Tracking the Documents, Listening to the Narratives: Public Policy Analysis and the Production of Meanings About Culture Funding

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the role of narratives, their influence and contributions as a resource for the production of meaning in public policy decision-making by examining the trajectory of PL 6722/2010, “Procultura”, and its effects on cultural policies between 2003 and 2018. As part of a broader thesis research submitted in 2019, here we emphasize the contrasts between discourses and the structured fields of public funding policy. For the sociology of public action, the narratives of social groups and actors are not loose, but intermingled with meanings objectifiable by the empirical and theoretical construction of public policy, and arguably its analysis does not do without narratives as a method, but following their enunciated elements can illuminate blind spots in the path of a public agenda. We conclude that symbolic movements and disputes are identified among the participating actors that reveal countless indications, not always tangible, but very powerful in the decision arenas.

Narratives and Rationalities; Symbolic Struggles; Culture Funding; Policymaking; Decision-Making Process