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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Bureaucratic Sorceries In The Third Policeman: Anthropological Perspectives On Magic & Officialdom, Alexandra Irimia Dec 2022

Bureaucratic Sorceries In The Third Policeman: Anthropological Perspectives On Magic & Officialdom, Alexandra Irimia

Languages and Cultures Publications

This article discusses The Third Policeman through the lens of a dialectic of enchantment and disenchantment that is firmly anchored in the history of anthropological discourse on bureaucracy (Malinowski, Lévi-Strauss, Tambiah, Herzfeld, Graeber, Jones). From this angle, Flann O’Brien’s novel is examined as an aesthetic illustration of an essentially anthropological argument: although bureaucracy has been described as an eminently rational form of social systematisation, regulation, and control (since Weber), it also functions, paradoxically, as a symbolic site for irrationality and supernatural occurrences, haunted by madness, mystery, and delusion. The novel is intriguing partly due to its nonchalant, humorous entwining of …


Legal Aid Amid Bureaucracy, Amanda Reinke, Nicole Bevilacqua Jan 2022

Legal Aid Amid Bureaucracy, Amanda Reinke, Nicole Bevilacqua

Faculty and Research Publications

Disaster lawyers navigate bureaucratic impediments to insuranceclaims and settlement and federal recovery and relief, and they actas third-party facilitators for disaster-affected clients to help enable theirsurvival efforts. The roles of such lawyers in navigating paperwork andbureaucratic processes on behalf of survivors, while assisting them inmeeting basic daily needs, has become seen as being integral to recoveryin these processes. We utilise findings from semi-structured interviewswith disaster law practitioners working with disaster survivors in thesouth-eastern United States (SEUS) to examine the bureaucratic socio-legallife of disasters. We marshal bureaucratic violence literature to analysedisaster law practitioners’ perspectives of the socio-legal nature ofdisasters in the …


Documenting The Undocumented: Experimenting Europe At The Biometric Migrant Archive, Romm Lewkowicz Sep 2021

Documenting The Undocumented: Experimenting Europe At The Biometric Migrant Archive, Romm Lewkowicz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The dissertation is a critical ethnography of the biometric governance of asylum seekers and illegal migrants in the European Union, an integral apparatus for the policing of border-free Europe. Interrogating the paradox of how ‘undocumented migrants’ have been—and are—the most documented subjects in Europe today, the research explores how this documentation assumes the form of biometric technology and its relation to the postwar eradication of Europe’s internal frontiers. At the center of these processes and my research object is Eurodac: a pan-European apparatus for the biometric documentation and regulation of Europe’s paperless migrants and asylum seekers. By attending to both …


Navigating The 'Bureaucratic Beast' In North Carolina Hurricane Recovery, Amanda Reinke Jun 2020

Navigating The 'Bureaucratic Beast' In North Carolina Hurricane Recovery, Amanda Reinke

Faculty and Research Publications

No abstract provided.


The Semi-Autonomous Administrative State, Cary Coglianese Jan 2019

The Semi-Autonomous Administrative State, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

Conflicting views about presidential control of the administrative state have too long been characterized in terms of a debate over agency independence. But the term “independent” when used to describe administrative agencies carries with it the baggage of an unhelpful and unrealistic dichotomy: administrative agencies that are (or should be) subservient to presidential control versus those that are (or should be) entirely free from such influence. No agency fits into either category. This essay proposes reorienting the debate over presidential control around agency “autonomy,” which better conveys that the key issue is a matter of degree. Contrary to some proponents …


The Maternity Ward As Mirror: Maternal Death, Biobureaucracy, And Institutional Care In The Tanzanian Health Sector, Adrienne Elizabeth Strong May 2017

The Maternity Ward As Mirror: Maternal Death, Biobureaucracy, And Institutional Care In The Tanzanian Health Sector, Adrienne Elizabeth Strong

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As public health policies continue to encourage women to give birth in biomedical care facilities, this research provides insight into the sequences of events leading to deaths in these settings from the unique perspective of the healthcare providers and administrators themselves, in addition to that of women and their communities. While the term maternal mortality implies biological processes and clinical practices, this dissertation focused on sequences of events at the hospital, and on historical, institutional, and political economic structures that shaped maternal risk in this region through 23 months of mixed-methods, ethnographic fieldwork in the Rukwa region of Tanzania and …


Borders Of Bureaucracy: Crossborder Cooperation And Its Challenges, Johanna Mitterhofer Jan 2013

Borders Of Bureaucracy: Crossborder Cooperation And Its Challenges, Johanna Mitterhofer

CHESS Student Research Reports

No abstract provided.


Power & Politics In Resettlement: A Case Study Of Bhutanese Refugees, Christie Shrestha Jan 2011

Power & Politics In Resettlement: A Case Study Of Bhutanese Refugees, Christie Shrestha

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

This thesis examines the complexities in the resettlement of Bhutanese refugees. Using anthropological ethnographic field methods, this thesis explores the power dynamics between the employees of a resettlement organization and the refugees and the intricate webs of power within different institutions, such as local NGOs and healthcare institutions. The study argues that humanitarian actions and interventions are often driven by bureaucratic politics and policies that contradict what humanitarianism stands for as apolitical and value-neutral. These contradictions or paradoxes in humanitarianism also are also present in refugee resettlement. Analyzing these paradoxes that characterize resettlement, this thesis illuminates structural discontinuities or gaps …


Is Duty-Bound Good Enough? Considering Archaeological Ethics Beyond Codes And Laws, Angela M. Labrador Mar 2010

Is Duty-Bound Good Enough? Considering Archaeological Ethics Beyond Codes And Laws, Angela M. Labrador

Angela M Labrador

As archaeologists we are bound by professional codes and legal statutes, which typically presume the primacy of the archaeological record and grant us some level of authority over it. Some scholars have critiqued this normative core by questioning who the archaeological record serves and to what greater goods archaeologists should contribute. Such critiques have led to wider acknowledgement and consideration of the social responsibilities that archaeologists have toward various stakeholders. However, in practice, archaeologists often become de facto managers of stakeholders, complicating the archaeologist’s own position as stakeholder and the multiplicity of moral codes that the stakeholders bring to the …