chapter 28
...................................................................................................................................................SOCIAL AND CULTURAL
FACTORS:
CONSTRAINING
AND ENABLING
...................................................................................................................................................davis b. bobrow
When a pickpocket looks at a king all he sees is pockets.
(Senegalese saying)
understanding how it is that men’s notions, however implicit, of the ‘‘really
real’’ and the dispositions these notions induce in them, color their sense
of the reasonable, the practical, the humane, and the moral.
(CliVord Geertz 1973 , 124 )- Introduction
.......................................................................................................................................................................................
Public policy never begins with a blank slate whether we are talking about how and
why it is made or whether it plays out in terms of wanted or unwanted consequences.
Policy makers, implementers, target populations, and their audiences already hold
and use a complex of ‘‘notions’’ to arrive at choices and evaluations (as Geertz
suggests). Those ‘‘notions’’ affect what is treated as more or less relevant, important,
- I am indebted to my two favorite anthropologists, Gail Benjamin and Riall Nolan, for their suggestions.