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Regular version of the site
Master 2024/2025

Anthropology of bureaucracy

Type: Elective course (Global and Regional History)
Area of studies: History
Delivered by: Department of History
When: 1 year, 3 module
Mode of studies: offline
Open to: students of one campus
Master’s programme: Global and Regional History
Language: English
ECTS credits: 3

Course Syllabus

Abstract

This course charts classical social theory of bureaucracy, key historical work and emergent ethnographies in this new field. While it includes case studies that range from (post)colonial, (post)socialist and EU contexts, its focus is not regional but methodological. We look at such issues as bureaucratic rationality, cultural intimacy and state affect, material and archival turns, ethnographies of archives, bookkeeping and digitalization of state, social lives of paper and digital documents, and violence symbolic and real.