Anthropology Commons^™

Engaging-Up: Compromised Spaces And Potential Partners, Jennifer Necole Webb

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The anthropology of public policy critically examines policy and its processes and the myriad ways in which power is exercised. To explore these power dynamics, anthropologists studying policy often study up, or study through a particular policy field. This entails the risky work of studying powerful people, whose ability to retaliate against the researcher and others create methodological and ethical dilemmas and contradictions, as well as potentially harmful consequences. Politicians, bureaucrats, employees of powerful non-profits, and, in the public-private neoliberal reality, even the head decision makers within corporations are all prospective research participants--an intimidating prospect for most anthropologists. In contrast, …