By assembling original, ethnographically-grounded research in legislatures, executives, and bureaucracies, this volume illuminates and unpacks the structures, practices, and values of government actors in local, regional, and national contexts.

"A groundbreaking collection of innovative studies of the complicated doing of governing, Governing Cultures is essential reading for anyone - in anthropology, sociology, geography, political science, or policy science - interested in productions and relations of labor, power, and meaning in government. Coulter and Schumann bring together analyses of the heterogeneous specificities of governing cultures and cultures of governing that together lay the theoretical and methodological foundations for a much needed new anthropology of government." - Catherine Kingfisher, professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Lethbridge

"This collection provides a fascinating exploration of the work of governing from an anthropological perspective. It presents a range of detailed ethnographic studies which engage with theories of governmentality and the state, and illustrates that the practice of governing is infinitely more contested than theoretical abstraction implies. The empirical focus is wide-ranging and international including discussions of food security, how governments and governing are gendered, the work involved in creating political identities for nations and states, and how indigenous peoples engage with processes of governing. It includes historical analyses as well as more contemporary ethnographic research and is an important contribution to our understanding of the process of government in all its messiness and complexity." - Nickie Charles, professor,Department of Sociology and Director of the Centre for the Study of Women and Gender, University of Warwick

Autorentext
KIM CLARK University of Western Ontario, Canada JOHN CLARKE The Open University DAVID FAZZINO University of Alaska at Fairbanks, USA ILANA GERSHON Indiana University, USA SUSAN BRIN HYATT Indiana University/Purdue University at Indianapolis, USA TARA SCHWEGLER Independent scholar ALAN SMART University of Calgary, Canada JOSEPHINE SMART University of Calgary, Canada

Inhalt
Government Matters: Intellectual Labor and the Work of Governing; K.Coulter & W.R.Schumann Navigating the Illegible State: Governmentality and Political Process; T.A.Schwegler A Project of Governing and its Contradictions: Maternal-Infant Care in Highland Ecuador; K.Clark Governing Beef: Program Implementation, Unintended Consequences and BSE Control in Alberta; A.Smart & J.Smart Selling Clear Red Water: The Identity Politics of Governing in the National Assembly for Wales; W.R.Schumann Legislative Authenticity and the Politics of Recognition: Being a M?ori Member of the New Zealand Parliament; I.Gershon Gendering Government: Political Labor and the Production of Policy and Political Culture; K.Coulter The Work of Being Governed: From the Welfare State to the 'Big Society' in Britain; S.B.Hyatt The Will To End Hunger in the Age of Security: Food Security, National Security and Community-Based Food Security in the United States; D.V.Fazzino II The Work of Governing; J.Clarke