Transforming States: Problematization and Translation in Responses to an Aboriginal 'Crisis'
Benjamin Richard Smith, Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Australian National University.
In recent years, a series of projects have attempted to address what has come to be perceived as a 'crisis situation' amongst Indigenous Australians living in Australia's Cape York Peninsula. State and Federal governments, regional and local non-governmental organizations and the media have been united both in identifying overwhelming social problems amongst the Peninsula's Aboriginal people and in an insistence that radical forms of intervention are necessary to address this situation. This paper explores the local implementation of this program of intervention in one of the Peninsula's townships. Bringing the literature on governmentality to bear on a series of local projects intended to mitigate the local social 'crisis', I identify the interplay between an encompassing situation of 'problematization' (Foucault), and the local forms of 'translation' (Rose) which result when governmental intentions are enacted within particular locales. Following Aretxaga and Rose, I conclude that, like other state projects, those undertaken by state-NGO partnerships constituted within an 'enabling state' milieu are subject to unexpected transformations during their implementation, in particular when they occur 'at the margins of the polity'.
