Bureaucracy

The study of bureaucracy has in many respects been defined negatively from the start, perhaps as the ultimate example of an uneasy match between the individual and (state) institution. While noting how it is easy for research to be “trapped” within the “moralizing” gap between modernist ideal, failing practice, and self‐sustaining institution, this entry addresses questions of scope, focus, and key concepts for the linguistic anthropological study of bureaucratic phenomena. The entry covers the constitutive role of language use and discursive practice, the central role of (strategic) information exchange and categorization, the emblematic position of the “file” that circulates through the institution, while also attending to questions of linguistic access, the contemporary challenges posed to a state‐centered perspective by a multilingual clientele, the representation of state systems and their clients, and – finally – some of the implications of more recent developments in “new public management.