An ethnography of the development and travel of the New Zealand model of
neoliberal welfare reform, this study explores the social life of
policy, which is one of process, motion, and change. Different actors,
including not only policy élites but also providers and recipients,
engage with it in light of their own resources and knowledge. Drawing on
two analytic frameworks of the contemporary anthropology of
policy--translation and assemblage--Kingfisher situates policy as an
artifact and architect of cultural meaning, as well as a site of power
struggles. All points of engagement with policy are approached as sites
of policy production that serve to transform it as well as reproduce it.
As such*,* A Policy Travelogue provides an antidote to theorizations
of policy as a-cultural, rational, and straightforwardly technical.