Absolute-monarchy bureaucracy turns career advancement into a shared pilgrim’s road
Evidence
For the new functionary, however, things are more complex. Talent, not death, charts his course. He sees before him a summit rather than a centre. He travels up its corniches in a series of looping arcs which, he hopes, will become smaller and tighter as he nears the top. Sent out to township A at rank V, he may return to the capital at rank W; proceed to province B at rank X; continue to vice-royalty C at rank Y; and end his pilgrimage in the capital at rank Z. On this journey there is no assured resting-place; every pause is provisional. The last thing the functionary wants is to return home; for he has no home with any intrinsic value. … And this: on his upward-spiralling road he encounters as eager fellow-pilgrims his functionary colleagues, from places and families he has scarcely heard of and surely hopes never to have to see. But in experiencing them as travelling-companions, a consciousness of connectedness (‘Why are we … here … together?’) emerges, above all when all share a single language-of-state. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 224
Categorization
- XREF: This functionary pilgrimage mechanism is what the Islamophobia readings will extend — bounded mobility and shared language creating exclusionary communities of ‘us’. — connects to: Shared bureaucratic pilgrimage transforms colonial states into national states — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 448
Related
- Shared bureaucratic pilgrimage transforms colonial states into national states (similarity 0.87)
- Shared journeys among strangers create the sense of an imagined community (similarity 0.80)
- Absolutism created meaning through bureaucratic pilgrimages that fostered solidarity (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Shared bureaucratic pilgrimage transforms colonial states into national states
#exemplifies(0.85) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 448