Bureaucracy, autocracy and empty words – from the depth of history till today: Mon 2 March 12-3 SU LG1
Provisional line-up of speakers:
Christian Goeschel
Sean Irving
Emily Jones
Eloise Moss
Philipp R. Roessner
Luca Scholz
Gerardo Serra
(…)
convened by Georg Christ georgchrist@gmail.com
This teach-out session will focus on problems of bureaucracy and its impact on governance of affected organisations (‘autocracy’) and in particular the role of (‘strategic’) communication (‘empty words’).
First we will consider the formation of bureaucracies in historical perspective as part and parcel of problem solving strategies in a context of up-scaling. We will, in other words, consider bureaucracies against the backdrop of demographic clustering or, more prosaically, highly concentrated clusters of human beings that can and need to be centrally organized horizontally in a logic of division of labour and vertically in a social stratification or class system (Georg Christ).
A first historic case study will look at Cameralism, Mercantilism and the building of professional state bureaucracies in the early modern period (Philipp Roessner tbc).
Then a second case study: Empty Words from Luther to Silicon Valley: Liberty, Welt, Artificial Intelligence:
From contested understandings of “liberty” in feudal Europe, to the Nazi’s love of superlatives like “Welt-”, and contemporary pipe dreams about “artificial intelligence”, empty words shed light on social and intellectual tensions in the communities that use them. This talk will explore three empty words from three centuries and discuss why their ambiguity is so revealing (Luca Scholz).
Short break
Referenda and the policy of the masses will be analysed as communicative and policy strategies in 19th British politics (Emily Jones).
Another case study will look at bureaucracies and communicative strategies of almost self-declared autocratic systems: Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy… (Christian Goeschel).
Bureaucracies and Marxist development policies etc. will be discussed with a focus on quantification and governance (Gerardo Serra).
An excursion into the world of crime and how governments and economic powers talk about them, construct them will conclude this session (Eloise Moss).
short stand-up break
Then we will look carefully at the terminology of current discourses, dissecting terms such as bureaucracy, economic freedom in the context of neoliberal goverance etc. (Sean Irving tbc).
A short round-table with students and staff will wrap-up and transit over (with a short break) to the next session, which is the meeting of the working group Microscopy 2020.
Format: short 10-15’ input lectures with following discussions and break-out groups.
General readings:
* Joseph A. Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies New studies in archaeology, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
* Cyril Northcote Parkinson, Parkinson’s Law: The Pursuit of Progress (London: John Murray, 1958).
David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (London: Allen Lane, 2018).
David Graeber, The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy (Brooklyn: Melville House, 2015).
Nikil Saval, Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace (New York: Doubleday, 2014).
Joseph A. Tainter, “Energy, complexity, and sustainability: A historical perspective”, Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 1, no. 1 (2011): 89-95, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2010.12.001 accessed 12/02/2020 17:28:28.
Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt, The political systems of empires (New York: The Free Press, 1969).
Historical case studies, mainly Venice:
Donald E. Queller, Two Studies on Venetian government (Genève: Droz, 1977).
Andrea Zannini, Burocrazia e burocrati a Venezia in età moderna: i cittadini originari (sec. XVI-XVIII) (Venezia: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 1993).
Edgar Kiser, and Joshua Kane, “Revolution and State Structure: The Bureaucratization of Tax Administration in Early Modern England and France”, The American Journal of Sociology 107, no. 1 (Jul., 2001): 183-223.
Monique O’Connell, Men of Empire : Power and Negotiation in Venice’s Maritime State The Johns Hopkins University studies in historical and political science, Ser. 127, 1, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).
Jürgen Sarnowsky, “The Vice-Chancellors of the Hospitallers on Rhodes”, in Cultural Brokers at Mediterranean Courts, ed. by Marc, von der Höh, Jenny Rahel Oesterle, and Nikolas Jaspert, Mittelmeerstudien 1 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2013), pp. 217.
Timothy Mitchell, Rule of experts : Egypt, techno-politics, modernity 7th print ed. (Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press, 2009).
Karen Barkey, Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route to State Centralization The Wilder House series in politics, history, and culture/ Cornell paperbacks, (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1997).
Ivone Cacciavillani, La Serenissima: Una repubblica burocratica (Venezia: Corbo e Fiore editori, 2003).
See also the working group Bureaucracy and uni: Microscopy 2020 https://teachoutbureaucracy.wordpress.com/microscopy-2020/
See also other teach outs – great line up: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wugtvdym8ufhhtj/The%20UCU%20Strike%20Teach%20Out-39.pdf?dl=0
see for updates (hopefully soon): http://manchester.web.ucu.org.uk/files/2020/02/The-UCU-Strike-Teach-Out-20.pdf
Bureaucracy 