Government of paper : the materiality of bureaucracy in urban Pakistan / Matthew S. Hull.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hull, Matthew S., Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Government paperwork--Planning--Islåamåabåad--Pakistan.

Government paperwork.

Bureaucracy--Records and correspondence--Pakistan--Islåamåabåad.

Bureaucracy.

Capitals (Cities)--Pakistan.

Capitals (Cities).

City planning--Islåamåabåad--Pakistan.

City planning.

Public records--Islåamåabåad--Pakistan.

Public records.

Municipal government--Pakistan.

Municipal government.

Islāmābād (Pakistan)--Politics and government.

Islāmābād (Pakistan).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (317 pages) : illustrations, maps

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, [2012]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In 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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Preface

Note on Translation and Transliteration

Introduction

Chapter 1. The Master Plan and Other Documents

Chapter 2. Parchis, Petitions, and Offices

Chapter 3. Files and the Political Economy of Paper

Chapter 4. The Expropriation of Land and the Misappropriation of Lists

Chapter 5. Maps, Mosques, and Maslaks

Conclusion: Participatory Bureaucracy

Notes

References

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9786613587268

9781280492037

1280492031

9780520951884

0520951883

OCLC:

792684987