Introduction

This chapter illuminates the significance and character of embodied knowledge in policymaking through a case study of work practices of civil servants in England's Department of Health (DH). It describes the distinctive importance of embodied knowledge to the ways in which civil servants construct understandings of the objects of national health policy, and the possibilities for their transformation. It sets out how civil servants identified to whom they should turn for knowledge, and offers an analysis of the in-practice principles guiding whose knowledge was permitted to contribute to policy formulation.

The second half of the chapter offers an account of the distinctive properties of embodied knowledge in this context, providing an analysis of why this form of knowledge was so appealing to the civil servants, as well as the ways in which embodied knowledge could prove problematic. The conclusion returns to the embodied–inscribed– enacted framework to argue that the strength of this heuristic for analysing policymaking in this context lies in the way in which it allows a foregrounding of embodied knowledge, together with a recognition of the primacy of interaction, or, more specifically, ‘inter-enactment’, for determining the significance and meaning of that knowledge in the case of any particular policy.

The analysis that follows draws on a case study of civil servants working in the Policy and Strategy Directorate of England's DH in 2010/11 (Maybin, 2012). The study is situated in a sub-field of interpretive policy analysis, which is concerned with understanding the work practices of policy actors (Wagenaar and Cook, 2003; Wagenaar, 2004; Colebatch, 2006; Colebatch et al, 2010; Freeman et al, 2011). It offers an ethnographic account of how knowledge was deployed in the everyday work practices of civil servants engaged in formulating high-profile national health policy in England. Data collection comprised 60 hours of interviews and meeting observations, together with documentary analysis.

The research focused on mid-ranking civil servants, who are often charged with leading on the formulation of policy documents, though it also included interviews with and observations of more junior and senior staff. The study included interviews with and observations of ‘analyst’ civil servants, who are trained in economics and statistics, as well as mainstream policymaking civil servants; sources given in footnotes in the following text distinguish between these two categories.