Stamp, Sign, Submit: Ethnographic Approaches to Bureaucracy

Harvard FAS

Bureaucracies are built of tangible things: forms to be filled out, records to be kept, emails to be archived, platforms to be navigated. This course guides students towards an understanding of bureaucracy by focusing on the paperwork and digital traces – from forms, reports and memoranda to identity papers, records, filing systems and business cards -- that bureaucracies produce. Drawing from ethnography, history and social theory, this course examines how paper and now digital artifacts –…