ABSTRACT
In this piece we approach the state through one of its most palpable manifestation: its bureaucracy. Our work leaves aside any analytical category that takes on the examination of state institutions through binary relations (i.e. formal/informal; rational/irrational, etc.) or depicts them just as sites of reproduction of social inequalities. Instead, our analysis focuses on a more concrete aspect of bureaucracy: the material aspects of bureaucratic knowledge-making instantiated in files, legal forms, procedures, protocols, and official and unofficial routines. Drawing on anthropological theory and ethnographic research, we study the technical and material dimensions of law by engaging with concrete aspects of the bureaucratic practices encountered in different milieus: the field of judicial practice in Argentina and disputes over land tenure in Colombia. Through this analysis, we aim to illustrate how an ethnographic lens on the technical dimensions of law may reveal the constitution of the law through the creation, circulation, and mediation of its material forms, which, in turn are able to mobilize different modes of sociality. Ultimately, this chapter seeks to challenge some of the common tropes present in socio-legal scholarship, as well as to spot new dynamics and power relations that have been often forgotten or overlooked when theorizing about the state and the role of law in Latin America
