What Did the Typewriter Do to Banking? Bureaucratic Practices, Materiality, and the Logic of Capitalism in the Late Habsburg Monarchy

3rd session of CEFRES Seminar 2021-2022

What Did the Typewriter Do to Banking?
Bureaucratic Practices, Materiality, and the Logic of Capitalism in the Late Habsburg Monarchy

Hosted by:
Mátyás Erdélyi, post-doctoral fellow at CEFRES and Charles University

When: November 3rd, 2021 at 4:30 pm
Where: CEFRES and online (to register please mail to claire(@)cefres.cz)
Language: English

Abstract
In this talk, I present my current research project that focuses on bureaucratic practices in banking at the turn of the century from the perspective of the materiality of office work. The project reconstructs the emergence of the modern bureau by relating the “grubby details” of office work to the multi-faceted identity of functionaires. Based on the case study of several savings banks in the Dual Monarchy, it studies how the logic of capitalism materialized and was embodied in different forms, how bureaucratic practices were implanted in the body and hands of clerks, and what exactly clerks did and they did it with what?