Anthropologies of health policy

Abstract

In this introduction to our special issue, we take a wide view of the history and epistemic stakes of anthropological and ethnographic approaches to health policy. Drawing on the history of critical medical anthropology, the anthropology of policy, and critical policy studies, we show how anthropologies of health policy are particularly essential in this current moment, as policy production becomes increasingly abstracted and even more entwined with specific forms of evidence making. Taken together, the contributors of this special issue argue that anthropology’s interventions into health policy are essential in three ways. First, they shed light on the practices of policy ‘communities’, the pragmatic parameters under which they work, and the central logics under which health policy actors are operating. Second, they examine the effects of policy implementation upon those intended to be the subjects of health policy, highlighting the effects of policy for those marginalised by gender, race, and caste. Here, anthropology provides a view into the ‘lived experience’ of those targeted by health policy, but it also demands that anthropologists provide ‘counter-stories’ and ‘counter-evidences’ that dismantle narrow systems of policy knowledge production. Finally, anthropological attention provides an essential lens into the things that carry over in the act of policy reform—the past reverberations and imperial inheritances. Together with our contributors, we call for anthropologies of health policy that work to highlight and dismantle such inheritances.