Mundane Governance: Ontology and Accountability (OUP, 2013) by Steve Woolgar and Daniel Neyland is deservedly attracting a good deal of attention, attested to by the Conference on the topic at the Australian National University (Call for Papers_Mundane Governance. The book, in conjunction with a 2013 paper by S. Woolgar and J. Lezaun (“The wrong bin bag: A turn to ontology in science and technology studies?”, Social Studies of Science, 43(3): 321-340), provides useful reflections on some of the key issues in contemporary social theory. Specifically, these sources address what is or may be involved in references to the “turn to ontology”, with particular attention to STS (Science and Technology Studies). Their starting point is that constitutive interpretations have to be developed further. This injunction is particularly relevant to those who engage with WPR since a WPR analysis adopts a constitutive approach to “problems”, “subjects”, “objects” and “places” (see Bacchi and Goodwin, Poststructural Policy Analysis, 2016). So, let us take a closer look at what is proposed.

The book and article mentioned above offer guidance on both what is intended by, and on the political implications of, the proposition that practices constitute (or enact) entities (including “objects” and “subjects”). This proposition is a basic contention of those who associate themselves with “the ontological turn”. The point of this claim – and it is a perspective shared with WPR – is that it directs attention to the unfinished nature of things that are deemed to be fixed and, equally importantly, to what gets left out of particular conceptualizations of the “real” world. The primary target in Mundane Governance is the “mundane” objects through which governing takes place. Examples include micro-chipped garbage bins, speed cameras and security devices in airports. A key part of the argument is that none of these “objects” sits outside the complex relations that shape them; hence, they are ontologically uncertain. It follows that entities are politics by other means.

While endorsing this perspective, I am less convinced by the critique of neo-Foucauldian governmentality theory (perhaps not surprisingly!). Woolgar and Neyland (2013) make the case that such theory offers too smooth an interpretation of the operations of power and tends to portray political subjects as “cultural dopes” (p. 27). They prefer to emphasize the “messy” aspects of social relations and to insist on space for resistance and irony. This view clearly suits the ethnomethodological research position they occupy, with the focus on the sense-making capacities of people.

The WPR position on subjectification (see Question 5 in Bacchi WPR CHART) can be described as neo-Foucauldian. In subjectification, political “subjects” are constituted, or made, provisionally through policy practices (see Chapter 5 in Bacchi and Goodwin, Poststructural Policy Analysis, 2016). With governmentality scholars there is a particular interest in how some of those practices promote identities that “perform” behaviours deemed to be desirable, rendering “subjects” governable. However, there is no suggestion that regimes of governance determine the kinds of “subjects” we become. So, we certainly do not have “cultural dopes”!

On this issue it would be fruitful to compare how power is theorized in Mundane Governance and in WPR. Woolgar and Neyland seldom mention power and then only within its conventional political sense as “power over”, a view they find limited. An alternative theorizing of power as productive may have proved useful in thinking through the constitution of “subjects”. This position is clearly developed in Chapter Chapter 5 of Poststructural Policy Analysis: A guide to practice (Bacchi and Goodwin, Palgrave, 2016). On a related topic, while Woolgar and Neyland (2013, p. 335) deem it to be worthwhile to consider the extent to which researchers may themselves be involved in ontological constitution, they do not pursue the matter. By contrast, WPR considers self-problematization and hence reflection on one’s (perhaps inadvertent) role in constituting particular “realities” to be a paramount responsibility (see FAQ 5 and Step 7 in Bacchi WPR CHART).

Given the focus in WPR on how governing takes place (see Bacchi, Analysing Policy, 2009, p. xiii), reflection on the “mundane governance” argument is clearly important. It is particularly useful to consider this argument in the context of “nudge theory”, which, as we will see in a forthcoming entry, enthusiastically endorses “mundane” behavioural interventions. What to make of “nudge theory”? – coming soon!

Comment: This new book – Welfare Words: Critical Social Work & Social Policy (London, Sage, 2018), by Paul M. Garrett – brings a critical and discerning eye to the use of language in welfare policy in the UK. Drawing inspiration from the classic book, Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society (London, Fontana, 1976), by Raymond Williams, Garrett zooms in on a cluster of concepts that have shaped a good deal of welfare debate in recent years, including Dependency, Underclass, Social In/Exclusion, Early Intervention, Resilience, Care and Adoption. His goal is to question the taken-for-granted meanings of these terms, to show how specific meanings reflect power relations, and to encourage researchers to think more critically about the languages they adopt. Since WPR also directs attention to the operation of key concepts and categories in shaping social worlds (through Question 2) it is useful to consider the overlaps and discrepancies between WPR and Welfare Words. Basically, we encounter through this work some of the ongoing debates about the relationship between critical policy analysis and poststructuralism. There is certainly common ground in Garrett’s concern regarding the authority to name “social problems” (2018, p. 14). However, the focus on “a struggle for meaning where dominant forces seek to embed certain hegemonic understandings to serve their class interests” signals a point of contrast in approach. In Foucault-influence poststructuralism, the theoretical target is not powerful groups manipulating meaning for gain but how we are all immersed in taken-for-granted knowledges that shape what is possible. Garrett (2018, p. 16) shows an inclination towards this form of interpretation where he draws on Foucault (The Birth of Biopolitics, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, p. 243) to highlight the need to “gain insight into the ‘analytical schema or grid of intelligibility’ of the social formation in which these words are prevalent”. The question remains as to the possibility (or impossibility) of blending these positions (see FAQ 10).

Comment: Although this book (Making policy move: Towards a politics of translation and assemblage, by J. Clarke, D. Bainton, N. Lendvai and P. Stubbs, Policy Press, Bristol) came out in 2015, it deserves attention for the novelty of the content and its theoretical grounding. The latter is signaled in the book’s subheading, where the key terms “assemblage” and “translation” locate the argument as aligned in some measure with the broader tradition of Actor-Network Theory (p. 38). However, importantly, the authors express concern that some ANT theorists do not always make the concept power central to their work (p. 38). Making Policy Move offers a useful challenge to the notions of “policy transfer” or “policy learning”, emphasising how policies are interpreted, inflected and re-worked as they change location. The book explores conceptions of agency, stressing with Foucault that agency is not a “generic property of human beings” and treating agents as points of condensation of “multiple, heterogeneous and possibly contradictory forces” (p. 58). The authors also deem it important to reflect on the place of emotions in policy analysis, without lapsing into “psychologistic or biologistic essentialism” (p. 58). We have here important engagement with theoretical issues central to WPR thinking.