Instagram, influencers and followers: Towards a feminist Foucauldian–Deleuzian sociology of algorithmic bio-power in the online economy

Foucault's work on the prison radically transformed the way social scientists conceive the institutional regulation of life. Drawing on Foucault's thesis about the gradual refinement and expansion of mechanisms of control and discipline in modern society, they quickly began to reveal all the micro-powers and technologies of control at work both inside and outside the criminal justice system. It soon became obvious that every attempt to reform society, to give people more freedom ineluctably becomes its opposite - a technique of domination. No matter where or when, it is the same as it ever was - social control. I challenge this thesis by demonstrating that Foucault's concept of power is not only inscribed in practices of normalization, but, most importantly, in practices of liberation. In light of his work on bio-powers and bio-politics, the constitution of the modern subject through power relations is understood in terms of a 'governmentality' that maximizes life. Hence Foucault's notion of power is better understood as a 'mechanism for life' that includes strategies of self-development that both constrain and enable agency. For the past fifteen years, Michel Foucault's groundbreaking account of the birth of the prison has exerted a powerful influence on the social sciences. Indeed, 'to write today about punishment and classification without Foucault' says criminologist Stanley Cohen 'is like talking about the unconscious without Freud' (1985:10). In Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison (1979), Foucault provided concepts that radically transformed the discourse in which penal reform was typically thought (e.g. Garland 1986). These concepts- 'power/knowledge', 'disciplinary society', 'micro-powers' - have allowed analysts to deconstruct both the liberal conception of the birth of the prison as a humanistic advance over the brutal punishments administered in pre-modern societies, and the Marxist conception of penality as an epiphenomenon of the mode of production. Under Foucault's influence, scholars have rewritten the history of penal reform as the history of the dispersion of a new mode of domination called 'disciplinary power', a power exercised through techniques of objectification, classification and normalization, a power

Since the era of deinstitutionalisation, many clinical approaches have emerged to enable the care and treatment of people suffering from mental illness. In recent years, the use of coercive approaches in the community (e.g., outpatient commitment or community treatment orders) has also increased internationally. Although nurses' role regarding these coercive approaches is central and significant, few empirical and theoretical writings have tackled this controversial nursing practice. The purpose of this paper is to analyse coercive nursing care through the lens of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze's concept of 'societies of control'. Taking up Michel Foucault's work on disciplinary power, Deleuze explores how the move from the striated spaces of closed institutions to the smooth spaces of societies of control took place since the middle of the 20th century. According to Deleuze, the overall objective of 'societies of control' is no longer simply to govern deviant behaviour in closed environments (e.g., psychiatric hospitals and prisons) but to ensure a regime of unrelentless surveillance in the open spaces of our communities.

This study investigates how the disciplinary power described by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish manifests itself in the context of religion and postmodernity. Foucault analyzes the transition from physical and visible punishments to more subtle and internalized forms of surveillance, in which the subject controls himself. The research examines how this disciplinary dynamic, previously centered on institutions such as prisons and schools, adapts to the postmodern religious field, marked by an individualized and fragmented spirituality. The methodology adopted is qualitative, based on interpretative analysis of Discipline and Punish and studies on religion and postmodern subjectivity. By relating Foucault's concept of discipline with contemporary religious practices, the research proposes a critical view of how religion, even decentralized, continues to operate as a tool for self-control and standardization. The results indicate that disciplinary power, although less visible, persists in an internalized form, especially in the personalized religious practices of postmodernity, where the subject becomes his own watchman and moral regulator. The research concludes that, in postmodernity, surveillance and social control become less institutionalized, but deeply rooted in the individual, shaping identities in a self-managed way.

Drawing on the work of the later Foucault, especially that concerning disciplinary power and bio-power, as well as Deleuze on the emergence of “societies of control,” this article traces the trajectory of obsessional subjectivity from its emergence as a firmly psychiatric category within a disciplinary matrix (i.e., monomania) toward its contemporary position within the bio-political sphere (i.e., obsessional neurosis and obsessive–compulsive disorder) in societies of control. It is argued—pursuant to Lacanian formulations—that obsessional neurosis simultaneously contributes to the efficacy of the workings of bio-power in imagining, vis-à-vis university discourse, a psychologized and psycho-biographical subject knowable and traceable, while also conferring an openness in being that would surmount the dysfunctionality inhering in repetitious thinking and doubt. The aim of this essay is to discern the structural dimensions of mechanisms of obsessional subjection as they implicate certain changing forms of power, and specifically that of our current predicament in the West, in a world where desire and the production of knowledge are governed through bio-power.

