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.
The ASAP Education Committee created the following bibliography full of resources for the anthropology of policy. It includes general readings on the anthropology of policy as well as specialized topics such as: bureaucrats and bureaucracy; committees and...
Audit Culture: How Indicators and Rankings are Reshaping the World Cris Shore and Susan Wright, February 2024 All aspects of our work and private lives are increasingly measured and managed. But how has this 'audit culture' arisen and what kind of a world is it...
Towards a Global Social Policy Otherwise: Decoloniality, socialist worldmaking and an ethics of translation Noémi Lendvai-Bainton and Paul Stubbs, November 2022 In this text, we argue for critical reflexivity regarding ‘global social policy studies’, focusing on the...
The cultural politics of dental humanitarianism (Chapter of Culture of Oral Health) Sarah E. Raskin, 2022 Multiple sociopolitical trends underlie US residents’ unmet oral care needs, including lack of public spending on adult dental coverage, Medicaid reimbursement...
Fast Childcare in Public Preschools Renita Thedvall, 2019 Fast Childcare in Public Preschools presents an ethnographic examination of the implementation of fast-policy management models and the efforts of teachers to use these to improve their work organization, and...
Discussing Policy with Prisoners Association for the Anthropology of Policy Jason Bartholomew Scott June 16, 2020 I teach an anthropology course within the Wisconsin Department of Corrections. The course is online in that video lectures, movies, assignments, and...
Wild Policy: Indigeneity and the Unruly Logics of Intervention Tess Lea, July 2020 Can there be good social policy? This book describes what happens to Indigenous policy when it targets the supposedly 'wild people' of regional and remote Australia. Tess Lea explores...
Sustaining Life: AIDS Activism in South Africa Theodore Powers, March 2020 An ethnographic account of the South African AIDS movement and activists From the historical roots of AIDS activism in the struggle for African liberation to the everyday work of community...
China, Soft Power, and Confucius Institutes with Jennifer Hubbert March 18, 2020 For those who have not yet read your book, could you offer a short overview of the focus, content, and argument? China in the World is the first book-length ethnography of Confucius...
Talking about Sovereignty and Action with Gregory Feldman Association for the Anthropology of Policy Theodore Powers and Gregory Feldman January 22, 2020 In this Association for the Anthropology of Policy column, Ted Powers interviews Gregory Feldman about his 2019...
Implementing Inequality: The Invisible Labor of International Development Rebecca Warne Peters, January 2017 Implementing Inequality argues that the international development industry’s internal dynamics—between international and national staff, and among policy...
Meeting Ethnography: Meetings as Key Technologies of Contemporary Governance, Development, and Resistance Jen Sandler, Renita Thedvall, December 2019 This volume asks and addresses elusive ontological, epistemological, and methodological questions about meetings. What...
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...
Encounters with Lunar Dust The Association for the Anthropology of Policy Dana Burton July 12, 2019 From Neil Armstrong’s footprints to future missions to Mars, contamination fears and policies lie at the heart of our cosmic explorations. The stiff, gray cardboard...
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,...
Forecasting Policy Trends The Association for the Anthropology of Policy Kristina Hook July 13, 2018 The application of predictive technologies to public policy questions opens opportunities for anthropologists to inject a human-focused approach into policy tools,...
Discreet Power: How the World Economic Forum Shapes Market Agendas Christina Garsten and Adrienne Sörbom, July 2018 In Discreet Power, Christina Garsten and Adrienne Sörbom undertake an ethnographic study of the World Economic Forum (WEF). Accessing one of the primary...
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...
Blue Children and All Shades of Responsibility The Association for the Anthropology of Policy Ema Hrešanová January 8, 2018 Book Review One Blue Child: Asthma, Responsibility, and the Politics of Global Health. Susanna Trnka. Stanford: Stanford University Press,...
"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...
The Anthropology of Policy Emerges The Association for the Anthropology of Policy Judi Pajo and Theodore Powers July 24, 2017 The Association for the Anthropology of Policy (ASAP) promotes the anthropological study of policy, including makings, workings, contexts,...
Between Tradition and Modernity The Association for the Anthropology of Policy Numvi Gwaibi (University of Pretoria) April 27, 2017 Politics and Policy in Cameroon The government of Cameroon introduced changes to the county’s constitution in the 1990s. These changes...
Speaking Ethnography to Policy The Association for the Anthropology of Policy Jessica Mulligan (Providence College) Rebecca Peters (Syracuse University) April 2017 Interdisciplinary Conversations on the Affordable Care Act Mainstream policy studies schools rarely...
Presidential Election in Austria and Rise of the Far Right The Association for the Anthropology of Policy Cansu Civelek (University of Vienna) March 2, 2017 On December 4, 2016, Austrians elected Alexander Van der Bellen, a former member of the GreenParty, as the...
Reflections on Minneapolis from the Section Leadership The Association for the Anthropology of Policy Cris Shore (University of Auckland) David Haines (George Mason University) February 14, 2017 As we noted in an earlier column, ASAP was active at the Minneapolis...