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Contradiction in contemporary political life: meeting bureaucracy in Norwegian municipal government

Abram, S.

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Abstract

Meetings are the apotheosis of contemporary bureaucratic life, containing dilemmas and contradictions that are at the heart of modernity. In particular, political and bureaucratic meetings (both state and civic) are ritual performances in which rules are enacted, ritual correctness is met with manipulative political game-playing, and formal transparency is intertwined with relational and informational secrecy. Meetings in bureaucratic government rely on a series of legitimating motifs, including the invoking of ‘conjured contexts’ to link bureaucratic practices to external action. This essay shows how meetings order political and bureaucratic life, and vice versa, and explores the materiality and embodiment of meeting practices, illustrating how a dominant global model of bureaucratic meeting is elaborated locally.

Citation

Abram, S. (2017). Contradiction in contemporary political life: meeting bureaucracy in Norwegian municipal government. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 23(S1), 27-44. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12592

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Feb 2, 2017
Online Publication Date Mar 20, 2017
Publication Date Apr 1, 2017
Deposit Date Feb 6, 2017
Publicly Available Date Mar 20, 2019
Journal Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Print ISSN 1359-0987
Electronic ISSN 1467-9655
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 23
Issue S1
Pages 27-44
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12592
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1386822

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Copyright Statement
This is the accepted version of the following article: Abram, S. (2017), Contradiction in contemporary political life: meeting bureaucracy in Norwegian municipal government. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 23(S1): 27-44, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12592. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.






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