Thomas Bierschenk: On Graeber on bureaucracy
David Graeber was certainly one of the most cited anthropologists of the early 21st century. More than a year after his untimely …
#A future history of water: Andrea Ballestero’s response
When encountering the generosity of brilliant colleagues, one can only start with gratitude. Add to that a historical moment when a virus …
The only lesson is that there aren’t enough jobs
Every so often something happens that perfectly encapsulates the consumptive death rattle that is the job market in higher education. A few …
Mediating Mobility: Migration and Brokerage at the Borders of the State
Natasha Raheja (Cornell University) will present on ‘Mediating mobility: Migration and brokerage at the borders of the State’. Elizabeth Challinor (Universidade NOVA de Lisboa) …
A Future History of Water: An Interview with Andrea Ballestero
A Future History of Water By Andrea Ballestero, Rice University 248pp. Durham, NC: Duke University Press § Colin Hoag spoke with Prof. …
#Open Call: Allegra Lab / EASA LawNet webinar series in honour of Sally Engle Merry
This series of online, public seminars features presentations that examine the current state of legal anthropology. We welcome contributions from anthropologists working …
#Failures: Failed to belong – (Re)Negotiations of care in a Tanzanian social welfare office
Every day, women, men, and children sit on the wonky wooden benches in front of the social welfare office, patiently waiting to …
#Reviews: Dispossessed
Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork, Dispossessed considers the 2008 subprime crisis through the eyes of Sacramento homeowners and the daily …
Call for reviews: Law, technology, Bureaucracy
Our new Book Review Team has expanded with the arrival of Emilie Thévenoz (Thank you Emilie for joining us!), which means we …
The Knot of Ecological Time: An Outlet, an Election, and an Irrigation Office
By Maira Hayat, Stanford University § In 2015, local elections were held in Pakistan, ten years after the previous ones in 2005 …
Vijayanka Nair takes the page 99 test
My dissertation is an ethnographic study of India’s Aadhaar (foundation) program, a colossal technocratic project that seeks to redefine how the Indian …
#Review: Rules, Paper and Status
The arrival of a ‘refugee,’ ‘migrant,’ ‘asylym seeker,’ or the European ‘Other,’ is too familiar to us from political debates. The stage …
Informed Consent Statement for Readers of This Column
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Post-Bureaucratic Stress: Reflections on getting a police check in Vietnam
Bureaucracy is so deadly dull because it’s so mundane. But, as Steve Woolgar points out in his book Mundane Governance, the Latin …
Bringing anthropologies of the state to Mainz: A workshop report
With #anthrostate, allegralab seems to suggest that there is a distinct subdiscipline of anthropology that studies the contemporary state. However, following Bourdieu …
Book Review: When the State Meets the Street: Public Service and Moral Agency by Bernardo Zacka
In When the State Meets the Street: Public Service and Moral Agency, Bernardo Zacka draws on eight months of fieldwork working as a …
→Sociology and Anthropology book reviews – LSE Review of Books
Current Trends in the Anthropology of Bureaucracy – A Report
The study of bureaucracy has become a standard prerogative of English-language anthropology in recent years. Long gone are the days when bureaucracy …
Plumbing the Depths in Lahore
Waste water inspections open up questions about bureaucratic processes and interactions. In the summer of 2015, the top tiers of the Punjab …
Blue binders of white donors: sorting race out in South African IVF by Tessa Moll
Miracle babies. The microscopic enchantments of embryos. The image of a woman holding that much-desired infant. In vitro fertilization, or IVF, is …
REDUX: “Cleaning Up the Streets” #AnthroState
Hillbrow, Johannesburg: It’s April 2008. I am in the lobby of the Ambassador Hotel, one of Johannesburg’s most happening nightclubs since the …
Revisiting ‘States at Work. Dynamics of African Bureaucracies’
‘States at Work’ aims to contribute to the academic debates on processes of state-building in Africa, and, among development practitioners, on the …
First (Virtual) Meeting on Meeting (MoM) #bureaucracy
This summer, Allegra has been particularly inspired by the intricacies of global bureaucracies. Our readers may have already read the report of …
Second (Virtual) Meeting on Meeting (MoM) #bureaucracy
This is part two of our virtual Meeting on Meeting. Read the Minute of our First MoM here. Date: 12 July 2017 …
The Bureaucratization of Utopia – A Report
Our students do not dream of global change anymore! It is on these pessimistic words that Alessandro Monsutti opened our workshop « The …