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đŸȘ” The Threshold

Specialized monopoly bureaucracy seals off victims and enlists their rational motives

Properties2
tagsja-picks, define, deepthinking, seed, definitional_content, trade, singleton, xref, category/definitional-content
aliases@bauman_modernity_1989, loc. 351

4 min read

Specialized monopoly bureaucracy seals off victims and enlists their rational motives

Evidence

Bureaucracy has to be, above all, fully specialized, and possess an unconditional monopoly in the specialized function it performs. In simpler terms this means that whatever bureaucracy is to do to its targeted objects must be explicitly aimed at no one else and hence is unlikely to affect the situation of other categories; and that the targeted objects must remain within the competence of this one specialized bureaucracy, and no other institution. The first condition results in the improbability of all outside interference with the bureaucratic process; unaffected groups are unlikely to rush to the rescue of the targeted category, as the problems faced by the two sides cannot easily find a common denominator and inspire an integrated, united action. Once the second condition is met, the targeted category knows or soon finds out that any appeals to authoritative and resourceful centres, other than the bureaucracy in whose administration they have been thrust, are vain or ineffective; in some cases such appeals may be construed as a breach of the rules (which only their own bureaucracy is entitled to define), and hence invite consequences more sinister still than dutiful compliance with the bureaucratic ruling. Between them, the two conditions leave the targeted category alone with ‘its own’ bureaucracy as the only frame of reference for rational decision-making. In other words, the bureaucracy that conducts a ‘targeted’ policy and retains the exclusive right to conduct it, is fully competent to set the parameters for its victims’ behaviour and thus able to enlist the victims’ own rational motives among the resources it can deploy in the pursuit of its task. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 351

Categorization

  • DEFINE: States the two formal conditions — specialization plus monopoly — under which bureaucratic oppression enlists the victim’s own rationality; a precise, portable definition.
  • DEEPTHINKING: A tightly specified mechanism — two conditions with their exact consequences — that a reader would want to reconstruct verbatim for the theory toolkit.
  • SEED: This two-condition account of bureaucratic victim enlistment could anchor an essay on how modern deportation and surveillance systems ‘seal off’ their target categories.
  • XREF: connects to: Victims’ rational conduct was engineered to serve their own destruction — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 95; Bureaucracy’s essence is dissociating means from moral evaluation of ends — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 289; Rational bureaucracy rendered murder morally neutral in perpetrators’ eyes. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 691 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

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