Critical policy studies and historical sociology of concepts

Abstract

This chapter draws on concepts and methods of analysis from critical policy studies, historical sociology and Foucauldian genealogy to examine the rise and reach of mindfulness, framing it as one instance of wider wellbeing agendas. Analysis of these discourses is advanced in three main ways. First, taking the methodological strategy of “problematisation” as developed in Foucauldian scholarship, it turns to Carol Bacchi’s (2009) approach of What’s the Problem Represented to Be (WPR) to identify how specific issues are defined and then made problematic. Second, it outlines the insights afforded by an “historical sociology of concept formation” (Somers, 2008) as applied to these matters. Third, it argues that such practices of problematisation require critical attention to not only the invention of policy problems but also to their conceptual networks, genealogy and effects.