National Capital Bureaucracy as a Spatial Phenomenon

Abstract

Emphasizing bureaucracy as a communicative phenomenon involving localized knowledge—or metis—this article examines the place of the national capital city of Australia, Canberra, within the geographies of the Australian Public Service. First, drawing on research into knowledge clusters, the city is viewed as a key place of certain forms of communicative interaction. Second, drawing on the concept of metis, Canberra is discussed as a place potentially out of touch with the rest of Australia in terms of this form of knowledge but also as an essential site of accumulating metis essential to career progression within the national bureaucracy.