Being ANTish in Aotearoa New Zealand: leaders assembling net-work

Abstract

This article takes up an ANTian sensibility to explore the enactment of a policy for educational collaboration in one region in the South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand (New Zealand). The case offers potential for considering the benefits of a sociology of associations (Latour 2005/2007): a Treaty-based bicultural nation, school atomisation consequential to a decades-long ‘system’ of self-managing schools, and geological actors in the form of damaging earthquakes in 2010 and 2011. The article considers the introduction of voluntary Kāhui Ako | Communities of Learning as a policy initiative intended to address achievement and equity concerns by providing support for collaboration. While the policy as articulated focuses on the aspirations and abilities of human actors in leadership roles, I take up ideas around actants, symmetry, alliance and translation to foreground other actors – both present and long absent – involved in myriad processes of policy enactment.