Between Everyday and Bureaucracy--Theorizing the Human Cost of Seeing Like a State

• In Event: 161 - Regular Session. Sociology of Culture 2: The Micro-Dynamics of Creating and Using Meanings

Abstract

Through the scrutiny of the work of 911 dispatchers who bridge two worlds of representation by interpreting and translating reported incidents from the citizens to actionable and documentable official categories in the bureaucratic system, this paper examines the process through which the state classification system is applied and reproduced, and uncovers the cost and consequence of this process—the secret to the state’s symbolic power. Bringing together literature on modern statecraft, street-level bureaucracy, social cognition as well as emotional labor, this research devises a comprehensive framework that approaches the key question of rationality and modernity—the reconstruction of the relationship between state symbolic system and social reality—through the intricacy of state and bureaucracy as well as the integrity of human experiences and relations.

Author

• Chi Phoenix Wang, Harvard University