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| Title: | The File: Agency, Authority, and Autography in a Pakistan Bureaucracy |
| Authors: | Hull, Matthew S |
| Keywords: | Writing
bureaucracy
Semiotics
south asia
Pakistan |
| Issue Date: | 2003 |
| Publisher: | Elsevier |
| Citation: | Language and Communication, 23(2003), 287-314 <http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/58595> |
| Abstract: | This article develops an approach to contemporary governance as a communicative practice fundamentally organized by ‘‘graphic artifacts’’—materials such as files, maps, letters, reports,and office manuals. The empirical focus is the role of graphic artifacts in bureaucratic institutions
in Islamabad, Pakistan. Departing from functionalist accounts of bureaucracy and
from approaches to governmental writing centered on reference and predication, the article describes the use of graphic artifacts, particularly files, in the ritual construction of collective bureaucratic authority and agents. This authority protects individuals and allows particular projects to be collectivized. The article highlights the relationship between, on one hand, the
material qualities and dispositions of artifacts and, on the other hand, the semiotic processes they mediate. |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/58595 |
| Appears in Collections: | Anthropology, Department of
Interdisciplinary and Peer-Reviewed
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| MHull_The File_Agency, Authority, and Autography in a Pakistan Bureaucracy.pdf | | 245Kb | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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