Files

In this essay, I lay out an argument about the scholarship on the emergent rationality of files. Looking at the case of Heinrich Otto Meisner’s groundbreaking modern diplomatics of files and the conditions and possibilities that shaped the argument of his work both practically and politically, I suggest a model for the analysis of bureaucratic mediocracy in historical perspective.
I understand Meisner’s observations of everyday life through the lense of bureaucratic logic as ethnography avant la lettre. After introducing Meisner and his pioneering work on the modern diplomatics of files, I give a close reading of his own private copy of the Aktenkunde that he first published in 1935; I show that the way he organized information followed the very symbolic and material logic of bureaucratic administration he set out to describe, acknowledging the basic concepts, such as the »principle of provenance«, which he defined and discussed throughout his book.
The historically contingent logics of archival administration and everyday life are incommensurable. Each is a relatively closed, but scattered terrain with its own emergent and internal logic. In that sense they can be considered black boxes within a model of double contingency. As it becomes clear with the case at hand, these relatively autonomous spheres are not separated from the politics inside and outside the archive. Examining the everydayness of state institutions, and intellectual and administrative practices, as well as the forms of paperwork that keeps them going, allows for a new perspective on the history of bureaucracy. Ultimately, I argue for an historical anthropology that acknowledges the epistemic violence and politics of inclusion and exclusion in bureaucracy in order to arrive at an historical anthropology of reason that does not deny, but instead attempts to think through its unequal terms.

Um 1900 überlagern sich Dokumentation und Verwaltung in der Registratur, was sowohl die Verwaltung auf eine neue, dokumentarische Grundlage gestellt als auch die Dokumentation verwal-tungstechnisch fundiert hat. Aus dieser Perspektive lassen sich die praktischen, technischen und epistemischen Dimensionen der Dokumentalisierung der Verwaltung in den Blick rücken. Zuerst rekonstruiere ich dazu den State of the Art der Registratur vor 1900 am Beispiel der schweizeri-schen Bundesverwaltung. Anschließend interessiert mich, wie administrative Praktiken die Do-kumentation operationalisieren bzw. ins Werk setzen. Drittens untersuche ich die Diskursivierung des dokumentarischen Teils der Verwaltungsorganisation, d.h. das Programm der documentation administrative. Viertens analysiere ich die Reorganisation der Registraturen der schweizerischen Bundesverwaltung in den 1930er Jahren, um die Verhältnisse zwischen Verwaltung und documen-tation administrative auszuloten. Bevor ich fünftens schließlich die Kulturtechnik des Registrie-rens auf ihre dokumentarischen Effekte hin befrage. Dabei wird sich die Registratur als jener Ope-rator erweisen, der das Dokumentarische in der Verwaltung instituiert, d.h. die Wirklichkeit der Verwaltung ins Werk setzt. Als Quellenmaterial dienen mir zum einen programmatische Schriften der Dokumentation aus Zeitschriften und Tagungsbänden und zum anderen archiviertes Schriftgut der Schweizerischen Bundesverwaltung.

Grinding and polishing has always been the finishing process of all kinds of crafted goods. By burnishing, a surface becomes smoothed and an edge sharpened. Polishing gives an object a nicer look and only then the right finish. In certain cases good polishing can also prevent rapid corrosion, as can be observed on the surfaces of finds of Roman metal mirrors.
The grinding and polishing abrasives presented in this book were more-or-less easily available to prehistoric and antique man. If he really actually did work with them can only be proved without doubt in a few cases. This study demonstrates how efficient the different abrasives are and therefore how probable their use in ancient times was. Synthetically made polishing agents, such as corundum, were not yet in use, unlike some side products of early indus¬trial production like tile powder from burnt clay. I confine myself here to grinding and polishing agents which could be useful in the manufacturing of all metals known in an¬tiquity. Most of the abrasives could of course also be useful in the processing of stone (from marble to precious stones), bone, antler and wood, but our experiments and experience in the field and in the laboratory focussed on metals.
When thinking of “natural” grinding and polishing agents, mainly sandstone, quartz sand and maybe natural emery spring to mind. Old handbooks for craftsmen and workshop equipment – plus a very few sources of inform¬ation from antique authors – deal with many other substances which could either be used for sanding or for polishing. These I obtained from natural deposits and from collections, processed them for grinding or polishing and tested them on copper, bronze and brass in line with “Experimental Archaeology”. Originally the aim was to define differences in the microscopic traces which the various abrasives leave as characteristic marks on the small metal sheets, and so to obtain information as to the abrasives used on antique finds. This proved to be impossible mainly because the marks left behind by grinding are primarily affected by the particle size of the abrasives and not by the materials themselves.
Apart from grinding blocs and pulverized polishing agents, grinding and polishing tools such as files, scrapers and burnishers are also examined. Files and hones have already been dealt with in length in many specialist monographs and therefore do not need to be extensively discussed here. On the other hand, the frequently used scrapers, which played such a dominant role in antique metalworking, correspondingly merit a far more in depth examination.
In the archaeological context we rarely find evidence of sanding or polishing materials, because only in excep¬tional cases can they be identified and specified. The num¬berless hones are the exceptions. It cannot usually be determined whether they indicate ancient metalworking or whether they were used for working other raw material. This is only possible when hones are found within a specific metalworking context. However, evidence of traces of metals on brick disks from Augusta Raurica (figs. 46,1–3; 47) shows that by implementing systematic surface analysis on hones, metals also in use in metalworking may in the fu¬ture also be identified. Even with the help of modern analytics, grinding and polishing powders will still be hardly identifiable (examples figs. 102 and 107). Further archaeological research must produce well documented evidence to prove as to whether the abrasives tested and discussed here were all used in times of antiquity or not.
In this spirit, it is to be hoped that archaeologists will examine even the most vague traces of these unimposing raw materials of many craftsmen, because such evidence will help us to a better understanding of past production technologies and of the workflow leading to the finished object.
(Translation Julie Cordell)

