LIST OF PANELS

How do states govern societies with deepening inequality while simultaneously professing commitment to liberal, democratic values in the context of mid and low income countries? What are analytically productive ways to unpack governing processes that create, sustain and deepen inequalities and exclusions as well as sources of resistance to them. The panel invites papers that engage with this central question while critically examining daily practices of governance and bringing lived experiences of those who are “invisibilized” to the forefront.

Despite its limitations, “what governments do” has served to be an enduring definition for public policy. Among the many things that governments do as they try to “tame wicked problems” (Rittel and Webber 1973; Crowley and Head 2017), they also look away (Mander 2015), exclude and reinforce inequalities (Schneider and Ingram 2005). In efforts to “improve” (Li, 2007), address inequalities, governing strategies of the state often fall short, or actively reinforce the very institutions they hope and claim to challenge. For example, policies that employ technological interventions like unique identification of ‘populations’ to improve efficient provision of public services, often exclude those who might need them most (Martin and Taylor 2020; Khera 2019).  Efforts to formalise the organisation of work, often further marginalize and adversely affect those who rely on informal work for subsistence (Harriss-White, 2003). Likewise efforts to universalise education in some contexts, has led to a stratification in access to education services to the most marginalised (like indigenous populations), erasing their knowledge systems and limiting access to further economic opportunities (Schmidt et al. 2015). Several voices from the feminist, dalit, black and other scholars have written accounts of experiences of being invisibilized (Star & Straus, 1999; Hatton, 2017; Daniels, 1987; Singh, 2014). Central to these accounts, is an experience of being devalued and dehumanized, experiences that have also come to the forefront from an anthropological turn in public policy (Wedel et al. 2005).

The panel hopes to draw in conversations between different streams of literature hoping to understand ways in which misguided - but conscious - action or inaction by policymakers (McConnell and ’t Hart 2019) furthers precarity (Butler, 2010), vulnerability (Nzeadibe & Ochege, 2018), marginality (Zimring, 2004), reproduction of social inequalities (Bourdieu, 1973).  It also joins the call put out by McConnell and ‘t Hart (2019) to “put the study of inaction on a new footing” especially in the context of vulnerable populations.

We invite empirical as well as conceptual and theoretical papers that critically interrogate the “rationality project” (Stone 1988) annd unpack the policy processes and mechanisms of governance that invisibilize and further marginalize specific populations. These include the creation of categories; methods of collecting and using data; promotion and usage of technology and new forms of formalisation and organising work and labour that reproduce or reify  social and economic inequalities. We are also interested in studies of sites and forms of resistance that help reimagine governance and public policy in ways in which ideas of social justice are at the heart of the enterprise.  

Key References:

Crowley, Kate, and Brian W. Head. 2017. “The Enduring Challenge of ‘Wicked Problems’: Revisiting Rittel and Webber.” Policy Sciences 50 (4): 539–47. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-017-9302-4.

Daniels, A. K. (1987). Invisible work. Social Problems, 34(5), 403-415.

Harriss-White, B. (2003). India working. Cambridge Books.

Hatton, E. (2017). Mechanisms of invisibility: rethinking the concept of invisible work. Work, employment and society, 31(2), 336-351.

Khera, Reetika, ed. 2019. Dissent on Aadhaar: Big Data Meets Big Brother. Hyderabad, Telangana: Orient BlackSwan.

Mander, Harsh. 2015. Looking Away: Inequality, Prejudice and Indifference in New India. 1st edition. Speaking Tiger Books.

Martin, Aaron, and Linnet Taylor. 2020. “Exclusion and Inclusion in Identification: Regulation, Displacement and Data Justice.” Information Technology for Development 0 (0): 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/02681102.2020.1811943.

McConnell, Allan, and Paul ’t Hart. 2019. “Inaction and Public Policy: Understanding Why Policymakers ‘Do Nothing.’” Policy Sciences 52 (4): 645–61. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-019-09362-2.

Rittel, Horst W. J., and Melvin M. Webber. 1973. “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning.” Policy Sciences 4 (2): 155–69. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01405730.

Schmidt, William H., Nathan A. Burroughs, Pablo Zoido, and Richard T. Houang. 2015. “The Role of Schooling in Perpetuating Educational Inequality: An International Perspective.” Educational Researcher 44 (7): 371–86. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X15603982.

Schneider, Anne L., and Helen M. Ingram, eds. 2005. “Introduction: Public Policy and the Social Construction of Deservedness.” In Deserving and Entitled: Social Constructions and Public Policy, 1–28. SUNY Series in Public Policy. Albany: State University of New York.

failed. Yale University Press.

Star, S. L., & Strauss, A. (1999). Layers of silence, arenas of voice: The ecology of visible and invisible work. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 8(1–2), 9–30.

Singh, B. (2014). Unseen: The Truth about India’s Manual Scavengers (R. Talwar, Trans.). Penguin Books.

Wedel, Janine R., Cris Shore, Gregory Feldman, and Stacy Lathrop. 2005. “Toward an Anthropology of Public Policy.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 600 (1): 30–51. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716205276734.