Government of Paper: The Materiality of Bureaucracy in Urban PakistanIn the electronic age, documents appear to have escaped their paper confinement. But we are still surrounded by flows of paper with enormous consequences. In the planned city of Islamabad, order and disorder are produced through the ceaseless inscription and circulation of millions of paper artifacts among bureaucrats, politicians, property owners, villagers, imams (prayer leaders), businessmen, and builders. What are the implications of such a thorough paper mediation of relationships among people, things, places, and purposes? Government of Paper explores this question in the routine yet unpredictable realm of the Pakistani urban bureaucracy, showing how the material forms of postcolonial bureaucratic documentation produce a distinctive political economy of paper that shapes how the city is constructed, regulated, and inhabited. Files, maps, petitions, and visiting cards constitute the enduring material infrastructure of more ephemeral classifications, laws, and institutional organizations. Matthew S. Hull develops a fresh approach to state governance as a material practice, explaining why writing practices designed during the colonial era to isolate the government from society have become a means of participation in it. |
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Government of Paper: The Materiality of Bureaucracy in Urban Pakistan Matthew S. Hull Limited preview - 2012 |
Government of Paper: The Materiality of Bureaucracy in Urban Pakistan Matthew S. Hull Limited preview - 2012 |
Common terms and phrases
actions administrative affectees Ahl-i Hadith Ahmed allocation argued Auqaf Directorate Barelvi British building bureaucratic Capital Development Authority CDA officials chapter circulation claims clerk clients colonial Company compensation construction Daman-e-Koh Deobandi described discourse division documents Doxiadis’s East Pakistan English example expropriation process files functionaries government servants graphic artifacts graphic genres groups hierarchy ICTA ideology illegal India individual inscriptions Islamabad Islamabad Capital Territory Islamic Karachi Khan’s Lands Directorate letter maps maslak Master Plan material matter mediated ment mohalla mosque committees Mughal Muslim norms note sheet offi organization organizational owners Pakistan paper parchi particular person petitioners petitions plots political practices Punjab Rawalpindi record room reference relations reports represent representation request residents role sectarian sectors semiotic senior officers shape Shia signature social spatial staff structures subordinate tion told town planner urban Urdu usually village writing written Zaffar Khan Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto