Personal States by Catherine Alexander, Hardcover, 9780199251797 | Buy online at The Nile
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Personal States

Making Connections between People and Bureaucracy in Turkey

Author: Catherine Alexander   Series: Oxford Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology

Personal States
Hardcover

This ethnography charts how Turkish people - both within and outside the state bureaucracy - attempt to personalise the impersonality of the state.

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PRODUCT INFORMATION

Summary

This ethnography charts how Turkish people - both within and outside the state bureaucracy - attempt to personalise the impersonality of the state.

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Description

Catherine Alexander charts how Turkish people, both within and outside the state bureaucracy, attempt to personalise the impersonality of the state. Based on a detailed study of the nationalized Turkish Sugar Corporation, she considers how people from the highest levels of the state bureaucracy to farming villages understand 'the state', and how, in turn, they imagine themselves to be perceived. The narratives and metaphors used in these constructions draw onresources close to hand such as the material organization of state factory compounds, state personnel encountered in the course of everyday life, and the image of the family structure. By also exploringnotions of state and personhood within the highest echelons of the administration itself, Alexander shows how ideas of 'the state' recede once one is actually 'within'. For officials the state becomes other institutions and Ministries with which they have little contact. The continual process of striving to make connections with other groups and people occurs both at all hierarchical levels of the Sugar Corporation and between farmers and factory engineers. Thiselegant, nuanced ethnography of modernity will cause scholars of state institutions across a broad range of disciplines radically to rethink what 'the state' actually is, and the relations that create it,thus taking understandings of the state to an entirely new level.

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About the Author

Catherine Alexander is a Research Fellow in Social Anthropology, St John's College, Cambridge.

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More on this Book

Catherine Alexander charts how Turkish people, both within and outside the state bureaucracy, attempt to personalise the impersonality of the state. Based on a detailed study of the nationalized Turkish Sugar Corporation, she considers how people from the highest levels of the state bureaucracy to farming villages understand 'the state', and how, in turn, they imagine themselves to be perceived. The narratives and metaphors used in these constructions draw on resources close to hand such as the material organization of state factory compounds, state personnel encountered in the course of everyday life, and the image of the family structure. By also exploring notions of state and personhood within the highest echelons of the administration itself, Alexander shows how ideas of 'the state' recede once one is actually 'within'. For officials the state becomes other institutions and Ministries with which they have little contact. The continual process of striving to make connections with other groups and people occurs both at all hierarchical levels of the Sugar Corporation and between farmers and factory engineers. This elegant, nuanced ethnography of modernity will cause scholars of state institutions across a broad range of disciplines radically to rethink what 'the state' actually is, and the relations that create it, thus taking understandings of the state to an entirely new level.

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Product Details

Publisher
Oxford University Press
Published
4th July 2002
Pages
284
ISBN
9780199251797

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