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Local or global policy? Thinking about policy mobility with assemblage and topology
Author(s) -
Prince Russell
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
area
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.958
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1475-4762
pISSN - 0004-0894
DOI - 10.1111/area.12319
Subject(s) - assemblage (archaeology) , argument (complex analysis) , technocracy , perspective (graphical) , focus (optics) , sociology , work (physics) , network topology , topology (electrical circuits) , computer science , epistemology , economic geography , political science , economics , geography , mathematics , artificial intelligence , law , engineering , archaeology , politics , mechanical engineering , biochemistry , chemistry , physics , philosophy , optics , combinatorics , operating system
The policy mobility literature is haunted by the local–global binary and the problem of understanding the extent to which a particular policy is ‘local’ or ‘global’. This paper argues that while an assemblage perspective is already prominent in the literature, its use can be extended to more effectively engage with this problem. Proceeding from the recognition that what makes mobile policy possible is first and foremost the existence of separate policy territories, through a focus on the kinds of assemblages that territorialise separate but interconnected territories, and a more thoroughgoing account of the topologies contained by those assemblages, we can account for how mobile policy is an outcome of this work of assemblage. It is through such assemblages that our ideas of what is global and what is local are produced. The example of the technocracy is used to illustrate the argument.