[STS-Africa] CFP for ASA: bureaucracies and ambivalence

[Mark Gardiner]

Dear list members,

It's late notice, I know, but a colleague and I are putting together a
panel focusing on fleshing out the experience of everyday statehood from
inside state institutions. Papers we currently have on board deal with
frustrated entrepreneurship promoters in Botswana's civil service and
ambivalent environmental technocrats in Namibia--and the social and
cultural work that frustration and ambivalence do in our fieldsites. I
think it might be interest to other members of the STS Africa list who are
doing historical or ethnographic work among state knowledge workers (where
I would place my own work).

Our draft title and panel abstract follow.

If you would be interested in participating please contact Mark Gardiner (
mark.gardiner at stanford.edu) or Hilary Chart (hchart at stanford.edu) with a
proposed abstract by March 12. The ASA deadline for submitting proposed
panels is March 15.

Best wishes,

Mark

What are we working for?
Mundane failures and everyday ambivalence in African states

Breakdown and disappointment have become common themes in discussions of
postcolonial governance in Africa. A rich literature traces the failures of
development projects and histories of expectations unmet. But how are these
failures felt by those within institutions of government, broadly defined?
We seek papers taking historical and ethnographic approaches to answer this
question.

Failure and disappointment may represent the final chapter in policy and
project narratives, but may also obtain as part of the normal state of
affairs, serving to produce new sets of practices and possibilities. This
panel asks what happens when failure is anticipated: not shocking, but
mundane; not final, but generative. Bringing together literature on
bureaucratic personhood, the state, and the work of repair, we explore the
everyday experiences of ambivalence and efforts of iterative reconstruction
entailed in the management of failure by African civil servants,
technocrats, policymakers and development planners.

-- 
PhD Candidate
Department of Anthropology
Stanford University
mark.gardiner at stanford.edu
+1-650-521-4357
Skype: mark.ac.gardiner
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