This article explores the material practices through which lower‐caste and poor villagers engage with bureaucracy in contemporary India. We take documents and paperwork – such as ration cards and community certificates – as a ‘lens’ through which to explore how paper materiality is infused with the politics of power, patronage, and identity. The article brings ethnography from rural Tamil Nadu, South India, in conversation with two bodies of literature: one on the materiality of bureaucracy and one on the nature of political mediation in contemporary India. We demonstrate how everyday engagements with paperwork as well as processes of applying, form filling, and securing recommendations are constitutive of social and political relationships and, ultimately, of citizenship itself. Political mediation around paperwork and bureaucracy generates a hierarchy of citizens rather than equal citizenship for all, yet ordinary villagers transpire as anything but passive. Drawing on patronage networks, engaging in affective performances, and navigating a politics of identity, they actively negotiate access to the state in an attempt to claim their rights as citizens.

中文翻译：

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文书工作、赞助和公民身份：印度泰米尔纳德邦官僚机构日常互动的重要性

本文探讨了当代印度低种姓和贫困村民与官僚机构打交道的物质实践。我们将文件和文书工作——例如配给卡和社区证书——作为一个“镜头”，通过它来探索纸张的重要性如何与权力、赞助和身份政治相结合。这篇文章将来自南印度泰米尔纳德邦农村的民族志与两种文学作品进行对话：一种是关于官僚主义的物质性，另一种是关于当代印度政治调解的性质。我们展示了日常文书工作以及申请、填写表格和获得建议的过程如何构成社会和政治关系，并最终构成公民身份本身。围绕文书工作和官僚主义的政治调解产生了公民的等级制度，而不是所有人的平等公民权，但普通村民却表现得并不被动。利用赞助网络，参与情感表演，并驾驭身份政治，他们积极谈判进入国家的机会，以争取他们作为公民的权利。