From a political anthropology to an anthropology of policy: interview with Cris Shore

Abstract

Cris Shore is one of the few anthropologists who have been studying “the makings of politics” and has put forward creative bridges connecting anthropology, political science, organisational studies and sociology. Shore is currently Chair of Anthropology and Head of Department at the University of Auckland (New Zealand), after lecturing at the Goldsmiths College, University of ­London (UK), between 1990 and 2003. Shore’s works include titles such as Anthropology of Policy: Critical Perspectives on Governance and Power (edited with Susan Wright, Routledge, 1997) and the recent Policy Worlds: Anthropology and the Analysis of Contemporary Power (edited with Susan Wright and Davide Pero, Berghahn, 2010), focusing on the cultural uses and meanings of politics in different social contexts, or Corruption: Anthropological Perspectives (edited with Dieter Haller, Pluto, 2005). But Europe’s inter-nationalist project has been a strong presence in Shore’s work since The Anthropology of Europe: Identities and Boundaries in Conflict was published in 1994 (edited with Victoria Goddard and Josep Llobera, Berg). Research on European integration policies, namely through the project “Constructing European Identity: EU Civil Servants and Cultural Policy”, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (UK), led him to conduct fieldwork in different offices of the European Union’s institutions in Brussels from 1995 to 1997, giving rise to Building Europe: The Cultural Politics of European Integration (Routledge, 2000) and European Union and the Politics of Culture (Bruges Group, 2001). Further research interests include the debates about the meaning of ‘European government’, institutional reforms and UE’s role as a global actor. Along with Marilyn Strathern, Susan Wright and others, Cris Shore was one of the first researchers to approach a most original topic in anthropological studies in the 1990s: audit cultures. Guest editor of a special issue of Anthropology in Action on “Universities and the politics of accountability” (with Don ­Brenneis and Susan Wright, 2005), Shore has done research on university reforms and the economy of knowledge, using ethnographic methods to study the new labour and knowledge production regimes at universities, as well as the notions of person and subjectivity involved in them. General anthropological themes such as the discipline’s methodological and epistemological distinctive features were explored by Shore in works like Anthropology and Cultural Studies (edited with Stephen Nugent, Pluto, 1997) or The Future of Anthropology: Its Relevance to the Contemporary World (edited with Akbar Ahmed, Athlone Press, 1995). Cris Shore is currently engaged in an ethnographic study of universities in New Zealand. This is part of a wider international collaborative project between The University of Auckland, Aarhus University (Denmark), and Bristol University (UK) entitled “University Reform, Globalisation and Europeanization”, which is funded by an EU Marie-Curie IRSES grant and the New Zealand Ministry of Research Science and Technology.