"Become The Cadre":Fragment Work And Moral Self-Formation Of Cadres

Anthropology is concerned with the microscopic picture of bureaucracy and the ethical practices of individual officials in specific spatio-temporal contexts,which implicitly influence the self-formation of cadres,the cadres in the ethical norms of political parties,the cadres that people feel personally and the self-perceived images of cadres’ present tensions.This paper takes the agricultural sector in X district of H city in northern Anhui province as a field case to record the experiences and insights of the office cadres in the current spatial and temporal context and to explain the formation and transformation of their moral selves.The cadres are often perceived by the public as "manipulative",but they do not abandon their selves,but protect them in a shell of "no self" and confront the bureaucracy in a non-corporeal way.The most distinctive feature of bureaucratic work,or other simmilar administrative work,is its triviality,which "sucks the soul out of people" and is the target of many scholars who criticize bureaucracy.Bureaucracy is a fractured space where various powers compete for the definition and distribution of public goods,where cadres are forced to accept the bureaucratic rules of redundancy as a source of internal conflict,where they become accustomed to the self-imposed discipline of hierarchy and seniority,where attention is lost to meaningless areas,and where the practice of leisure life is dominated by work.But bureaucracy is not a field of extinction of the self;it represents the transformation of the people from physical to cognitive labor,involving the psychological and desirous self,and the people’s desires repressed by modernity are invested in the competitive bureaucracy.The change from the "carpet world" to the "screen world" of the governmental work space as a result of menial work is a process of shifting from the "carpet world" to the "screen world," as the technologies of the New Public Management(NPM)shape the traditional sphere of governance into a computable space,and as the government and bureaucratic organizations become progressively accountable,with the widespread use of OA systems and ledger technology.systems and the widespread use of ledger technology.With the introduction of trivial tasks into every aspect of officials’ work lives,cadres lost a lot of attention to meaningless procedural tasks,and governance reforms aimed at efficiency failed to achieve their original purpose.At the same time,cadres are lost in the world of screens,seriously weakening their courage to "tell the truth" and "see the truth".Through repetition,high participation,and political ethics,these ritualistic performances produce a body of knowledge about bureaucracy and government organization,turning meaningless time sequences into thickened time regimes.At the same time,cadres reinterpreted and practiced this ethicalized time while undergoing the technical discipline of time,producing multiple modes of self.Finally,the view is cast to a more macro social structure and history,a land where policy movements,major events and reforms,such as population movements,poverty alleviation policies and epidemics,have affected people’s lives.The cadres,being more closely connected to the state apparatus,have been more affected by changes in policy and political environment.Beyond their menial tasks,the city’s specific cultural tone,historical experiences and social mores also influence the formation of their selves,as they catch up with the pace of history and uncompromisingly grasp their destiny.In short,there is a tension between the moral selves of the cadres and the political and moral demands and moral expectations of the people.This tension comes from the trivial work of bureaucratic production,which shapes the self-perception of the cadres in terms of spatial environment and temporal order.At the same time,the macro era and regional culture also influenced the cadres’ self-practices.