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Accepted Paper:
'Policy Societies': policy, property, and owned persons.
Simone Abram
(Durham University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper considers the personhood of policy. In the context of policy on housing demolition, it examines why feelings of ownership of house-property might disrupt governmental ambitions that citizens should feel ownership over policy and explores the ambivalence around what that ownership entails.
Paper long abstract:
In the pantheon of neo-liberal government (eg in the not-so 'New Public Management'), the idea of investing ownership in policies is central to creating legitimacy for governing strategies. When these policies involve the demolition of people's homes, feelings of 'owning policy' might be disrupted by feelings of ownership over the property that constitutes home. Whether or not a house is owned by the inhabitants, or whether it is rented from others, feelings of ownership often constitute the house as a person (as Levi-Strauss suggested in his definition of 'house society'). But can we equally understand policy as person? Does policy have properties or property-like aspects that correspond to house-property, or is it a different kind of person? This paper examines policy as person, property as person, and person as property through a study of urban regeneration policy and 'housing renewal' in the UK.
Policy, power and appropriation: reflections on the ownership and governance of policy
Session 1