ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to articulate some of the theoretical and methodological possibilities for working with narrative as an approach to policy and its analysis. The chapter draws on an ensemble of theories: theorisation of governmentality, discourse and subjectification; Ricoeur's theorisation of temporality, narrative and identity; theorisation of space and narrative; and theorisation of a narrative approach to policy analysis. These resources and practices are neither monolithic nor stable, but multiple, mobile, diffuse, contradictory and historically variable. Given that these constitutive technologies and practices, along with the subjects and worlds they constitute, change over time and space, then an address to temporality and spatiality is critical to a narrative approach to policy analysis. A narrative approach to policy analysis focuses on the centrality of narratives in understanding policy issues, problems and definitions. There is a conflation of education policy and economic policy that is explicitly directed towards labour market participation in a competitive global knowledge economy/market.
