Talk: Policies, Politics, and Policing: "Us" and "Them" in the Neo-Liberal State
Keynote Talk for Day 1 of Policy & the Everyday Conference by
Dr. Eve Darian-Smith, Associate Professor of Legal Studies, UMass Amherst. .
In this talk Dr. Eve Darian-Smith reflects upon why anthropologists and policy-makers have difficulty in talking to each other and examines some of the hurdles faced in making ethnographic insights relevant to neo-liberal agendas. Drawing on her research, Dr. Darian-Smith examines how current policies in Britain regarding immigrants, and in the United States regarding Native Americans, continue to embody colonial assumptions and attitudes toward others despite a laissez-faire rhetoric of empowerment and equal opportunity. She concludes that in the neo-liberal state, an essential function of public policy with respect to minorities is to police and control the borders between “Us” and “Them."