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- Convenors:
-
Susan Hyatt
(Indiana University Indianapolis)
Paul Stubbs (The Institute of Economics, Zagreb)
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- Formats:
- Panel
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.
Accepted papers
Session 1Paper short abstract
This article presents the views of families who have resorted to surrogacy and the challenges they currently face in Spain, in order to protect the well-being of their children; in a context where surrogacy is subject to stigmatization and harassment by the state and the dominant feminist movement
Paper long abstract
Families formed through surrogacy face increasing challenges in Spain that threaten their dignity and well-being. Recent legal reforms and policy actions indicate an authoritarian shift within the Spanish democratic regime aimed at discouraging surrogacy. This includes the incorporation of rhetoric on the “reproductive exploitation” of women into legislative preambles, such as the abortion law, and the tightening in April 2025 of regulations governing the registration of children born through surrogacy abroad. These measures disregard public opinion, which is largely supportive of surrogacy, as well as the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, which affirms that children born through legal surrogacy abroad must not be denied legal recognition in their parents’ country of nationality.
Unlike other European contexts where diverse positions coexist, Spanish feminist movements have largely adopted a unified opposition to surrogacy, while only a limited number of LGBTI associations engage openly in debate, contributing to internal tensions within social movements. This paper draws on a broader ethnographic study based on 29 semi-structured interviews with parents who have used surrogacy, documenting their perceptions of increasing discrimination. The discussion concludes by assessing the impact of these policies on families and on societal tolerance toward family diversity in Spain.
Paper short abstract
This project examines how authority in China emerges within everyday life. Based on ethnography in Beichuan New County, it explores Tianxia as a logic of elastic, overlapping temporalities, showing how political belonging and legitimacy are co-constituted through circulating, relational practices.
Paper long abstract
This research investigates how the Chinese state is experienced, enacted, and legitimized through everyday moral and relational practices rather than through explicit institutional domination. Focusing on Beichuan New County—a centralized resettlement site established after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake—the study examines how post-disaster governance operates through symbolic inclusion, affective alignment, and what I term an ethics of placability: a mode of political integration that prioritizes accommodation, moral resonance, and relational continuity over coercion or ideological consensus.
Conceptually, the project reinterprets Tianxia as an empirical analytic rather than a civilizational ideal, emphasizing its elastic boundaries and capacity to absorb difference without fully resolving it. Methodologically, it employs long-term ethnographic dwelling, participant observation, and recursive interviewing to trace how kinship, memorialization, and everyday encounters with state practices produce a suspended space in which authority is neither fully internalized nor openly contested. By situating the state as a relational node activated through collective practice, this research offers a non-sovereign account of governance and advances anthropological understandings of legitimacy, morality, and state–society relations in contemporary China.
Paper short abstract
This paper explores a politics of translation as a lens through which to understand coalescing crises and the rise of variegated authoritarianisms, addressing some of the philosophical, moral-ethical and political implications.
Paper long abstract
This paper addresses the importance of a politics of translation for understanding coalescing crises and the rise of variegated authoritarianisms, situating reconstituted racialized hierarchies, patriarchal and heteronormative ideologies, and forms of class oppression across spatio-temporal assemblages. A politics of translation illuminates a policy world in which forces of displacement and dislocation unfold through continuous transformation, negotiation and enactment. We aim to capture translation in terms of making “new associations, to reassociate or perhaps reassign” (Freeman, 2004). Thinking about reassociation and reassignments emerged at a time when the straightjackets of dominant policy models - revealed in our own work on development projects and on the Europeanization of social policies in new EU member states – alongside the depoliticization of governing, rendered a seemingly ever-expanding techno-legal policy space actually smaller in terms of the room for manoeuvre and the possibility of alternatives. With the rise of authoritarian governing, deglobalisation, radical uncertainty, and the profound crisis and fragmentation of technocratic and legal registers of policy worlds, we address some of the philosophical, moral-ethical and political implications of taking translation seriously as a central concept in the anthropology of policy and beyond. Our aim is to broaden understandings of what might constitute an anthropology of policy by bringing it closer to work that may well not address policy centrally or, even, at all and, indeed, work not even considered to be anthropological in terms of its disciplinary provenance. We explore, in turn, translation itself, relationality, conjunctural thinking, history, racialised coloniality, silences and policy otherwise.
Paper short abstract
This paper interrogates gendered moralities as policy in Portugal, examining how authoritarian ideologies reshape family and reproduction, and how feminist resistance contests struggles over bodies, citizenship, and democracy in a time of growing authoritarianism.
Paper long abstract
This paper examines the recent rise of far-right politics in Portugal through the anthropology of policy, analyzing how gender equality, reproduction, and family emerge as central sites of power and cultural production in a time of authoritarianism. Long perceived as a society of “mild manners,” Portugal has undergone rapid political transformation with the parliamentary ascent of Chega, whose policy agendas mobilize narratives around the “traditional family,” reproductive rights, gender identity, and education.
