RIS ID
107531
Abstract
In responding to Woods and Gardner's (2011) article, this piece positions policy research as a potentially rich site for critical praxis. It works through the possibilities around (i) negotiating the politics of policy research; (ii) the iterative and hybrid nature of policy research; and (iii) the internally differentiated nature of states. While remaining clear-eyed around the limits Woods and Gardner point to that shape collaborative work around policy, the article argues that policy research can be a site where the ethical and normative commitments of a critical agenda can be pursued. This requires that we recognise, first, policy research as a context for situated knowledge production within the complex social terrain of the state and, second, the performative and constitutive effects of knowledge.
Publication Details
McGuirk, P. (2011). Policy research as critical praxis. Dialogues in Human Geography, 1 (2), 233-237.