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The ‘task to come’ in anthropological fieldwork is rarely discussed explicitly as a set of underpinning methodological, analytical, conceptual, and theoretical precepts and practices. Drawing on learnings from a study of policymakers in the Australian Public Service–a non-conventional fieldwork location–this paper presents an account of how the anthropologist instituted direction and purpose or ‘fruitful ways of looking’ as an orientation to policy ethnography and the sense-making journey that follows. This paper progresses three interrelated aims: (1) to argue that, through ethnog...

An intrepid traveller, the lone anthropologist, leaves familiar surroundings to embed herself in a foreign community, hoping to make sense of the people and place located here. Her task is to document and interpret the customs and practices of the people and seek understanding of their distinctive ways. She enters a smooth-grey concrete building, dons a laptop and security swipe, and embarks on a prolonged and intensive process of watching, learning and ultimately, doing—as she is welcomed and inducted into the daily lives of a group of public servants who administer policies and programs in...