Unruly Experts: Methods and Forms of Collaboration in the Anthropology of Public Policy

Schwegler, Tara A.; Powell, Michael G.

doi:10.3167/aia.2008.150201

Cited by 12 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…My response to this problem, and the broader point for understanding how NLHs resituate conflict of laws, is that triangulating how different actors use hubs shows that the self-promotion of hubs, which is constitutive of their attractiveness as a choice of law and forum for dispute resolution, is contingent. Experts occupy "different relationship configurations of power and collegiality," 154 and ethnography draws attention to these positions.…”

Section: A Corporate Lawyermentioning

confidence: 99%

The New Legal Hubs: The Emergent Landscape of International Commercial Dispute Resolution

Erie

2019

SSRN Journal

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New legal hubs (NLHs) are "one stop shops" for cross-border commercial dispute resolution, in financial centers, promoted as an official policy by nondemocratic or hybrid (i.e., democratic and authoritarian) states. NLHs address the problems of the legitimacy deficit of host states and also insufficient economic growth. They do so by optimizing conflict of law rules, namely choice of forum and efficiency of procedure, attracting international parties to the hub venue. Further, they suggest a novel heuristic in the study of transnational law, particularly during a period of geo-political and ideological flux. This article is based on empirical fieldwork over a period of two years in six NLHs in four countries across "Inter-Asia," including in Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Dubai, and Kazakhstan. It analyses legal hubs at two levels: their impact on host states and interhub connections as a form of transnational ordering. This article finds that, first, legal hubs are engines of doctrinal, procedural, and technological experimentation, but they have had limited impact on the reform of the wider jurisdictions within which they are embedded. Second, through relationships of competition and complementarity, legal hubs function to enhance normative settlement. However, many of the innovations (e.g., intrahub cross-institutional mechanisms between courts and arbitration institutions and interhub soft law such as memoranda of understanding) are untested, vulnerable to state politics, or even unlawful. Consequently, NLHs demonstrate the potential and fragility of "rule of law" in nondemocratic states that promote globalization against trends in the West. The article begins with an introduction that defines NLHs, identifies their significance as jurisdictional carve-outs to otherwise weak legal systems of host states, and proposes an anthropology of legal hubs. Part I sets the analysis of NLHs against the backdrop of a partially deglobalizing Euro-American liberal legal order and a globalizing Inter-Asian one. Part II describes the methodology of "para-ethnography." Part III provides a theory of NLHs. Part IV builds on this theory to generate a continuum of NLHs. Part V assesses how NLHs and their host states affect each other, including hubs'

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Section: A Corporate Lawyermentioning

confidence: 99%

The New Legal Hubs: The Emergent Landscape of International Commercial Dispute Resolution

Erie

2019

SSRN Journal

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“…This required a more ethnographic method, using interviews and participant observation, to flesh out calculative expertise as calculative experts, humanising them, and recognising that just because they work within a calculative regime, they are not simply calculating automatons mindlessly putting the governmental diagram into effect (Boyer, 2008). Work on the anthropology of policy is a useful guide here (Schwelger and Powell, 2008). This literature recognises that policy does not simply proceed down a hierarchy from the elite spaces where it is invented into society where it is realised, successfully or unsuccessfully.…”

Section: Assembling a New Cultural Sectormentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This literature recognises that policy does not simply proceed down a hierarchy from the elite spaces where it is invented into society where it is realised, successfully or unsuccessfully. Instead, policy takes shape across a wider field, involving multiple actors with multiple histories and geographies, and including those that are being governed and those seeking to govern (Schwelger and Powell, 2008; Shore and Wright, 2011). Policy is understood as a part of a story about the ordering of society and space.…”

Section: Assembling a New Cultural Sectormentioning

confidence: 99%

Calculative Cultural Expertise? Consultants and Politics in the UK Cultural Sector

Prince

2013

Sociology

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An explosion in the production of cultural data reflects the increasing influence of calculative reason in the cultural sector, a situation criticised as the 'instrumentalisation' of culture. This article argues that this criticism concedes too much to the logics of calculation, and that power and political agency are being worked out in the sector in more complex ways in the wake of calculation than simply acquiescing to it. This is illustrated through an ethnographic account of the work of a new stratum of calculative cultural expertise that has emerged in the sector as calculation has become more important. These experts construct political agency through relational work that is concerned with both calculative and non-calculative matters, including the performance of objectivity, the mobilisation of various effects, and the construction of coalitions of actors.

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“…Despite frequent calls to study the social lives of experts (Boyer ; Holmes and Marcus ), particularly in policy contexts (Schwegler and Powell ; Shore and Wright ), anthropologists conducting research on major global policy issues such as climate change tend to focus their attention on the downstream effects of these interventions, rather than studying the policy‐making process itself. In the absence of an ethnographic perspective on how scientists engage with this process, we are left with a simplistic understanding of expertise as an objective form of knowledge that becomes purely instrumentalist when deployed for political purposes (Jasanoff :158).…”

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confidence: 99%

The “Difficult Game” of Selling Brazilian Ethanol: Untangling Science–Business Relationships in the Global Biofuel Policy Nexus

Newberry

2015

J Latin Amer Carib Anth

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R e s u m e n O etanol brasileiro tem sido criticado por seus potenciais contribuiçõesà mudança climática, criando uma controvérsia científica com grandes implicações econômicas, sendo que o resultado vai afeitar políticas globais que regulam exportações dessa energia. Os cientistas brasileiros envolvidos neste conflito político são vistos como motivados por interesses econômicos e nacionais, devidoà sua colaboração com representantes da indústria de cana de açúcar em influenciar a política internacional de biocombustíveis. Proponho que esse alinhamentoé um fenômeno emergente queé formado pelo envolvimento desses cientistas num processo político queé percebido como dominado pelas preocupações e normas dos participantes americanos e europeios. Definindo redes de políticas internacionais assim, como ambientes institucionais que influenciam e restringem ativamente os interesses dos atores envolvidos, teremos uma análise maisútil de como "interesses brasileiros" em relação a questões como a produção de energia e mudança climática são formados e traduzidos em políticas públicas. [agricultura, Brasil, ecologia/meio-ambiente, política] A b s t r a c tBrazilian sugarcane ethanol has come under criticism for its potential climate change impacts, creating a scientific controversy with major economic implications, as the outcome will shape trade policy regulating ethanol exports. The Brazilian scientists involved in this political struggle are often seen as motivated by predetermined economic and national interests due to their collaboration with sugarcane industry representatives in influencing international biofuel policy. I argue that their alignment is ratherThe Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 308-326. ISSN 1935-4932, online ISSN 1935-4940. C 308J o u r n a l o f L a t i n A m e r i c a n a n d C a r i b b e a n A n t h r o p o l o g y

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Unruly Experts: Methods and Forms of Collaboration in the Anthropology of Public Policy

Abstract: Anthropology in Action, 15, 2 (2008): 1-9

Cited by 12 publications

References 10 publications

The New Legal Hubs: The Emergent Landscape of International Commercial Dispute Resolution

The New Legal Hubs: The Emergent Landscape of International Commercial Dispute Resolution

Calculative Cultural Expertise? Consultants and Politics in the UK Cultural Sector

The “Difficult Game” of Selling Brazilian Ethanol: Untangling Science–Business Relationships in the Global Biofuel Policy Nexus

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