Proliferating Policy: Technologies, Performance, and Aesthetics in the Circulation and Governance of Health Care Reform in Bolivia

This article examines the circulation of a national health reform policy in Bolivia. While much of what exists as policy finds its dissemination and implementation in literary and material forms such as documents, pamphlets, and legal papers, I suggest that both documented and performative forms of policy provide openings to aesthetic realization that exceed the staid and stable manifestations of finished forms. I examine the presentations and performances of a national health reform policy, which repeated in different iterations and were represented through a variety of aesthetic strategies throughout the country, such as through slide presentations, vocalization, and images. I suggest that the circulation of policy demands an attention not only to specific forms of dissemination but also to the governance strategies and histories that dictate the aesthetic practices and possibilities through which these media come into life, interpellate audiences, and make possible interactive engagements with its content and implementation. This work can help researchers think critically about policy more generally and raise questions about how to study health policy circulation ethnographically.