Suchergebnisse

As complex institutions extend into and govern greater spheres of social life, ethnographers contend with policy in an ever-widening range of fieldsites. This review examines anthropology of policy as an emerging subfield of political anthropology, focusing on policy making as central to contemporary governance in English-language ethnographies. Broadening the analytical field in the study of policy to include the targets of policy and their allies is one of the central contributions of an anthropological approach to policy making. Anthropological studies of policy production, implementation, and effects face significant methodological and ethical challenges. Scholarly debates in the United States and Europe continue to erupt over the production of scholarship intended to inform policy making, including the co-option of ethnography. While turning the anthropological gaze on powerful political actors could contribute to decolonization efforts within the discipline, ethically adopting ethnographic research into policy making requires complex alliances with communities targeted by policy.

Explicitly prohibiting US military counternarcotics assistance to foreign military units facing credible allegations of abuses, Leahy Law creation and implementation illuminates the epistemological challenges of knowledge production about violence in the policy process. First passed in 1997, the law emerged from strategic alliances between elite NGO advocates, grassroots activists, and critically located Congressional aides in response to the perceived inability of Congress to act on human rights information. I explore the resulting transformation of aid delivery; rather than suspend aid when no "clean" units could be found, US officials convinced their Colombian allies to create new units consisting of vetted soldiers. I use the implementation of the law in Colombia to explore how the vetting process exposed the knowledge practices inherent in policy implementation, the social production of credibility, and ways in which some forms of political violence were made visible while others were erased.