Policy Worlds: Anthropology and the Analysis of Contemporary Power

Published by Berghahn Books 2011

Policy Worlds

Anthropology and the Analysis of Contemporary Power

Edited by: Cris Shore , Susan Wright and Davide Però

Volume 14 in the series EASA Series

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780857451170

Overview
Contents

About this book

There are few areas of society today that remain outside the ambit of policy processes, and likewise policy making has progressively reached into the structure and fabric of everyday life. An instrument of modern government, policy and its processes provide an analytical window into systems of governance themselves, opening up ways to study power and the construction of regimes of truth. This volume argues that policies are not simply coercive, constraining or confined to static texts; rather, they are productive, continually contested and able to create new social and semantic spaces and new sets of relations. Anthropologists do not stand outside or above systems of governance but are themselves subject to the rhetoric and rationalities of policy. The analyses of policy worlds presented by the contributors to this volume open up new possibilities for understanding systems of knowledge and power and the positioning of academics within them.

Author / Editor information

Cris Shore is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Susan Wright is Professor of Educational Anthropology at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Denmark.

Davide Però is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Nottingham.

Cris Shore is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Reviews

“The editors break new ground in offering policy as one lifeline to anthropologists struggling to give shape to multi-sited ethnography…This book achieves what it sets out to do. These accounts show that policy is good to think with, that theories of governmentality should encompass contestation to be convincing, and that ‘policy’ deserves further study.” · Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

“The book offers both unsettling and highly inspirational reading material, especially for academics emerging from the world’s metropolises. It raises issues that are frequently overlooked and which represent unavoidable starting points for those doing anthropology today in the Antipodes and elsewhere.” · Social Anthropologie/Anthropologie sociale

“This volume offers an indispensable point of reference for any methodological and theoretical planning and execution of cultural- and social-anthropological research into the fields of politics and policy.” · H-Soz-u-Kult

“The value of the very idea of focusing on policy processes rather than on politics lies in that it is at the level of policy that a more comprehensive light can be shed on the always less ‘local’ and always more multifarious, subtle, flexible and dissimulating ways in which contemporary power shapes our worlds. This is why, after reading this book,... one recognizes the bounded coherence of its highly dissimilar contexts and ethnographic stories.” · Ethnic and Racial Studies

“The currency of this book adds to the validity of argument being made by applied anthropology’s advocates and supports their case in the ongoing applied/theoretical divide…Policy Worlds is a valuable addition to this emerging field of anthropology.” · Anthropological Forum: A Journal of Social Anthropology and Comparative Sociology

“An outstanding contribution to the anthropological understanding of public policy… A very polished, coherent project, ably edited.” · Susan Greenhalgh, University of California, Irvine

“The volume represents an emergent subfield of anthropology coming of age in some ways; it will teach very well indeed and will certainly prove an invaluable book to think with and through… I was consistently impressed by the quality, coherence, and interest of the articles in themselves. Each was substantively fascinating, methodologically thought-provoking, and clearly linked to the others.” · Don Brenneis, University of California, Santa Cruz

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Introduction
Chapter 1 Conceptualising Policy: Technologies of Governance and the Politics of Visibility Cris Shore and Susan Wright Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Section I Studying Policy: Methods, Paradigms, Perspectives
Introduction Susan Wright Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	27
Chapter 2 Illuminating the Apparatus: Steps toward a Nonlocal Ethnography of Global Governance Gregory Feldman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	32
Chapter 3 Politics and Ethics: Ethnographies of Expert Knowledge and Professional Identities David Mosse Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	50
Chapter 4 Peopling Policy: On Conflicting Subjectivities of Fee-Paying Students Gritt B. Nielsen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	68
Chapter 5 ‘Studying Through’: A Strategy for Studying Political Transformation. Or Sex, Lies and British Politics Susan Wright and Sue Reinhold Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	86
Chapter 6 What was Neoliberalism and What Comes Next? The Transformation of Citizenship in the Law-and-Order State Susan Brin Hyatt Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	105
Section II Studying Governance: Policy as a Window onto the Modern State
Introduction Cris Shore Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	125
Chapter 7 Intimate Knowledge and the Politics of Policy Convergence: The World Bank and Social Security Reform in Mexico Tara Schwegler Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	130
Chapter 8 Shadow Governing: What the Neocon Core Reveals about Power and Influence in America Janine R. Wedel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	151
Chapter 9 Espionage, Policy and the Art of Government: The British Secret Services and the War on Iraq Cris Shore and Susan Wright Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	169
Chapter 10 The (Un)Making of Policy in the Shadow of the World Bank: Infrastructure Development, Urban Resettlement and the Cunning State in India Shalini Randeria and Ciara Grunder Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	187
Chapter 11 Sweden’s National Pension System as a Political Technology Anette Nyqvist Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	205
Section III Subjects of Policy: Construction and Contestation
Introduction Davide Però Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	223
Chapter 12 The Case of Scanzano: Raison d’État and the Reasons for a Rebellion Dorothy Louise Zinn Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	227
Chapter 13 Migrants’ Practices of Citizenship and Policy Change Davide Però Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	244
Chapter 14 Integration Policy and Ethnic Minority Associations Clarissa Kugelberg Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	264
Chapter 15 The Elephant in the Room: Multistakeholder Dialogue on Agricultural Biotechnology in the Food and Agriculture Organization Birgit Müller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	282
Afterword
Chapter 16 A Policy Ethnographer’s Reading of Policy Anthropology Dvora Yanow Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	300
Notes on Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	315
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	319

Language: English
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 348
Keywords: Theory and Methodology; Applied Anthropology; Sociology

eBook

Published: April 1, 2011
ISBN: 9780857451170