Short Abstract

The anthropology of policy has yielded insights into ‘policy’ as a domain of cultural production. With democratic regimes of governance now in retreat, the nature of policy production and implementation is changing. This panel explores those transformations in an increasingly authoritarian world.

Long Abstract

Over the past quarter century, the anthropology of policy has grown into an important subfield, emerging as an area of inquiry that has yielded significant insights into the ways in which ‘policy,’ understood here as a domain of cultural production, has contributed to the transformation of power and society in the context of what can loosely be termed ‘neoliberal globalization.’ Central to this body of work, in contrast to more orthodox ‘policy studies,’ has been the prioritization of the role of people in the production, reproduction, and performance of power through policy, as well as instances of resistance, subversion, and transformation.

At present, we are in a critical historical moment when supposedly democratic regimes of governance, many built on the fruits of colonial exploitation, seem to be transforming, with modes of authoritarian rule now in ascendence in different parts of the world, including within centres of supposedly firm democratic traditions, with colonial violence returning to the so-called core countries. The convergence of racist, populist and law-and-order social movements has produced a fraught environment that has nurtured the development of policies that seem to repudiate evidence altogether in favor of decrees that are largely ideological in content. Although policies have always been shaped by their ideological contexts, the present moment is giving way to the production of policy initiatives that eschew a basis in scientific data entirely. Thus, this emergence of “post-evidentiary” policy calls for new modes of analysis, and for new understandings of the ways in which policies that had once been widely accepted have become generative terrain for heated political debates, mobilizations, and contestations. The papers in this panel will contribute to on-going debates and discussions about the continuing role that anthropology can play in shedding light on the cultural dimensions of policy in our increasingly undemocratic world.

This Panel has 2 pending paper proposals.
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