Buy the book: Stanford University Press or Amazon
Winifred Tate on anthropology’s contributions to policy studies:
“Tate’s book sets a new standard for the anthropological study of policy making. A master ethnographer with deep experience, she tells the chilling story of how the militarization of U.S. drug policy, the mobilization of fear, the limitations of human rights lobbying, and the outsourcing of Colombian security to paramilitary forces all came together to produce a ‘model aid plan’ that, for most Colombians, was anything but. A tour de force of political acuity.”
—Susan Greenhalgh, Harvard University
“Drugs, Thugs, and Diplomats is a rich and insightful analysis of the cultural dimensions of policy making and makes a major contribution to the exciting new field of the anthropology of policy.”
—Sally Engle Merry, New York University
“Here’s the book we’ve been waiting for to help us make sense of the much debated Plan Colombia, from the national security bureaucracy in Washington to the coca fields in Colombia. Tate’s fascinating account is a model for how to do an ethnography of foreign policymaking.”
— Peter Andreas, Brown University
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Winifred Tate is an associate professor of anthropology at Colby College and the author of the award-winning Counting the Dead: The Culture and Politics of Human Rights Activism in Colombia (University of California Press 2007).