ABSTRACT
This question arises not only because as a qualitative researcher connections to policy analysis seem tenuous in a field dependent upon rational numbers, but also because of the theoretical and methodological lens I work through – namely race-feminisms1 and post-structuralisms, including specifically uses of Foucault’s genealogy. A genealogical analysis necessarily focuses upon bodes and tracing the discursive reproductions of bodies. Perhaps the question above was posed because attention to bodies, particularly in education, seems taboo, too personal or playful; certainly not real policy work and unrelated to viable policy recommendations. Is there a place in the field of policy studies, an arena dependent upon rational data even in the midst of ‘messiness’, for the theories of racefeminism and post-structuralism, the use of genealogies and discussions of bodies? After all, as a school administrator instructed me during my research on teen pregnancy, ‘bodies are dangerous’.