This paper explores the history of the biomedical construction of women's bodies as social bodies in the formation of colonial modernity in Korea. To do so, I engage with Michel Foucault's concepts of governmentality and biopolitics and the postcolonial history of medicine that has critically revisited these Foucauldian notions. These offer critical insights into the modern calculation of population and the biomedical gaze on female bodies on the Korean Peninsula under Japan's colonial rule (1910-1945). Foucauldian reflections on governmentality and colonial medicine can also shed light on the role of biomedical physicians in the advancement of colonial biopolitics. Biomedical physicians-state and non-state employees This paper explores the history of the biomedical construction of women's bodies as social bodies in the formation of colonial modernity in Korea. To do so, I engage with Michel Foucault's concepts of governmentality and biopolitics and the postcolonial history of medicine that has critically revisited these Foucauldian notions. These offer critical insights into the modern calculation of population and the biomedical gaze on female bodies on the Korean Peninsula under Japan's colonial rule (1910-1945). Foucauldian reflections on governmentality and colonial medicine can also shed light on the role of biomedical physicians in the advancement of colonial biopolitics. Biomedical physicians-state and non-state employees and colonizers and colonized alike - served as key agents investigating, knowing, and managing, as well as proliferating a discourse about, women's bodies and reproduction during Japan's empire-building. In particular, this paper sheds light on the processes by which Korean women's bodies became the objects of intense scrutiny as part of an attempt to quantify, as well as maximize, the total population in late colonial Korea. In the aftermath of the establishment of the Manchurian puppet state in 1932, Japanese imperial and colonial states actively sought to mobilize Koreans as crucial human resources for the further penetration of Japan's imperial holdings into the Chinese continent. State and non-state medical doctors meticulously interrogated, recorded, and circulated knowledge about the sexual and conjugal practices and reproductive life of Korean women in the agricultural sector, for the purposes of measuring and increasing the size, health, and vitality of the colonial population. At the heart of such medical endeavors stood the Investigative Committee for Social Hygiene in Rural Korea and Japan-trained Korean medical students/physicians, including Chóe Ŭg-sŏk, who carried out a social hygiene study in the mid-1930s. Their study illuminates the ways in which Korean women's bodies entered the modern domain of scientific knowledge at the intersection of Japan's imperialism, colonial governmentality, and biomedicine. A critical case study of the Investigative Committee's study and Chóe can set the stage for clarifying the vestiges as well as the reformulation of knowledge, ideas, institutions, and activities of colonial biopolitics in the divided Koreas.

Racial Imperatives: Discipline, Performativity, and Struggles Against Subjection

With the emergence of ISIS andAmerican public furor over allowing Syrian refugees safe haven, Muslim Americans find themselves once again in the cross-hairs of a nation obsessed with searching for answers and someone to blame.I argue that the premise behind American anti-Muslim sentiment is rooted in two of Michel Foucault's concepts -"biopower" and "pastoral power."This article is divided in two halves.In the first, I argue that American nationalism is articulated in a unique way, particularly through "pastoral power."In conjunction with an "imagined" American nationhood (Anderson 1983), it has created a state that is often viewed as secular, but is quite Christian ideologically and structurally.Drawing on Göle (1996), I surmise that the Western "culture of confession," an extension of pastoral power, is incompatible with Islam -or at least is viewed as such.In the second half, I present my main argument towards a new understanding of Foucault's (1990) biopower in the context of the sovereign and its ability to designate who is "sacred," a la Agamben (1998).I suggest that a new evaluation of Agamben (1998) should be undertaken to account for the renewed racialization of and discrimination towards American Muslims.

The Influence of Michel Foucault on Accounting Research

Este artigo tem por objetivo problematizar as relações entre ensino de filosofia e cidadania na sociedade contemporânea. Assume a caracterização de Lipovestky dos ''tempos hipermodernos'', baseados na hiperbolização dos três eixos da modernidade: o mercado, o indivíduo e a eficiência técnica. A forma política predominante é aquela que Deleuze denominou de ''sociedades de controle'', operando segundo a lógica da biopolítica, desvendada por Foucault. Recorre a Rancière para mostrar que, nessas sociedades, vivemos mais no âmbito da polícia, como administração do social, do que da política, como acontecimento de uma ruptura. Interroga-se: em que consiste a cidadania? Em afirmar essa sociedade de controle ou em opor resistências a ela, traçando linhas de fuga? Para pensar um ensino de filosofia que seja a prática do pensamento autônomo e criativo, o artigo escolhe a segunda opção, propondo um ensino de filosofia que enxameie saídas, que crie armas de resistências e criação.

Coronavirus Disease 2019, originated in Wuhan city of China, has been spreading across the world from December 2019 to till now with 55 million confirmed cases in 191 countries and nearly 1.3 million people deaths. As there is no vaccine available, the government and other institutions are taking measures to protect the people from this highly infectious disease. As the purpose of this paper is to define method and relate the more suitable method with Covid-2019 pandemic, in the introductory part, it has defined method and types of methods. It has also provided an overview of Post Structuralism, as a relevant method in explaining Covid-19 responses. Then, in a deeper way, this paper has discussed Foucault's concept of power: biopower, sovereign power and disciplinary power and examines its relevance with Covid-19 measures. It has also focused on the term ‘New Normal’- the normalization of abnormal during Covid-19. Finally, the paper concluded with acknowledging the critiques of Foucault theories and limitations of the paper in explaining some of the aspects of ongoing pandemic.

