Summary
In Feldman’s account of Gaza, the way the general idea of good civil service work was concretised over a career: a technical competence that was not exactly expertise, a social competence of differentiated service based in local knowledge, and an ethical competence of self-cultivation that did not guarantee a moral outcome (Governing Gaza, PDF p.109-114 / printed p.92-97).
Details
- Habit was operationalised as competence: as civil servants sought personal advantage and strove to be competent, they became ever more acclimated to the service milieu, and the moments of a career, from hiring to retirement, schooled personnel and identified the borders of the service (PDF p.109 / printed p.92).
- Technical competence in Gaza emphasised coping skills rather than mastery of elaborated models, because government was tactical rather than strategic and large-scale government was neither possible nor often sought; it was “the skills of the bricoleur, not the expert, that were required” (PDF p.111-112 / printed p.94-95).
- Social competence was not disinterested treatment but knowing how to treat people appropriately according to their social position, producing satisfaction from an encounter even when it did not produce the desired result (PDF p.112-113 / printed p.95-96).
- Mandate hiring sought people already acclimated: recruitment policy sought out “sons or relatives of old government servants, who have traditions or experience behind them”, and by 1946 character and manners were central to judging Gaza district administration applicants (PDF p.115-117 / printed p.98-100).
- The borders of the service were policed at its closure as well as its entry: the Administration refused the August 1949 Beersheba petitioners because, having disobeyed orders to stay in Hebron and Bethlehem, they had placed themselves outside the boundaries of service, while after 1956 applications added personal suffering to qualifications as the service became a form of welfare and overstaffing devalued the work (PDF p.118-120 / printed p.101-103).
- Training debates turned on whether competence could be taught: a Mandate education director held that absence of powers of supervision was “probably congenital and irremediable”, while Muhammad Ghazi’s career rested on self-training, and engagement rather than expertise marked the competent employee (PDF p.120-122 / printed p.103-105).
- Competence was displayed in the space of service: in Mandate offices by efficiency and guarding information from public view, in Administration offices by a public performance of knowledge in crowded rooms where the really private audience was almost unknown (PDF p.122-125 / printed p.105-108).
- Promotion operated by resemblance and recognition — the 1926 committee proposed cadres and equivalence against a system “formed under a system of opportunism” — and punishment, from the Hammanieh dismissal to Mariam Samira’s salary fine, defined competence by its failures of practice and character (PDF p.126-133 / printed p.109-116).
- Pension eligibility decided who had been a civil servant: married women were forced to resign on marriage and rehired as temporaries, shari’a court personnel won pensions only under a special ordinance, and the government’s monthly life pension against UNRWA’s lump sum carried competence’s dignity into retirement (PDF p.133-137 / printed p.116-120).
Related pages
Governing Gaza, Reiterative authority, Reflective habit, Tactical government, Gaza