Public lecture, Institut für Politikwissenschaft, University of Vienna, 13 December 2018…
What are policy and politics, in practice? When we do politics and make policy, what are we doing? In this lecture, I want to set out a framework for understanding policy and politics in terms of the actions – the doings and sayings – that they entail. I begin by grounding this understanding in the interactionism of Arendt and Goffman, and explore the core phenomena of gathering, encounter and meeting. I reflect on the way each is instantiated in forms of talk, and supported and extended by documents and texts; I point to their material predicates, including human bodies, spaces and time. I conclude by discussing some of the ontological implications of thinking of politics in this way.