GOOD BUREAUCRATS AND GOD: The Ethical Labor of the Public

Abstract

Bureaucracies are typically studied for lessons in structural violence, anti-politics, failures of law, and as foils to the ethical. I, however, argue that they constitute uniquely important sites to theorize the ethical. Conceptualizing ethical labor as a modality of everyday bureaucratic work, I examine this labor as it enrolls law, God, and vernaculars of work, and takes the form of public-private distinction-making. The article expands the anthropology of bureaucracy, ethics, and Islam by going beyond showing that public-private distinctions are immanent to modern secular power, arguing instead that they are actively labored for in everyday bureaucratic work. As a result, who they favor or menace is a function of specific political-legal and historical lineages.