When: 15-16 June 2018. Where: University of Vienna (Lecture Hall 6, Lower Ground floor), Universitätsring 1, 1010 Vienna.

Bureaucracy is all around us and has a tendency to expand. In the late 19th century the state began to exercise increasingly more control and influence over its citizens, for example by imposing rules of registration and identification. Citizens, for their part, responded to the rise of bureaucracy by making use of what the state offered and prescribed for their own purposes. Bureaucracy, however, is not confined to the state authorities: practices from public administration are being borrowed by private organizations, and vice versa. As the conference programme demonstrates, bureaucracy is not a phenomenon existing only in the so-called Western world. The contributions coming from historians, sociologists and social anthropologists span over a period from the early 19th century to the present. They address bureaucratic encounters taking place in (and sometimes also between) Austria, Australia, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Poland, Romania, the Russian and the Habsburg Empires, and Switzerland, thereby allowing for comparative and interdisciplinary approaches.

The program and all further details can be found in the folder.