Poetics and Policy

Addressing the problems of the borderlands through poetics and policy is an interpretive method of analyzing laws, policies, and institutions. Poetics implies that there is a conscious reading and interpretation of material that also has symbolic and representational characterisitics. This is how I view policies. The results of policies are a reflection of strucutral and institutional conditions, thus by interepreting policies and laws one may better understand the intention of the authors. Applying this perspective to the borderlands is particularly challenging becasue it is the intersection of different policy systems, cultures, political ideologies, and economic systems. In this way examining the poetics of policy in the borderlands, one may view the borderlands as a contested region in which the intention of policies are linked to the distribution of power and the dynamics of this complex intersection.