State acts, acts of State: reflections and horizons for critical research
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.56247/qua.553Keywords:
State, public action, public policy, ethnography, social historyAbstract
In the introduction to this special issue, we present some reflections on the study of the practices and relations through which the State and public policy are (re)produced in their diverse forms and scales, from the local to the global level. Drawing on the dialectic between the social construction of the political and the political construction of the social, the contributions analyze how the State manifests and crystallizes in everyday practices, institutions, norms, and categories of public intervention. This approach situates state practices in tension with the structures and historical conditions that shape them, highlighting the complexity and plurality of the State as a relational and processual phenomenon. With this presentation, we aim to offer a critical and situated perspective that invites us to study how the State manifests, acts, and (re)produces itself, expanding the understanding of the forms and processes that configure contemporary public action—a critical interpretive framework that precedes six articles where this perspective is concretized.
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