Bear & Mathur 2015 – Remaking the Public Good¶

In brief

This is the introduction to a special issue calling for a new anthropology of bureaucracy centred on ‘the public good’ (p. 18) [U]. The authors want to take the concept back from economics, because new public goods – transparency, fiscal discipline, decentralization and others – are being pressed into the service of states and transnational organizations (p. 18) [U]. They argue this calls for fine-grained ethnography of their techniques, effects and affects (p. 18) [U]. Two Indian cases show how fiscal austerity produces limited social contracts and what they call precarious citizenship (pp. 22–27) [U].

Research question and main claim¶

Main claim: bureaucracies are an expression of a social contract between citizens and officials aimed at a utopian order; their legitimacy rests on the claim that they exist for the public good (p. 18) [U].
They want to push back against a powerful economistic definition of the public good that makes institutional ethics invisible by turning market ethics into a ‘neutral’ technocratic measure (p. 20) [U].
New public goods do not simply lead to the economization of the political; they create lines of conflict and diverse attempts to realise the public good (p. 20) [U].
They redefine the public good as the desirable ideals considered universally beneficial for everyone, which are used as the rationale for radical changes to bureaucratic organizations (p. 21) [U].

Theoretical perspective¶

Weber on bureaucracy and conducts of ethical life (via du Gay), and Foucault's The Birth of Biopolitics (pp. 18, 20) [U].
They distance themselves from views of bureaucracy as an iron cage, structural violence (Gupta), violent simplification (Graeber) or simply an agent of the market (Harvey) (p. 19) [U].
They build on and move beyond the anthropology of audit and governmentality (Power, Strathern, Shore and Wright) (pp. 20–21) [U].
Anthropology of ethics and affect (Stoler, Navaro-Yashin, Laidlaw) (p. 21) [U].
The economic definition they argue against: non-rivalrous and non-excludable goods (Stiglitz, Samuelson) (p. 20) [U].

Empirical material and context¶

Mathur: over eighteen months with state bureaucrats implementing NREGA, India's rural employment guarantee law, in Uttarakhand (p. 22) [U].
Bear: fourteen months (2008–2010) on the Hooghly River, studying the Kolkata Port Trust's fiscal austerity, boatmen in the sand trade and informal shipyard workers (p. 25) [U].
Brief summaries of the six articles in the special issue: Pakistan, an international tuna commission, Scotland's NHS and freedom-of-information law, land restitution in South Africa, Peru and Italy (pp. 28–31) [U].

Method¶

Long-term ethnography and participant observation of bureaucratic sites, ‘following policies into their complex social entanglements’ (pp. 19, 22) [U].
They criticise moral dismissals of bureaucracy that are rarely based on long-term participant observation (p. 19) [U].

Key concepts¶

Concept	How the source defines or uses it	Page	U/T
the public good	Desirable ideals considered universally beneficial for everyone, used as rationale for changing bureaucracies	21	U
new public goods	Fiscal austerity, marketization, consensus, transparency and decentralization	19, 20, 28	U
economistic public good	Defined by non-rivalrous consumption and non-excludability; the authors argue against it	20	U
social contract	What bureaucracies express and try to materialise between citizens and institutions	18	U
precarious citizenship	Contractually delimited, partial inclusion in relations with the state	22, 28	U
economization of the political	What new public goods are often said to cause; the authors say this mistakes models for reality	18, 20	U
documentary regimes	Documents in decentralized bureaucracies that stimulate speculation and unstable relations	28, 30–31	U

How privacy and private data are understood¶

Topic not addressed. Transparency and freedom of information are discussed as a new public good (pp. 29–30), but not privacy or personal data [T].

Arguments and findings¶

In Uttarakhand, young professionals on fixed-term contracts and permanent state employees clashed, and work on NREGA stopped for over six weeks in one office (pp. 23–24) [U].
The conflict comes from the desire to remake bureaucracy according to the new public goods of fiscal austerity, transparency and professionalized efficiency (p. 24) [U].
On the Hooghly, boatmen welcomed licences as inclusion in the state, while shipyard workers came to see the state as illegitimate (pp. 25–27) [U].
Precarious citizenship is not about absolute inclusion and exclusion but about contractually delimited partial inclusion (p. 28) [U].
These restricted contracts often do not deliver justice, create contradictions within institutions and generate inequality (p. 28) [U].
Transparency is not the same as openness (John on FOI in Scotland, p. 29), and transparency in South Africa led to reduced accountability (Zenker, p. 30) [U].
Documents in decentralized bureaucracies do not guarantee transparency, knowledge or rights (Pinker, pp. 30–31) [U].

Limitations the source itself mentions¶

Elyachar's periodization of changes in public goods needs further investigation; India alone raises questions about conventional periodizations (p. 21) [U].
Otherwise: Not found in the text.

What the source does not cover¶

Privacy, personal data or digital technology [T].
Norway or the Nordic welfare state [T].
The six articles themselves are not included; only the authors' summaries of them [T].

Possible relevance for the thesis¶

Offers a different meaning of ‘public good’ than Fairfield & Engel: not an economic category, but the ideals bureaucracies claim to serve [T].
Transparency appears here as a ‘new public good’ that can have unintended effects (pp. 29–30). If transparency or openness is prominent in the Norwegian documents, this may be a useful lens [T].
The view of documents as part of social contracts between state and citizens (pp. 18–19, 30) could connect to how documents enact privacy [T].
The ethnographic method is quite different from document analysis, so the transfer must be considered [T].

Connections to other sources¶

Fairfield & Engel 2015 – thematic and contrasting: Fairfield & Engel use ‘public good’ in the strict economic sense, which Bear & Mathur explicitly argue against (p. 20) [T].
Asdal et al. 2023 – thematic: both examine versions of ‘the good’ in state and economy, and both cite Foucault's The Birth of Biopolitics [T].
Grimmelikhuijsen et al. 2013 – thematic: transparency [T].
Mazzucato 2018 – thematic: the state and public value [T].

Key quotes¶

“In this introductory article, we call for a new anthropology of bureaucracy focused on ‘the public good’. We aim to recapture this concept from its classic setting within the discipline of economics.” (p. 18)

“Their legitimacy rests on claims that they manifest a constitutional agreement and exist for the public good.” (p. 18)

“the ethics of institutions are made invisible through a sleight of hand in which market ethics are turned into a ‘neutral’ technocratic measure of the public good.” (p. 20)

“we understand it to be those desirable ideals that are considered universally beneficial for everyone and are the rationale for radical changes to bureaucratic organizations.” (p. 21)

“John’s work shows that transparency is not the same as openness” (p. 29)

Open questions for Rebekka¶

Is it the concept of the public good, or the view of bureaucracy as a social contract, that makes this text relevant for you?
Which ideals (‘public goods’ in Bear & Mathur's sense) do the Norwegian documents claim to serve when they discuss data use?
Do you want to contrast this meaning of public good with Fairfield & Engel's economic meaning?
Is any of the six articles in the special issue (for example on transparency) relevant enough to read in full?