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Bevir, Mark and Trentmann, Frank (eds.),
Houndmills, Palgrave MacMillan, 2007, v-286,
ISBN
9780230517288
.
A central aim of this book is to add an awareness of culture to current debates about governance. This methodological intervention has two main advantages: In the first instance, it allows us to recognise political strategies as culturally constructed discourses. Newman, for example, shows with an analysis of discourse produced by the Office of Public Sector Reform that government policy may be engaged in a retelling of the national past for political means. The second advantage lies in the way in which it shifts the focus of research from questions about institutions, policy and the interaction of policy makers to the social. Making a strong argument against positivism, the authors in this book favour a bottom-up, interpretive study of governance that enables them to explore the complex and often contradictory ways in which people engage with...