Documents and the bureaucratisation of alternative dispute resolution in the United States
Department
School of Conflict Management, Peacebuilding and Development
Additional Department
Geography and Anthropology
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
6-1-2020
Embargo Period
1-19-2021
Abstract
Documents are part of interactive sociocultural worlds in which ethnographers can analyse topics such as power relations, social struggle, violence and secrecy. While they emerge from bureaucratic administration, apparently mundane and stagnant documents represent dynamic processes of decision-making, knowledge production and exclusion. I consider ethnographic research on documents and their production as one that offers significant insights into bureaucratic violence and the tensions between formality and informality in alternative dispute resolution in Virginia and the San Francisco Bay Area. This article discusses working with documents that are simultaneously bound by law and exist extra-legally. While documents are used to gain economic support, strengthen relationships between non-profit and government bodies, and evidence ‘success’, the processes have difficulties. The data demonstrate that bureaucratisation has resulted in cumbersome processes and expensive requirements that mirror the exclusion and power asymmetries of formal law itself.
Journal Title
Journal of Legal Anthropology
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.3167/jla.2020.070701