Drawing on feminist anthropology and critical policy studies, I analyze how these initiatives exemplify post-evidentiary governance, in which ideological claims increasingly displace scientific knowledge in debates over abortion, sexuality, and gender diversity. Far-right gender policies operate not merely as legal instruments but as cultural projects that reorganize social hierarchies by naturalizing patriarchy, heteronormativity, and nationalist imaginaries, revealing how authoritarian power is produced through policy domains.
At the same time, feminist and LGBTQIA+ movements mobilize to defend gender-egalitarian frameworks, reproductive autonomy, and inclusive education, underscoring the relationship between gender equality and democratic governance. Gender-egalitarian policies have long served as indicators of democratic consolidation, while their erosion signals authoritarian shifts. These struggles unfold across institutional and public arenas, where policy becomes a site of contestation and resistance.
Situating Portugal within wider transnational patterns of far-right resurgence, this paper contributes to anthropological debates on policy as cultural production. It foregrounds anthropology’s critical role in interrogating how power is enacted through gendered policies and how these processes reshape citizenship, bodies, and democratic life.
Paper short abstract
This paper examines how the Disturbed Areas Act in Ahmedabad governs property transactions through post-evidentiary state practices. It reflects on the ways regulatory anticipation and sedimented prejudicial logics come to shape possibilities of urban coexistence in polarized contexts.
Paper long abstract
Who or what decides where one may live? In the dense and often chaotic array of intersecting forces shaping urban residence, one factor that stands out in the city of Ahmedabad is the regulatory regime of the Disturbed Areas Act (DAA). Formally titled The Gujarat Prohibition of Transfer of Immovable Property and Provision for Protection of Tenants from Eviction from Premises in Disturbed Areas Act, the law was introduced in the aftermath of communal violence as a temporary protective measure intended to prevent distress property sales. Originally enacted in 1986, the Act, through subsequent amendments, has evolved into a framework that extends its scope beyond episodic violence to the regulation of property transactions. Drawing on a critical analysis of the Act and its amendments, government notifications and interviews with practicing lawyers, this paper examines the DAA as a paradigmatic post-evidentiary policy. Contemporary iterations of the law no longer hinge on demonstrable evidence of “disturbance”. Instead, they rely on governance vocabularies like “polarisation”, “demographic equilibrium”, and “improper clustering”, through which residential population movement itself is rendered subject to regulatory assessment. Such discursive reconstruction underpins a post-evidentiary mode of governance, in which administrative intervention is justified through anticipated risk and sedimented prejudicial logics rather than demonstrable evidence of disorder. This reconfiguration displaces evidentiary thresholds with administrative discretion, enabling state inventions through delays, denials, and bureaucratic scrutiny. Through this analysis, the paper reflects on whether possibilities of urban coexistence can endure in a polarized context where the state adopts post-evidentiary practices.
Paper short abstract
An ethnographic study of three East German pro-democratic civil society initiatives amid democratic backsliding and rising authoritarianism. Focusing on former socialist regions, it examines their practices, challenges, and what they reveal about current political struggles in Germany and beyond.
Paper long abstract
As in many other parts of the world, Germany is currently facing a process of “democratic backsliding” and “new authoritarianism,” with far-right political forces on the rise and increasingly seeking to abolish liberal democracy. This trend is especially evident in the formerly socialist East German regions, where right-wing extremism and hostility toward democracy are particularly widespread.
At the same time, a vibrant and diverse organized democratic civil society has emerged in both West and East Germany over recent decades, working to promote universal human rights, political participation, and the rejection of “ideologies of inequivalence.” After years of structural growth and favorable funding conditions, such initiatives are now confronted with budget cuts, dwindling political support, and increasing violence and intimidation.
My contribution presents an ethnographic study of three German pro-democratic civil society initiatives—the “Cultural Office Saxony,” the “Anne Frank Center,” and the “Grannies against the Right”—conducted in autumn 2024. During this period, a convergence of crucial sociopolitical events and developments took place in which the struggle to preserve democracy became particularly pronounced, with East German civil society finding itself at the center of these disputes.
Using a conjunctural analysis approach, the paper examines the current methods and strategies of East German democratic civil society initiatives, the challenges and threats they face, and their involvement in urgent processes of social negotiation. One of the central paradoxes for their representatives is that they are required to defend something with which they themselves are often not content: the present state of liberal democracy.
Paper short abstract
In this paper, I explore the role that philanthropic interests play in re-shaping urban infrastructures in democratic societies subject to austerity measures. Through funding large-scale ventures, wealthy individuals are able to implement and evaluate policy initiatives without democratic oversight.
Paper long abstract
The extent to which urban landscapes are being reshaped through deploying non-public funding streams is one illustration of the growing pervasiveness of anti-democratic regimes of policymaking. Rather than being driven solely by corporate interests, however, much of this recent urban development has been bankrolled and led by private philanthropies and not-for-profits (like universities and hospitals) which, like corporations, are not directly accountable either to local municipalities or to the broader public. These philanthropic organizations frame their interventions as a positive benefit to struggling cities trapped by resource deprivation or “austerity urbanism” (Bergland, 2020). I discuss how major infrastructure projects, including one in Indianapolis, are driven by ideas almost entirely envisioned and funded by philanthropists and foundations. Such endeavors illustrate how, in a period of about 30 years, the role of municipal governments has been reduced, from once having been the impetus for community development and lead partner, to having become simply the means for its mplementation. Conversely, the role of the philanthropic actor has evolved from that of a gap funder or supporter of larger public infrastructure initiatives, to serving as an aspirational leader and primary developer for such interventions. I show how such interventions, framed as an unquestionable moral and economic good, can no longer be understood solely in neoliberal terms; rather, they have become an anti-democratic conduit for channeling mobile capital into neighborhoods in ways that can and do result in the displacement of the very residents whose interests they claim to be serving.
