Colonial Bureaucracy and Contemporary Citizenship

'Examining the legacies of 'emergencies' during British rule in India, Cyprus and Palestine-Israel, this eye-opening book shows us how the seemingly mundane logics of bureaucracy served as the fulcrum for racialized power, citizenship, and the unequal management of subjugated peoples. A compelling history of our persistent colonial present.' Julian Go, The University of Chicago 'A sophisticated, inter-disciplinary, and comparative study of the colonial legacies of bureaucratic micro-practices in India, Israel/Palestine and Cyprus. In this strikingly original work, Berda interprets citizenship as a mobility regime, emptied of rights by bureaucratic determinations of loyalty and suspicion based on racial hierarchy, and the pervasiveness of emergency laws.' Niraja Gopal Jayal, King's College London 'By considering the way in which bureaucratic procedures have come to define postcolonial citizenship before, in place of, and apart from the law, Yael Berda offers us a wholly new framework for understanding colonial legacies at a global level. Detailed and expansive at the same time, her book is a model of comparative analysis.' Faisal Devji, University of Oxford 'Combining compelling forensic legal analysis with deeply researched comparative study of partition and state-formation in India, Israel and Cyprus, Berda skillfully uncovers the 'bureaucratic toolkit' of routinized emergency that emerged in the transition from colonial rule to independence, transforming our understanding of citizenship in the 20th century.' Rohit De, Yale University 'Colonial Bureaucracy and Contemporary Citizenship is a major comparative and historical study of colonial and postcolonial politics. Berda identifies a 'hybrid' form of informal colonial administration based on emergency rule and the classification of subjects according to 'race' and loyalty to the regime. In independent Cyprus, India, and Israel, these practices were perpetuated in practices of partition, emergency governance, gradated citizenship, and regulated spatial mobility.' George Steinmetz, University of Michigan 'Contemplating the commonplace can be extraordinary. Yael Berda's comparative, multidisciplinary and nuanced study of everyday practices of British colonial bureaucrats in India, Israel/Palestine and Cyprus to understand modern citizenship in post-colonial partition states is such a contemplation. This erudite book is creative scholarship at its best.' Orna Ben-Naftali, Striks Law Faculty, Israel