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.
Anthropology of Public Policy — Syllabus Cris Shore This course has two main aims. The first is to interrogate the concept of ‘policy’ and examine how it works - as a socio-cultural category, a political technology and an instrument of governance. The second is to...
The Social Life of Policy — Syllabus Jennifer Hubbert The study of policy deals with issues at the heart of anthropology such as institutions and power; ideology and discourse, identity and culture; and interactions between the global and the local, public and...
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...