Paper short abstract
This presentation explores the anthropology of externally engineered development policy in Africa. Anthropological analysis of such policies uncovers hidden agendas and power dynamics that subordinate local interests, undermine social rights, and fail to align with local development realities.
Paper long abstract
This presentation explores the anthropology of externally engineered development policies in Africa. Analysing development policies through an anthropological lens highlights the often 'hidden' agendas of policies, particularly those originating from outside the African continent. Such policies can function as mechanisms for the perpetuation of colonial legacies, which subordinate local populations, undermine social rights, and frequently fail to align with local realities. The anthropological insights generated by early scholars regarding Africa have engendered a complex relationship between this knowledge and the resultant policies, often yielding detrimental effects on African development. Critics contend that this knowledge is imbued with bias and lacks contextual understanding, thereby necessitating a departure from such frameworks in the formulation of development policies. In response, African scholars and their allies have initiated efforts to deconstruct or advocate for the decolonisation of this scholarship and the associated policies that have emerged from it. Although the anthropology of policy has surfaced as a distinct academic field, we argue that it can be further enriched by diversifying the geographical and ideological focus of such studies. Consequently, we contribute to this field by presenting West Africa as a case study and demonstrating how transnational policies imposed upon the continent for experimental and hidden purposes have severe repercussions for development.
Paper short abstract
This paper explores how infrastructural access discourse and nationalist sentiment have shaped Turkey’s “national credit access” policies. Drawing on Turkey’s long history of debt, it shows how authoritarian rule is sustained through digital financial infrastructure building projects.
Paper long abstract
This paper traces how nationalist sentiment and a discourse of infrastructural access have shaped financial policy in Turkey over the last two decades, producing a politics of “easy credit access.” I argue that contemporary promises of empowerment through easy, widely distributed, and digitalized bank loans for the “needy working male citizen” are rooted in longer histories of indebtedness and protectionism in Turkey, particularly in a collective memory of Ottoman debt servicing that continues to animate anxieties about fiscal sovereignty. In recent decades, these anxieties have been reframed through a national imagination of “humiliation,” strategically mobilized to legitimize a developmental ethos that links national independence to domestic credit expansion amid global financial volatility. Within this ethos, expanding household access to credit is not simply an economic policy; it has been promoted as a moral and political project of reclaiming sovereignty and protecting the nation from another episode of dependency. By situating financial inclusion programs and the building of digital financial infrastructures within these historical and affective formations, this paper shows how globally circulating IMF and World Bank frameworks of “inclusive growth” are localized in Turkey through nationalist attachments to credit and state-led projects of financial infrastructure building. Together, these processes produce policies that promise protection and national belonging while deepening everyday indebtedness among working-class households and enabling authoritarian policymaking through digital and legal infrastructures.
Paper short abstract
This paper revisits “soft authoritarianism” in political anthropology and asks what comes next. Focusing on migration and border policies in Poland, it argues that authoritarian shifts persist across electoral change and are actively pushed forward by a range of political and grassroots actors.
Paper long abstract
The concept of “soft authoritarianism” was introduced into political anthropology to analyse a mode of governance that combines illiberal, authoritarian, and democratic elements, drawing power precisely from this hybrid configuration. Rather than seizing power through coups, actors operating within this mode gain office through elections and subsequently mobilise democratic legitimacy to hollow out liberal-democratic institutions from within. Judicial independence, media pluralism, and electoral integrity are gradually undermined without an explicit break with the normative framework of democracy. This lens has proven productive for ethnographically tracing shifts along the democracy–authoritarianism matrix in Poland under right-wing populist governments (Adam/Steinhauer/Randeria 2022; Adam/Hess 2023).
This paper argues, however, that a primary focus on governmental practice and policy-making is increasingly insufficient. At least three developments challenge this perspective: the global normalisation of authoritarian rule, which diminishes the imperative to publicly enact democratic norms in international contexts; the increasing readiness of right-wing political actors to resort to violence as a mode of domination; and the growing importance of grassroots movements that actively demand authoritarian transformations from below.
Building on key contributions to anthropological transformation research (Verdery 1996; Hyatt 2011; Wright/Reinhold 2011) and long-term ethnographic work on struggles along the democracy–authoritarianism matrix, this paper asks what new political formations and rationalities are currently emerging. Focusing in particular on migration policy and border regimes, it shows how authoritarian shifts are pushed forward across electoral cycles, and why the replacement of right-populist administrations does not in itself undo authoritarian dynamics once they have become politically mobilised and socially demanded.