Policy translation: an invitation to revisit the work of Latour, Star and Marres

Abstract

The aim of this article is to make an invitation to revisit the contributions of Latour (along others such as Callon, Star, and Marres) in order to widen the inputs that a policy translation approach can provide, particularly in what pertains to the analysis of processes of movement of ideas between multiple actors and in the process of implementation of social policies. To do this, the article is organized in five sections. The first section aims to situate the scenario in which ideas associated with Latour and others connected to actor-network theory have influenced discussions in social policy analysis, particularly in the construction or configuration of the policy translation approach. The second section presents the case of Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programmes in Latin America, which will be used to illustrate the benefits of revisiting the work of Latour to widen and deepen the analysis of the policy translation approach. The third section proposes that following Latour’s old injunction of looking at the materiality of arrangements can help bring to the fore trajectories that are worth engaging with and will use as an example of the information systems and banking arrangements emerging in the context of CCT programmes. The fourth section introduces a second dimension of the Latour revisit being proposed, this time a catching-up related to Latour’s recent work on politics. The fifth section, finally, is an invitation to consider different alternatives enabled with this revisit to Latour and illustrated with instances from our CCT case.

Keywords:

• policy translation
• social policy
• conditional cash transfers
• Latour
• material arrangements