Unmanaging the past: Truth,data and the human being

Management systems in archaeology seek to impose the scientific objective‐reductionist paradigm on archaeologists and their data. This orthodoxy has been enshrined in English Heritage's document Management of Archaeological Projects (English Heritage 1991) which prescribes rigorous application of a standardized methodology. MAP II, as it is known, is based on a processual model in which ‘data’ enter at one end and valuable archaeology emerges at the other. Such a view not only lacks any appreciation of the distinctions between ‘data’ and ‘information’ but also fails to acknowledge the beliefs and values which underpin the decision‐making criteria crucial to the model. In this paper we argue for an approach which un‐manages the past — by building relativistic humans into our strategies for dealing with the past. Examples are given which demonstrate how such an approach might work in practice.     

An Angel on the Wind: How Heroic Policy Narratives Shape Policy Realities

Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) is a new and maturing theory of the policy process that takes a systematic, scientific approach to understanding the social construction of policy realities. As such, NPF serves as a bridge between postpositivists, who assert that public policymaking is contextualized through narratives and social construction, and positivists, who contend that legitimacy is grounded in falsifiable claims. The central questions of NPF are: What is the empirical role of policy narratives in the policy process and do policy narratives influence policy outcomes? First, the contributions of NPF scholarship at three levels of analysis—micro, meso, and macro—are examined. Next, necessary conditions of a policy narrative are specified, accompanied by detailed discussion of the narrative components: narrative elements, narrative strategies, and policy beliefs. Finally, an empirical illustration of NPF—a case study of Cape Wind's proposal to install wind turbines off Nantucket—is presented. Although intercoalitional differences have long been studied in the NPF scholarship, this is the first study to examine intracoalitional cohesion or the extent to which a coalition tells the same story across narrative elements, narrative strategies, and policy beliefs. NPF is a new approach to the study of the policy process that offers empirical pathways to better speculating the role of narrative in the policy process.