Vorlesungsverzeichnis

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Veranstaltungen von Postdoc Lydia Jørgensen

Lehrveranstaltungen

The Bureaucratic Imperative (Seminar)

Inhalt: The seminar aims to provide students with theories and concepts to critically examine the modulation and management of bureaucracy and its imperative of power as organizational form. The students are asked to conduct fieldwork-based analysis in/of bureaucracies, the constitution of power relations and its consequences. Bureaucracies in many ways form the backbone of democratic rights and obligations in contemporary western societies, but are also constitutive of how companies organize their work and decision making. Overall bureaucracies can be said to hold the power to guide the actions of others, as through public or company policies, application procedures etc. Following Weber’s seminal text on bureaucracies as rule based, hierarchical and impersonal, bureaucracies have often been portrayed as the imperative of a rational way of organizing, that is affectively neutral. Yet, Webers ideal type of bureaucracy was a sociological investigation of an organizational form emerging in a specific historic context, that altered previous power relations. Together with more recent societal developments, also the organizational form of bureaucracy and its constitution of power seems to have changed, when Foucault addresses 'governmentality' as intertwined with power relations and (self)disciplining humans. By taking a socio-cultural approach to bureaucracy, the seminar seeks to address the organizational form of bureaucracy and its power imperative(s) following the societal context. How can we understand the shift from the impersonal and hierarchical imperative towards e.g. the modulation of affective relations and human disciplining, which has come with nudging? How do and why these changes in bureaucracies emerge? What role does neo-liberal thinking and behavioural economics play in the organization of bureaucracies and their power relations?. How does bureaucratic power relations show in contemporary organizations, like the workplace, urban planning, government communication etc.? Accordingly, this seminar seeks to investigate how bureaucracy is part of producing, inciting and organizing a complex set of (affective) power relations, and asks how we can understand bureaucracies as an organizational imperative, that demands a certain kind of action and exercies power. Just consider your interactions with the bureaucratic apparatus, when you get a letter from the tax authorities, see the deterent pictures on a cigarette package or companies nudge employees creativity though innovative work spaces. At the level of these everyday practices and behaviour, (affective) power relations happen that modulate our lives, but also seek to organize and shape lives in a certain way. Willed or not bureaucracies take part in organizing power relation, that may range from clear control and command to very subtle affective (self)discipling and organizing. Further, addressing the bureaucratic imperative as part of organizing power relations also raises questions of critique and (political) resistance. Inquiring bureaucratic imperatives means studying how power relations happen and play out in everyday interactions, documents, and work spaces. Investigating bureaucracy thereby articulates the configuration of social realities and power relations through lived (affective) experiences as a major force, how they are central in the socio-cultural development of society and how they may reflect political considerations. The seminar is dedicated to both understanding and exploring these developments. Its aim is to, conceptually and methodologically, equip students with a basic understanding of ‘the imperative of bureaucracy’ as first and foremost an organizational phenomenon of power that can be manifested through everyday practices, spatial organization and embodied traces.