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What can political theory teach us about architecture, and what can
it learn from paying closer attention to architecture? The essays
assembled in this volume begin from a common postulate: that
architecture is not merely a backdrop to political life but a
political force in its own right. Each in their own way, they aim
to give countenance to that claim, and to show how our thinking
about politics can be enriched by reflecting on the built
environment. The collection advances four lines of inquiry, probing
the connection between architecture and political regimes;
examining how architecture can be constitutive of the ethical and
political realm; uncovering how architecture is enmeshed in logics
of governmentality and in the political economy of the city; and
asking to what extent we can think of architecture-tributary as it
is to the flows of capital-as a partially autonomous social force.
Taken together, the essays demonstrate the salience of a range of
political theoretical approaches for the analysis of architecture,
and show that architecture deserves a place as an object of study
in political theory, alongside institutions, laws, norms,
practices, imaginaries, and discourses.
When the State Meets the Street probes the complex moral lives of
street-level bureaucrats: the frontline social and welfare workers,
police officers, and educators who represent government's human
face to ordinary citizens. Too often dismissed as soulless
operators, these workers wield a significant margin of discretion
and make decisions that profoundly affect people's lives. Combining
insights from political theory with his own ethnographic fieldwork
as a receptionist in an urban antipoverty agency, Bernardo Zacka
shows us firsthand the predicament in which these public servants
are entangled. Public policy consists of rules and regulations, but
its implementation depends on how street-level bureaucrats
interpret them and exercise discretionary judgment. These workers
are expected to act as sensible moral agents in a working
environment that is notoriously challenging and that conspires
against them. Confronted by the pressures of everyday work, they
often and unknowingly settle for one of several reductive
conceptions of their responsibilities, each by itself pathological
in the face of a complex, messy reality. Zacka examines the factors
that contribute to this erosion of moral sensibility and what it
takes to remain a balanced moral agent in such difficult
conditions. Zacka's revisionary portrait reveals bureaucratic life
as more fluid and ethically fraught than most citizens realize. It
invites us to approach the political theory of the democratic state
from the bottom-up, thinking not just about what policies the state
should adopt but also about how it ought to interact with citizens
when implementing these policies.
What can political theory teach us about architecture, and what can
it learn from paying closer attention to architecture? The essays
assembled in this volume begin from a common postulate: that
architecture is not merely a backdrop to political life but a
political force in its own right. Each in their own way, they aim
to give countenance to that claim, and to show how our thinking
about politics can be enriched by reflecting on the built
environment. The collection advances four lines of inquiry, probing
the connection between architecture and political regimes;
examining how architecture can be constitutive of the ethical and
political realm; uncovering how architecture is enmeshed in logics
of governmentality and in the political economy of the city; and
asking to what extent we can think of architecture-tributary as it
is to the flows of capital-as a partially autonomous social force.
Taken together, the essays demonstrate the salience of a range of
political theoretical approaches for the analysis of architecture,
and show that architecture deserves a place as an object of study
in political theory, alongside institutions, laws, norms,
practices, imaginaries, and discourses.
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