This graduate seminar examines policy as a form of cultural logic and a productive site for critical analysis of global and local political power. Drawing on anthropological, science studies, and interdisciplinary literature, the course will focus on policymaking as a form of expert labor; the role of institutions, organizations, and governments in producing and performing policy; bureaucracy and technocracy as professions, callings, and forms of life; and documents, files, and archives as material culture and ethnographic artifacts. Students will gain familiarity with classic and contemporary theoretical approaches to policy and a range of ethnographic and qualitative methods suitable for studying policy worlds.
Professor Alison Cool
See the University Catalog for specifics, recommendations, and prerequisites.
