La antropología y el estudio de la política pública: reflexiones sobre la “formulación” de las políticas

This paper explores the contribution of social anthropology to the study of public policy. it asks how do policies 'work' and what advice might an anthropologist give to social scientists who wish to study policy. Drawing on ethnographic case studies, i argue that anthropology can provide a critical lens for understanding the way policies work as, inter alia, symbols, charters for legitimacy, political technologies, forms of governmentality, and instruments of power that typically conceal the mechanisms of their own operation.