, a better understanding of the action logics that inform them is necessary. This article tries to bring to light the hidden mechanisms of bureaucratic practice.

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“…Rather than focusing on the margins as privileged sites where the constitutions and operations of state power could be observed, Bierschenk argues for an anthropology of the state that focuses on the centres rather than the peripheries of state power. As he argues, ‘…the anthropology of the state should aim at comprehending state actors’ agencies, their constituted knowledge, their particular moralities and subjectivities and, perhaps most importantly, their own capacity for critique’ (Bierschenk 2018: 397). Regardless of one’s position within this debate over the ‘proper’ focus of the ethnography of the state, the analyses of legal entanglements can proceed either via focus on the margins of the state or on its limits.…”

Section: Artefacts and The Mediation Of Non-enforcementmentioning

confidence: 99%

The logic of non-enforcement: Entanglements between state and non-state law in Bangladesh

Berger¹

2020

Contributions to Indian Sociology

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This article investigates the ways in which state and non-state laws become intricately intertwined in practices of conflict resolution in rural Bangladesh. Instead of inhabiting separate legal universes, I show how state and non-state laws become entangled in what I call the logic of non-enforcement. People in rural Bangladesh frequently appeal to state courts—yet they frequently do so not in order to get binding and enforceable verdicts, but to alter the outcomes of a non-state justice institution like the shalish in their favour. This leads to unexpected patterns of political accountability: people expect local elected politicians to intervene in the state courts, stop pending cases and bring them back to community-based resolution in non-state fora. Elected politicians are thus held accountable according to their ability to prevent the enforcement of state laws. At the same time, state agencies frequently bring legal cases to trial in non-state courts. I conceptualise this blurring between state and non-state laws, its underlying social dynamics as well as its normative justifications as a distinct ‘logic of non-enforcement’. According to this logic, state courts decisively affect the outcomes of processes of conflict resolution in rural Bangladesh while state laws nonetheless are systematically not enforced.

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Commentary: ethnography, critique and the state. Some thoughts on “fiscal anthropological insights into the heart of contemporary statehood”¹

Cited by 4 publications

References 3 publications

How to study bureaucracies ethnographically?

How to study bureaucracies ethnographically?

Logics of action in the Brazilian bureaucracy - the case of the INCRA

The logic of non-enforcement: Entanglements between state and non-state law in Bangladesh

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Commentary: ethnography, critique and the state. Some thoughts on “fiscal anthropological insights into the heart of contemporary statehood”1

Cited by 4 publications

References 3 publications

How to study bureaucracies ethnographically?

How to study bureaucracies ethnographically?

Logics of action in the Brazilian bureaucracy - the case of the INCRA

The logic of non-enforcement: Entanglements between state and non-state law in Bangladesh

Contact Info

Product

Resources

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Commentary: ethnography, critique and the state. Some thoughts on “fiscal anthropological insights into the heart of contemporary statehood”¹