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In this article, I present the theoretical and methodological steps by means of which I developed an encompassing and empirical approach to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). By drawing upon an embedded ethnography and the analytical tools of political anthropology, I studied the organization’s internal operation and the relations enmeshing its agents and offices, an approach that also allowed me to grasp the organization’s global action in the 2000s. In addition to underscoring how using the methods of anthropology to study bureaucratic institutions contributes to the theoretical revival of the discipline, the term “bureaugraphy” highlights the role played by the organization’s material infrastructure in constructing the UNHCR as an object and in analyzing my data. Following an introduction regarding the renewal of studies devoted to international organizations, I explain how I was able to “uninstitute” the UNHCR and conceive of its splintered bureaucratic system as a field. I then show the manner in which I circumscribed the perimeter of my study and describe the processes by which I moved from localized observation to an encompassing analysis. Finally, I recount the process of epistemological distanciation necessary to identify the production of expert knowledge as one of the organization’s major forms of authority.