Date: 31/1, 10.15-13.00

Room: ALC Haga

Lecturers: Damon and Jesper

This workshop is aimed at helping us to understand the complexity of global health challenges, but also to help us embrace that complexity!

What we want you to understand is that we must not, as future practitioners or policy makers, move into making policy suggestions or proposing solutions before we have done the critical thinking needed to understand the situation properly.

Our method will be situational mapping.

We will work in groups to brainstorm and map the relevant policy elements of your cases.

Preparation

Each student should individually read and watch the material for their case example.

Individually brainstorm the relevant elements of the case example (see list of elements below) and their relationships. What issues or aspects of this issue come to mind, and how do they relate to each other? Please note: This will be messy and it will probably be confusing. That's the point. Ideally there will be too much! Bring your notes to the workshop.

Cases and Project Groups:

Groups 1-3: Water privatization

Groups 4-6: Sex work laws

Groups 7-9: Morphine for pain

Workshop

1. We will begin with group discussions of individual findings. Again, the aim here is to lean into the complexity of the situation, so it should be confusing! If it's not we're probably oversimplifying (15 minutes)

2. Following the discussion, each group should use the whiteboard to map the relevant elements and their relationships, using the policy triangle as a framework (40 minutes).

BREAK

3. Gallery walk: After the break we will take the time to consider and discuss other groups' maps. Remember, these maps are not supposed to be perfect, or to be self-explanatory. They will serve as talking points for the groups exploration of the case example. (20 minutes)

4. Final discussion: We will gather in plenary for a discussion of the exercise and lessons learnt. (15 minutes)

Policy elements to consider

Political elements: local/regional/national governments, industries, political parties, political ideologies etc.

Economic elements: Incentive structures, financing, socio-economic factors

Laws, rules, governance structures: structured roles, laws, rules, norms, infrastructure, technologies etc.

Sociocultural/symbolic elements: religion, race, sexuality, gender, ethnicity, nationality, class, and other influential symbols

Temporal elements: past history, crises, pre- or post-election, (post)colonialism, future generations etc.

Spatial elements: spaces in the situation, geography, local versus regional versus national, etc.

Dominant narratives or stories: regarding any of the above you have identified. How these are perceived by others.

Individuals: key individuals in a situation, lived experience, personalities, etc.

Groups: NGOs, activists, religious groups...

Implicated/silent actors: individuals and groups passively involved.

Expectations: of actors, moral/ethical elements, mass media, popular culture, etc.

Any other elements that come to mind

Policy triangle

(Adapted from Walt & Gilson)

This workshop is adapted from Holtzman R. (2019) Mapping Policy Issues: A Simple, Active- Learning Exercise for Critical Thinking, Political Science and Politics 52(4): 754-756