Policy Worlds: Anthropology and the Analysis of Contemporary Power

351 Pages·2011·23.8 MB·English

by  Chris Shore

POLICY WORLDS
EASA Series 8. EXPLORING REGIMES OF
Published in Association with the DISCIPLINE
European Association of Social The Dynamics of Restraint
Anthropologists {EASA) Edited by Noel Dyck
I. LEARNING FIELDS 9. KNOWING HOW TO KNOW
Volume 1 Fieldwork and the Ethnographic Present
Educational Histories of European Social Edited by Narmala Halstead, Eric Hirsch
Anthropology and Judith Okely
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10. POSTSOCIALIST EUROPE
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Volume2
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Current Policies and Practices in
IN THE PRESENT
European Social Anthropology Education
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Edited by Deborah James, Evelyn Plaice
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13. POWER AND MAGIC IN ITALY
Patients and Healers in Biomedical,
Thomas Hauschild
Alternative and Traditional Medicine
Edited by Helle Johannessen and Imrc 14. POLICY WORLDS
Lazar Anthropology and the Analysis of
Contemporary Power
S. FRACTURING RESEMBLANCES
Edited by Cris Shore, Susan Wright and
Identity and Mimetic Conflict in
Davidc Pen)
Melanesia and the West
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6. SKILLED VISIONS
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RELIGIOUS PRACTICES
Edited by Vcrcd Am it
Anthropological Reflections
Edited by Anna Fedele and Ruy Llcra Blancs
POLICY WORLDS
Anthropology and the Analysis
of Contemporary Power
Edited by
Cris Shore, Susan Wright and Davide Pero
~
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©20 II Cris Shore, Susan Wright and Davide Pero
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Policy worlds : anthropology and the analysis of contemporary power I edited by
Cris Shore, Susan Wright and Davide Pero.
p. em. -- (EASA series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-85745-IIG-3 (hardback: alk. paper)-- ISBN 978-0-85745-241-2
(pbk.: alk. paper)-- ISBN 978-0-85745-117-0 (ebook)
I. Political anthropology. I. Shore, Cris, 1959-II. Wright, Susan, 1951- III. Pen),
Davide.
~N492.P48 ~ 306.2--dc22
2011000956
British library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Printed in the United States on acid-free paper.
ISBN: 978-0-85745-II6-3 (hardback)
ISBN: 978-0-85745-241-2 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-85745-117-0 (ebook)
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 Conceptualising Policy: Technologies
of Governance and the Politics of Visibility
Cris Shore and Susan Wright
SECTION I STUDYING POLICY: METHODS, PARADIGMS,
PERSPECTIVES
Introduction 27
Susan Wright
Chapter 2 Illuminating the Apparatus: Steps toward
a Nonlocal Ethnography of Global Governance 32
Gregory Feldman
Chapter 3 Politics and Ethics: Ethnographies of Expert
Knowledge and Professional Identities 50
David Masse
Chapter 4 Peopling Policy: On Conflicting Subjectivities
of Fee-Paying Students 68
Gritt B. Nielsen
Chapter 5 'Studying Through': A Strategy for Studying Political
Transformation. Or Sex, Lies and British Politics 86
Susan Wright and Sue Reinhold
Chapter 6 What was Neoliberalism and What Comes Next?
The Transformation of Citizenship in the
Law-and-Order State 105
Susan Brin Hyatt
SECTION II STUDYING GOVERNANCE: POLICY AS A
WINDOW ONTO THE MODERN STATE
Introduction 125
Cris Shore
Chapter 7 Intimate Knowledge and the Politics of Policy
Convergence: The World Bank and Social
Security Reform in Mexico 130
Tara Schwegler
vi + Contents
Chapter 8 Shadow Governing: What the Neocon Core Reveals
about Power and Influence in America 151
]anine R. Wedel
Chapter 9 Espionage, Policy and the Art of Government:
The British Secret Services and the War on Iraq 169
Cris Shore
Chapter 10 The (Un)Making of Policy in the Shadow of the
World Bank: Infrastructure Development,
Urban Resettlement and the Cunning State in India 187
Shalini Randeria and Ciara Grunder
Chapter 11 Sweden's National Pension System as a
Political Technology 205
Anette Nyqvist
SECTION III SUBJECTS OF POLICY: CONSTRUCTION AND
CONTESTATION
Introduction 223
Davide Pero
Chapter 12 The Case of Scanzano: Raison d'Etat and the
Reasons for Rebellion 227
Dorothy Louise Zinn
Chapter 13 Migrants' Practices of Citizenship and
Policy Change 244
Davide Pero
Chapter 14 Integration Policy and Ethnic Minority
Associations 264
Clarissa Kugelberg
Chapter 15 The Elephant in the Room: Multistakeholder
Dialogue on Agricultural Biotechnology in the
Food and Agriculture Organization 282
Birgit Muller
Afterword
Chapter 16 A Policy Ethnographer's Reading of
Policy Anthropology 300
Dvora Yanow
Notes on Contributors 315
Index 319
INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1
Conceptualising Policy:
Technologies of Governance and
the Politics of Visibility
Cris Shore and Susan Wright
A revolutionary moment in the world's history is a time for revolutions, not for
patching ... Social insurance should be treated as one part only of a comprehensive
policy of social progress. Social insurance fully developed may provide income
security; it is an attack upon Want. But Want is one only of five giants on the road
of reconstruction and in some ways the easiest to attack. The others are Disease,
Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness ... [S]ocial security must be achieved by co-operation
between the State and the individual . . . in establishing a national minimum, [the
State] should leave room and encouragement for voluntary action by each individual
to provide more than that minimum for himself and his family. (Beveridge 1942: 1)
Why an 'Anthropology of Policy'?
This book is about how and why anthropology opens up new perspectives on
the study of policy. As our authors demonstrate, the point of an anthropology
of policy is not just to focus a new lens on particular fields of policy but, in
doing so, to reveal larger processes of governance, power and social change
that are shaping the world today. As the title suggests, policies belong to-and
are embedded within- particular social and cultural worlds or 'domains of
meaning'. But they create as well as reflect those worlds. From our perspective,
policies are not simply external, generalised or constraining forces, nor are they
confined to texts. Rather, they are productive, performative and continually
contested. A policy finds expression through sequences of events; it creates
new social and semantic spaces, new sets of relations, new political subjects