Aus der Perspektive der Verwaltung ist das Verwaltungsrecht das Recht der Verwaltung. In-sofern es als genitivus objectivus (das für die Verwaltung geltende Recht) gelesen wird, be-zeichnet es das Verwaltungsrecht, das der Staats- und Verwaltungsrechtler Walter Jellinek folgendermaßen eingrenzt: »Es ist nicht das Recht der Verwaltung im ganzen Umfange, son-dern das der Verwaltung eigentümliche Recht.«  Im ganzen Umfang offenbart sich das Recht der Verwaltung, wenn es auch als genitivus subjectivus gelesen wird. Es beschreibt dann das Recht, das die Verwaltung selber ausübt, das mitunter die Grenzen des (Verwaltungs-)Rechts überschreitet, zumindest überschreiten kann. Sei es, dass das »für den Staat als Privatperson geltende Recht […] nicht zum Verwaltungsrecht im heute gebräuchlichen Sinne« gehört.  Sei es, dass die öffentliche Verwaltung ihren Ermessensspielraum strapaziert und in ihrem Handeln die Grenzen des Rechts überschreitet, wie die Einrichtung und zahllose Urteile von Verwaltungsgerichten belegen.
Die folgenden Erkundungen loten das Verhältnis von Recht und Verwaltung in drei Schritten aus. Erstens wird Latours Ethnografie im Kontext einer Materialitäts- und Medi-engeschichte der Papierarbeit analysiert. Dreh- und Angelpunkt dabei ist die Auseinander-setzung mit der Akte als operativem Grund des Rechts. Zweitens werden Verwaltungsakte, administratives Handeln und Schriftgut, nach ihren Rechtseffekten und Verwaltungs-Rechts-Verhältnissen befragt. Ausgangspunkt ist die Frage, wie Schriftgut in administrativen Netz-werken zirkuliert und welche Wertobjekte sie transportieren. Drittens wird das Verwaltungs-recht verwaltungspraktisch auseinanderdividiert. Hierzu werden maßgebende deutsch-schweizerische Beiträge zum Verwaltungsrecht darauf hin gelesen, wie sie das Verhältnis von Recht und Verwaltung definieren und welchen Stellenwert administrativen Praktiken dabei zukommt. Dabei entpuppen sich Verwaltungsakte, so meine These, in einem mehrfa-chen Sinn als Vorrecht.

La presente transcripción y comentario se realiza sobre un documento que constituye una muestra representativa de la cultura jurídica y judicial en torno al Jurado Popular, adquirida en los foros de las localidades en Colombia durante el siglo XIX. El documento es una representación política escrita por Tomas Brito, un abogado de formación, quien la dirigió al Poder Ejecutivo de la Nueva Granada desde Moreno, capital del departamento de Casanare, en 1852. El texto solicitaba la corrección de la ley de Jurados para los delitos penales de robo, hurto y homicidio, sancionada en 1851, y reclamaba que el establecimiento de la institución se realizara sobre toda la justicia criminal ordinaria.

The sharing of music files has been the focus of a massive struggle between representatives of major record companies and artists in the music industry, on one side, and peer-to-peer (p2p) file-sharing services and their users, on the other. This struggle can be analysed in terms of tactics used by the two sides, which can be classified into five categories: cover-up versus exposure, devaluation versus validation, interpretation versus alternative interpretation, official channels versus mobilisation, and intimidation versus resistance. It is valuable to understand these tactics because similar ones are likely to be used in ongoing struggles between users of p2p services and representatives of the content industries.