Digital Weberianism: Bureaucracy, Information, and the Techno-rationality of Neoliberal Capitalism

Abstract

The social infrastructures that constitute both public and private administration are increasingly entangled with digital data, big data, and algorithms. While some argue that these technologies have blown apart the strictures of bureaucratic order, we see more subtle changes at work. We suggest that far from a radical rupture, in today's digitising society, there are strong traces of the logic and techniques of Max Weber's bureau; a foundational concept in his account of the symbiotic relationship between modernity, capitalism and social order.