Toward an Anthropology of Public Policy

Abstract

As the rational choice model of “policy” proliferates in “policy studies, ” the social sciences, modern governments, organizations, and everyday life, a number of anthropologists are beginning to develop a body of work in the anthropology of public policy that critiques the assumptions of “policy” as a legal-rational way of getting things done. While de-masking the framing of public policy questions, an anthropological approach attempts to uncover the constellations of actors, activities, and influences that shape policy decisions, their implementation, and their results. In a rapidly changing world, anthropologists’ empirical and ethnographic methods can show how policies actively create new categories of individuals to be governed. They also suggest that the long-established frameworks of “state” and “private, ”“local” or “national” and “global, ”“macro” and “micro, ”“top down” and “bottom up, ” and “centralized” and “decentralized” not only fail to capture current dynamics in the world but actually obfuscate the understanding of many policy processes.

Policies on the Move: The Transatlantic Travels of Tax Increment Financing

“…A second, still burgeoning, engagement around policy mobilities is also multi-disciplinary in nature. It involves anthropologists and others working on the notion of 'policy worlds'-"domains of meaning" that policies both reflect and create (Shore, Wright and Però 2011, 1;Shore and Wright 1997;Wedel, Shore, Feldman and Lathrop 2005). This literature has recently come into conversation with those developing critical geographies of policy (Peck 2011;Roy and Ong 2011;Jacobs 2012;McCann and Ward 2012a, 2012bRobinson, 2011Robinson, , 2013Söderström 2014).…”

Pour une socio-anthropologie de l’action publique dans les pays ‘sous régime d’aide’

“…Malg uel ues t a au da s les a nées 1980 (Apthorpe, 1986 ;Grillo et Rew, 1985 , est au ilieu des a es « u ha p ou eau pou l a th opologie » (Shore et Wright, 1997). En 2005, est encore en devenir, une approche vers laquelle il faudrait tendre (Wedel, Shore, Feldman et al, 2005 ;. Centrées sur les pays industrialisés ou les anciennes républiques soviétiques, ces recherches se sont intéressées avant tout aux politiques publiques comme forme de pouvoir, aux enjeux de pouvoir liés aux discours et à leurs implications.…”

Researching the Geographies of Policy Mobility: Confronting the Methodological Challenges

“…Because the processes being analyzed are much more fluid, defined through eddies and flows that move uncertainly and are defined in place as well as in and through networks; it is not easy to find straightforward ways of researching them (Bu« scher et al, 2011;Pero et al, 2011;Shore and Wright, 1997;Wedel et al, 2005). The next section explains how the papers in this theme issue respond to and seek to take this research agenda forward.…”