Building on Max Weber’s observation that the state’s reliance on formal tools leads to governance for some and dehumanization for others, we investigate administrative standards as a social mechanism of stratification that sorts people into categories and allocates symbolic and financial resources. Specifically, we examine how at a time of increased family diversity, the state’s use of family standards at the end-of-life discounts certain people as kin. Based on ethnographic and documentary data about government’s implementation of family standards to identify next-of-kin and task them with the disposition of dead bodies, we find that the use of family standards leads to three outcomes: a formal fit between standard and family forms; a formal misfit between who is designated next-of-kin and who is willing to handle disposition, leading to bodies going unclaimed; and a formal refit, where people not officially designated as next-of-kin overcome formal barriers to disposition. Our analysis offers a conceptual framework to examine how administrative standards include and exclude people from social groups. These bureaucratic tools produce a standard-specific governable life for some, and a diverse range of oppositional effects varying from non-recognition to opportunism for the non-standardized.

基于马克斯·韦伯（Max Weber）的观察，即国家对正式工具的依赖会导致某些人的治理和其他人的非人性化，我们将行政标准视为一种社会分层机制，将人们分类并分配象征性和财政资源。具体来说，我们研究了在家庭多样性增加的时候，国家在临终时使用的家庭标准如何将某些人视为亲属。基于有关政府实施家庭标准以识别近亲并要求他们处理尸体的民族志和文献数据，我们发现家庭标准的使用导致三个结果：标准和家庭形式之间的正式契合; 谁被指定为近亲和谁愿意处理处置之间的正式不匹配，导致尸体无人认领；和正式的改装，没有正式指定为近亲的人克服正式的处置障碍。我们的分析提供了一个概念框架来检查行政标准如何包括和排除社会群体中的人。这些官僚工具为某些人创造了一种特定于标准的可治理生活，并为非标准化的人带来了从不承认到机会主义的各种不同的对立效应。