December 14, 2011

Bureaucracies & the power of nonsense

For some reason, I am feeling decidedly anti-bureaucracy today.  Does this ever happen to you?  What is it about bureaucracy that it is so difficult, that drives us mad?  Let me give an obvious answer that you would expect from some cultural anthropology type like myself: it's because of the inhumanity of it all.  The inhumanity of some bureaucracies can become so thick that they turn us all into blithering fools.

We get backed into a corner, with no place to turn.  Our choices are cut off--we are stuck with the hassles of lines, rules, and forms.  We wait on phones, we try to find official offices with no address.  You know what I'm talking about.  We become not just fools in this process, but blithering fools.  But there is power in the inefficiency of bureaucracies--Weber knew that, as did many others.  You know that too, don't you?  If you want to know more about this, please click here for more options.

Apologies for that...there must be some sort of glitch in the system.  I will send out a request for someone to post a note about composing an email to resolve this issue at a later date.  Please wait.  In the mean time, if you haven't read David Graeber's "Beyond power/knowledge: an exploration of the relation of power, ignorance and stupidity," well, you should.  Here is your chance.

Let me give you a short example of the hilarity of bureaucracy from some of my recent travel experiences:
 
Read the rest on Savage Minds.

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