Réunissant historiens, anthropologues, sociologues et politistes, ces journées d'étude portent sur les faux et usages de faux administratifs. La falsification de documents officiels est conçue comme un moyen de mieux comprendre les dispositifs de l'administration elle-même, ainsi que les savoirs et savoir-faire auxquels elle donne lieu parmi ses « usagers ». À cette fin, une diversité de contextes impériaux, nationaux ou locaux, à l'époque moderne et contemporaine, sont adoptés comme cas d'étude. Sont plus particulièrement représentés l'Europe centrale, orientale et balkanique, sur l'Empire ottoman, la Turquie et le Moyen Orient.

Workshop Forging Administration

June 18-19, 2008,
Zentrum Moderner Orient, Kirchweg 33, 14129 Berlin

In co-operation with
Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin; Etudes Turques et Ottomanes, Paris; Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin; Institut d’Etudes de l’Islam et des Sociétés du Monde Musulman, Paris

Convened by :

• Marc Aymes (Fellow of Europe in the Middle East – The Middle East in Europe, Berlin)
• Benoît Fliche (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Études turques et ottomanes, Paris)

This two-day workshop is part of a project which aims at constituting a research group dealing with the forging of ‘administration’. Its disciplinary span straddles historical, anthropological and sociological perspectives, along with legal or literary ones. Beside this transdisciplinary emphasis, we will also strive to maintain a diachronic approach, as a way to inter-weave aspects of past and present administration, in former empires as in the states which took over. While first inspired by an analysis focused on Ottoman and post-Ottoman case studies (in which both organizers share a primary interest), the idea also is to bring about a comparative criss-crossing of studies variously situated in other imperial, national or local contexts.

A word about the project’s broader backdrop is in order. Administration produces idiosyncratic ideologies and singular behaviors; it also enacts ad hoc logics of writing and reading. When relating to it, the ‘administered’ ones contrive particular sets of abilities and competences: i.e., they develop techniques of accommodation-, patronage- and favor-securing. (Think for instance of ID-trafficking, if not identity-trafficking, which sometimes comes up as a tactical expedient for circum-venting administrative constraints in today’s Turkey.) All this makes for a large body of administrative knowledge and know-how which one needs to tease out.

The aforementioned example - that of forged IDs - may precisely provide us with a convenient springboard. As a matter of fact, fakes and forgeries open up promising pathways for investigating administration backstage. Thus, they are to form the privileged topic of inquiry during the Berlin meeting. Several dimensions may be explored and intertwined:

- the forged documents themselves, and their characteristics;
- their users and producers, be they from within or outside the administrative circles;
- the counter-measures developed by authorities for devising fakeproof items

The main working languages of the sessions will be English and French.

The participants include eight paper presenters and eight discussants. Each paper presenter will be given 30 minutes to provide an overview of his/her research, followed by 45 minutes of discussion (first by two discussants, then by all the participants and audience) for each paper.

June 18, 2008

9:00 Greetings & Toolkit-Introduction | Marc Aymes & Benoît Fliche

Session 1 Forgeries in many guises

10:00-11:15 “Forging Ottoman Administration: Examples from the Christian Orthodox Monasteries of Mount Athos” | “Falsifier l’administration ottomane. Exemples en provenance des monastères chrétiens orthodoxes du Mont Athos” | Elias Kolovos (University of Crete)

discussed by Magdi Guirguis (“Europe in the Middle East – The Middle East in Europe”, Berlin Free University) & Benoît Fliche (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris)

Coffee Break

11:30-12:45 “Contourner l’administration locale en Turquie. L’exemple d’Adana” | “Bypassing local administration in Turkey: the Adana example” | Élise Massicard (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris)

discussed by Nora Lafi (Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin) & Martha Mundy (London School of Economics)

Lunch at ZMO

Session 2 Uses and misuses

14:30-15:45 “The honour of the state. Uses and misuses of the Ottoman sultans’ symbols of legitimacy” | “L’honneur de l’État. Usages et mésusages des symboles de la légitimité des sultans ottomans” | Güneş Işıksel (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris)

discussed by Magdi Guirguis (“Europe in the Middle East – The Middle East in Europe”, Freie Universität Berlin) & Yael Navaro-Yashin (University of Cambridge)

Tea Time

16:00-17:15 “Fakes and forgeries in the 19th-century Mediterranean” | “Faux et usages de faux en Méditerranée au xixe siècle” | Marc Aymes (“Europe in the Middle East – The Middle East in Europe”, Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin)

discussed by Elias Kolovos (University of Crete) & Martha Mundy (London School of Economics)

Rest at Will, then Dinner

June 19, 2008

Session 3 Border crossing

9:30-10:45 “Les transferts de populations liés au changement du tracé des frontières polono-ukrainiennes” | “Population transfers at redesigned Polish-Ukrainian frontiers” | Catherine Gousseff (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris / Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin)

discussed by Benoît Fliche (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris) & Christiane Reinecke (Humboldt-Universität, Berlin)

Coffee Break

11:00-12:15 “The ‘self-forging’ of Turkish administration with regard to the settlement of migrants from Western Thrace” | “Les usages de l’a-légalité par l’administration turque : la gestion des migrants originaires de Thrace occidentale” | Jeanne Hersant (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg)

discussed by Marc Aymes (“Europe in the Middle East – The Middle East in Europe”, Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin) & Nora Lafi (Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin)

Lunch at ZMO

Session 4 Sham states?

14:00-15:15 “The Make-Believe Environment and Its Objects: Affect in the Realms of Space, Law, and Administration” | “Le faire-semblant et ses objets : affects spatiaux, juridiques et administratifs” | Yael Navaro-Yashin (University of Cambridge)

discussed by Marc Aymes (“Europe in the Middle East – The Middle East in Europe”, Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin) & Christiane Reinecke (Humboldt-Universität, Berlin)

Tea Time

15:30-16:45 “Identités des administrés et administration turque” | “Administered identities in Turkey” | Benoît Fliche (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris)

discussed by Élise Massicard (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris) & Pascale Laborier (Université de Picardie, Amiens / Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin)

17:00-18:00 Conclusions

Dinner