ABSTRACT
This book sets out to chart a new domain of anthropological enquiry, the anthropology of policy. We ask: how do policies ‘work’ as instruments of governance, and why do they sometimes fail to function as intended? What are the mobilizing metaphors and linguistic devices that cloak policy with the symbols and trappings of political legitimacy? How do policies construct their subjects as objects of power, and what new kinds of subjectivity or identity are being created in the modern world? How are major shifts in discourse made authoritative? How are normative claims used to present a particular way of defining a problem and its solution, as if these were the only ones possible, while enforcing closure or silence on other ways of thinking or talking?
