Translation Practices

Panel Chairs:

Christophe Dubois, University of Liège - Belgium (c.dubois@ulg.ac.be)

Rosalind Cavaghan, University of Edinburgh - Scotland   (R.M.Cavaghan@sms.ed.ac.uk)

Abstract:

We locate our panel within the wider interpretative perspective which views policy as an unstable product and the policy environment as a series of interlocking actors and networks.  We therefore understand policy as a multi-level process where multiple actors and groups each reinterpret policy according to their own practice and situation, in a continual process of negotiation and argumentation.  These processes and the power dynamics contained within them are the analytical focus of this panel.

Within this theoretical context this panel focuses on a particular dimension of the policy process as a research problem: the translation of 'big ideas' into policy and practice.  What happens when bureaucracies or state institutions try to translate new abstract concepts like 'choice', 'restorative justice' or 'gender equality' into action? Papers in this panel explore how we should conceive of and analyse these processes.

Approaches such as discourse or frame analysis have successfully analysed meaning in policy.  Others, such as social movement theory or actor network theory, have focused on the people and groups involved in policy development. Papers in this panel should explore how we can fuse these foci to explore the power of both ideas and actors in multi-directional processes of translation from ideas, to the practice of policy. What dimensions and aspects must we consider, what concepts do we need? What methods could we use?  We envisage three aspects which might be key in such an examination of translation: practice, knowledge and materials. For example actor network theory (Callon, Latour) enables us to examine how practices and the knowledge which help to constitute them, are stabilized and transmitted through negotiations and interactions. Material dimensions (writings, formal texts, statistics, etc.) and concrete interactions are therefore in the heart of this approach.  

Papers focusing on this 'translation' problem either through case studies of these processes and/or theoretical discussion of the research problem are most welcome.