and new webs of meaning. Identifying and analysing these policy worlds
is the central aim of this volume. In stating this, we are adamant that the
2 • Policy Worlds
term 'policy worlds' does not imply essentialised or bounded entities; rather,
we see policies as windows onto political processes in which actors, agents,
concepts and technologies interact in different sites, creating or consolidating
new rationalities of governance and regimes of knowledge and power.
A good case in point is the 1942 Beveridge Report, cited above, which
provided an ambitious blueprint for the post-War welfare state in Britain
and became a model for similar reforms in much of the developed world.
Beveridge's proposals included a national network of hospitals and family
doctors, a system of public health and support for elderly and disabled
people, and children's allowances for food and clothing, all to be financed by
a national system of comprehensive social insurance (Abel-Smith 1992). Like
all major policy initiatives, it was deeply contested, being denounced by one
former chairman of the British Medical Association as:
the first step, and a big one, to national socialism as practised in Germany. The medical
service there was early put under the dictatorship of a 'medical fuhrer' The Bill will
establish the minister for health in that capacity. (BBC 1998)
Despite the initial hostility of doctors, who feared it would undermine their
professional independence and threaten their incomes, the popularity of
the new nationalised health system rapidly established a national political
consensus that has survived to the present day and has made it impossible
for neoliberal reformers to privatise it openly. Beveridge's plan for social
insurance, in which the current workforce underwrote the security of the
retired generation trusting that its own security would come from the
future contributions of the next generation, produced a fundamentally new
construction of the 'social', one that tied the welfare of every individual
into membership of society. The Report conveyed an image of a new policy
world, framing the space to be governed in a radically new way and recasting
the roles of both the state and individuals.
The importance of policy as a subject of anthropological analysis arises
from the fact that policies are major instruments through which governments,
companies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), public agencies and
international bodies classify and regulate the spaces and subjects they seek to
govern. Policy is a fundamental 'organising principle' of society which, like
'family', 'nation', 'class' or 'citizenship', provides a way of conceptualising
and symbolising social relations, and around which people live their lives and
structure their realities (Berger and Luckman 1966). Through the analysis of
these policy processes we are able to observe the way fragments of culture and
society are brought into new alignments with each other to create new social
and semantic terrains. There are few, if any, populations today that are not
in some way or another touched by the classificatory logics and regulatory
powers of policy. Even societies that have no indigenous concept of policy find
their lives and livelihoods subject to the policies of often remote governments,
mining companies and other national and international agencies, as exemplified
in Rumsey and Weiner's (2001) and Kirsch's (2006) studies of mining in Papua
Introduaion • 3
New Guinea and Australia. Equally, in those countries where the idea of policy
is not differentiated semantically from the term 'politics' (as in Denmark and
Italy, where 'politik' and 'politica' are used respectively to cover both}, policies
nonetheless exist. In short, the reach of policy, understood in both a general as
well as particular sense, is now truly global.
If part of the 'work of policy' is to classify and organise people and ideas
in new ways, then it becomes easy to understand why policies can be such
powerful vehicles for social change. Policies can serve as instruments for
consolidating the legitimacy of an existing social order or they can provide
the rationale for 'regime change' and the subversion of an established order.
Like the architecture and internal organisation of an institution, policies
reflect the rationality and assumptions prevalent at the time of their creation.
However, this is not to suggest that the ideas (or ideologies) that create and
sustain policy agendas are in any way static or monolithic. On the contrary,
a key quality of policies is that, once created, they often migrate into new
contexts and settings, and acquire a life of their own that has consequences
that go beyond the original intentions.
This 'domaining effect' as we have called it is perhaps best illustrated in
the rise of the 'audit culture' in the workplace of public and private sector
organisations in Britain and beyond (Shore and Wright 1999; 2000; Strathern
2000). The introduction of the principles and techniques of New Public
Management (NPM) into local authorities, government ministries, hospitals,
schools and universities has profoundly modified the behaviour and self
understandings of these organisations and their staff. The new systems of
'internal markets', 'performance measurement', 'self-appraisal', 'external
benchmarking', 'competitive ranking' and 'payment by results' may have
boosted productivity and performance, but these forms of surveillance and
disciplinary 'techniques of the self' individualise and isolate people, forging
new types of flexible, self-managed and responsibilised subjects and increasing
insecurity, stress and fear in the workplace (Rose 1989; Cruikshank 1999;
Martin 1997; Strathern 2000; Larner and Le Heron 2005}.
The creation and rapid spread of auditing technologies exemplifies how
policies often have a 'runaway effect', actively reshaping the environments
into which they have been introduced (Power 1997}. Theoretically, we
see policies as having complex 'social lives' as people interact with them
and as they in turn enter into relations with institutions and other artifacts
(Appadurai 1986 ). An even better way to theorise policies is to think of them
as exemplars of what Bruno Latour (1996} terms 'actants'- that is, policies
have agency; they shift action; and, like machines, they perform tasks and are
endowed with certain competencies. Importantly, actants typically interact
with other social agents in processes that are dynamic and contingent, and
therefore have unpredictable effects.