A POLITICAL TECHNOLOGY OF THE BODY: HOW LABOUR IS ORGANIZED INTO A PRODUCTIVE FORCE

Online media of digital methodology has transformed human behaviors from sociocultural and political backing, interest, and participation to sharing supposition or resistance and has transfigured the approach of interaction and thinking—a serious issue for digital anthropology that centeres on internet-related changes of social marvels, a configuration of chaotic pluralism. With the prime argument that digital social media platforms implant feebleness, insecurity, and instability into social and political life, this paper investigates the risks that online media impose on democracy. Based on auxiliary secondary data, the methodology incorporates qualitative verifiable, and analytical methods. The paper's findings contend that the politico-techno-driven political economy of digital innovation has chopped social and democratic institutions and has destabilized worldwide social relations and politics, democracy has been fumed, stormed, and hacked. Social media has created a modern world order of amazing befuddling filter bubble impact where cyber-violence is misogynistic--social media is just like a redirection of Chinese whispers. Subsequently, with, private on-screen characters, governments' data dispersal, and so-called security and safeguarding of citizens' democratic rights, allegorically, George Orwell’s nightmare of 'Animal Farm' unfurling. In a bourgeois populist science of the 'digital panopticon' of technological colonialism, state surveillance, and bourgeois information, humankind is becoming more divided and unsecured and in the future citizens' will be deprived of numerous sociopolitical rights. Future people may fade under the pressure of high-tech colonialism which concurs with the normalization approach that 'offline field' powerful people are powerful 'online' too. Upcoming democracy is probable to be a discreetly 'high-hat' elitist endeavor. Current endeavors and legislations are romanticized as a glass half empty with very few tools to control cyberspace. It is pivotal to invigorate and fortify citizens’ digital agency and self-determination in society, politics, well-being, and economy, otherwise, societies/countries are probable to be more totalitarian.

What is the relevance, in our time, of the notion of a surveillance society, as popularised by Foucault in Discipline and Punish? In this contribution, we show in particular how contemporary surveillance apparatuses, linked to the development of 'societies of control' or even 'expository society', are born of contradictory desires and sustain ambiguous divisions between private and public, freedom and security. How can we reconcile, on the one hand, a reluctance to implement control procedures that have the effect of limiting our freedom in fact and sometimes in law, and on the other hand, a deep-rooted desire for security that itself calls for tighter control of some acts, some behaviours and even so-called 'at-risk' populations? How can we reconcile the desire to expose ourselves (on social networks) with the possibility of resisting the grip of the permanent surveillance that ensues? Questions such as these bring Foucault's concepts up to date, confronting them in particular with the contemporary deployment of digital identities that reinforce the ambiguity of our relationship with surveillance appartuses presenting themselves as obvious tools for free self-expression.

This paper examines the use of certain discursive strategies and the consequent female resistance in Margret Atwood novel The Handmaid's Tale (1985. The novel portrays different forms of power exercised by totalitarian governments over women. In complex ways, Margret Atwood uses the feminist dystopian genre to resist gender-based oppression. To do so, Atwood must first build a miserable world that subjugates their female characters before she can create ways for these characters to resist. The events of The Handmaid's Tale, like most dystopian stories, take place in the future, but they express the anger and anxieties of the present, and more women speak out against sexual assault and harassment. This study applies Michel Foucault's concepts of power relations through discursive strategies in Margret Atwood's “The Handmaid’s Tale”. More explicitly, the research tries to shed light on the discursive practices used to control women's minds and bodies in a way that guarantees complete obedience to a specific ideology. The study also shows how women use strategies of language and education to resist and free themselves from the oppression imposed on them. These types of fiction have always been sites of power conflict, reflecting the atrocities committed against the public by those in power. It is concluded that Foucault's ideas about discourse and power explain why women are oppressed by totalitarian regimes and how they use the same power to build a discourse of resistance to free themselves from oppression and disciplinary power.

A crucial long-term care resource for individuals with severe mental illness (SMI) in Taiwan is provided by psychiatric nursing homes. Given the higher incidence of physical illnesses and accidents among individuals with SMI, ensuring patient safety is an important aspect of quality care. However, there is limited literature exploring how the staff provides safe care for individuals with SMI. Investigates how the staff in a psychiatric nursing home managed residents' activities to mitigate risks and reduce physical injuries. Using a qualitative approach and drawing from Foucault's concept of 'disciplinary power', data were collected from field observations and staff interviews. Three themes emerged: (1) a gaze for efficiency, where checklists, timetables and spatial arrangements were used to efficiently manage residents' bodies; (2) controlling the deviant body, which entailed procedures to monitor and prevent risk behaviours and bodily signs through broad safety measures and (3) your body, my business, which described the reduced autonomy of residents over their behaviours as the responsibility largely shifted to the staff. The predominant risk management framework, driven by safety considerations, comprises residents' autonomy and undermines compassionate caring. Risk management should actively involve both staff and residents in decision-making.