This series explores policy through anthropological methodologies to better understand how policies work as instruments of political intervention and social change. What new kinds of actors, subjects, and social spaces do policies create, and how are they used to manage populations? Can policy analysis shed light on wider transformations of governance and power? How can ethnography capture critical dimensions of policymaking, and the cultural worlds of policymakers themselves? For more on the series, click below.
Coordinating Care and Coercion: Styles of Sovereignty and the Politics of Humanitarian Aid in Lebanon Sam Dinger, NYU - 2023 Coordinating Care and Coercion: Styles of Sovereignty and the Politics of Humanitarian Aid in Lebanon is a timely—urgent, even—critique of...
"We Are Not Going to Vote Again!" Violence and the Politics of Devolution in Northern Kenya Sean Furmage, 2017 Abstract: In this paper, I explore how the implementation of decentralization policies has shaped violence in Samburu County, northern Kenya. In 2010, a...
Automobility and Flexibility after Foster Care in Kentucky EB Saldaña. Princeton University, 2021 In this paper, I ask: What are the specific conditions for former foster youth that make car-based mobility particularly challenging? Based on ten months of fieldwork in...
Good Practices: Humanized Birth, and Political Subjectivity in Brazil Eliza Williamson, 2019 Abstract: In this paper, I attend to the disconnect between current Brazilian maternal and infant health policy and the experiences of my interlocutors in Salvador da Bahia. I...
Readmission Policy and State-NGO-Funder Relations in Malawi Rachel Silver, 2018 Abstract: Within the anthropology of development, a rich body of work highlights the unintended—and gendered—consequences of development interventions. According to Mosse (2004), however,...
The Neighborhood School Stigma: Choice, Stratification, and Shame The Association for the Anthropology of Policy Julia McWilliams February 15, 2018 “The Neighborhood School Stigma: School Choice, Stratification, and Shame” Over the past decade, social scientists...
"Off the Record and In the Loop": Excavating Power in the Washington Foreign Policy Establishment The Association for the Anthropology of Policy Negar Razavi September 19, 2017 Power and the Washington Establishment Graduate Student Paper Prize Winner These days...