Introduction

The task of reconsidering policy requires that we take a closer look at processes of categorisation in policy making. Categorising is integral to the dynamics of the policy-making process so playing a key part in the conception, design and implementation of policies. It demonstrates very clearly how policy is above all a meaning-making process in which categories are symbolically constructed according to the policy-making context (Innes, 2002). Theorising policy entails considering both how and why categorising occurs. This involves examining the reasons why categories are required in policy making, the ideas that inform the adoption of particular categories and the impact of the adopted categories on policy development. This highlights the fact that the categories used by policy makers cannot be taken for granted or ignored but should always be questioned as an important part of problematising policy overall. In common with Chapters Two and Ten by Jenkins and Lendvai and Stubbs in this volume, this chapter begins from the understanding that theorising policy involves defamiliarising the familiar.

This chapter contributes to the overall aims of the book in three main ways. First, it shows that categorising is part of the meaning and language of policy as policy making inevitably involves putting people into categories. The terms used to categorise people, and the meanings associated with them, are chosen in a specific social, cultural and political context. Acknowledging this is a good starting point for casting a critical eye over the political process of categorising in policy making because it reveals categorising as a crucial site for challenging the aims and objectives of policies. Second, it explains how categorising is part of the practical framework for the expression of political messages and achievement of social goals. Like policy itself, it is inherently political and so never politically neutral. As this book consistently demonstrates, policy is always a contested domain with competing interests. Likewise, the way that people are categorised, or indeed if they are categorised at all, is the outcome of a political process in which categories are negotiated, and thus always open to challenge. Finally, this chapter reveals how a critical look at categorisation contributes to a better understanding of the practice of policy, as it contributes to our awareness of the extent to which policies can attain their stated goals.