400021 SE Seminar für DissertantInnen: Theorie (2013S)

This short course investigates the practices of politics, concentrating on the specific form of politics which is policy making. What does it take to 'do politics', and what kinds of work are involved (sessions 1-3)?
We begin by identifying three domains of practice in the fundamentals of meeting, speech making and the production and circulation of documents (4-6). Just as practice as knowledgeable, so policy - or the steering of practice - is knowledge work. Policy entails the mobilisation of knowledge variously embodied in people, inscribed in artefacts and enacted in particular circumstances (7-8). We recognise, too, that the work of policy is not only cognitive but also material: its practices inhere in specific instruments, artefacts and assemblages (9-10). We explore the concept of translation as a way of understanding how policy is 'put together' in configurations of people, things and organizations(11), and conclude by discussing the problem of how to represent practice so as to make it available for research and reflection.
As far as possible we will use a workshop format, comprising:
20-30 mins introduction;
20-30 mins case study;
20-30 mins student contribution.