Foucaultian Approach Research Articles

Clothing Norms in Tertiary Institutions: Negotiating Fashion Towards Social Hegemony

Public discourse and scholarship espouse the subjective influence of clothing norms over the natural body as visual markers of the social boundaries of fashion. As a backlash to student fashion on campus with growing incidences of immodest dressing, most tertiary institutions particularly in Nigeria introduced dress standards. Scholars have elaborated on how fashion has been used to negotiate social boundaries of power, identity, status, gender, etc.They differed on the approval/acceptability and disapproval/unacceptability of the institutional control over clothing behaviour of adults. This article underscores the role fashion plays as an effective driver of social control and hegemony. Also, by underpinning sartorial practices in conformity to established institutional expectations and standards of appropriate nuances of formal dressing in institutions of higher learning. From an ethnographic standpoint, the study analysed the institutional standards of formal dressing or dress codes of different tertiary institutions in Nigeria as posted on their websites in addition to the participant method. This information is equally published in the students′ handbooks of these institutions. The post-structural Foucaultian approach to Discipline and Punishment is applied as an analytical framework. This explains disciplinary power as a mechanism of social control of the body in contemporary society through conformity to approved dress standards in a formal environment like the university. It is argued that the framework provides an understanding of the significance of social control which may be hampered by misconceptions about what other people think of clothing norms.

Foucault Dan Diskursus Media Siber

The availability of cybermedia offers many options that vary for discovering and consuming information similar to the ability to generate it. Cybermedia has also given rise to new methods for people to interact and build relationships in society, posing problems for researchers in the communication study field, particularly in dissecting new kinds of multi-modal communication. The research objective is to learn more about how Michel Foucault's discourse analysis applies to the cybermedia discourse. The findings of this study show that Foucault's notions, as found in The Birth of the Clinic, The Archeology of Knowledge, and Technology of the Self, are still relevant in addressing the difficulties of cybermedia research. The Foucaultian approach to social media focuses on sharing processes, which are the foundation of social media. Another aspect of Foucault's media philosophy is "constant awareness and visibility."

“I say it but wouldn't be happy hearing it from a kid”: Personal boundary parameters in responding to taboo language, swearing and -IST-ing use

As a result of social and linguistic change, the use of swearing and taboo language has become commonplace in Anglophone societies with varying responses to its use. This commonplace use of swearing and taboo language is also apparent in educational institutions. Commentary from educators suggests they are frequently confronted with verbally abusive students in school settings. Data available in Queensland, Australia, illustrate a large percentage of students are suspended and excluded from school for verbal misconduct. As a result, many students are missing school because of institutionally unacceptable but socially and culturally mutable linguistic choices. This article examines the associated responses from stakeholders regarding swearing and taboo language use in school contexts, keeping the societal linguistic change in mind. Adopting a Foucaultian approach of discourse and power and Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), 19 secondary school teachers were interviewed for their perspectives of and responses to the use of taboo language and swearing by secondary school students. Analysis of the data suggest three areas of concern. First, document analysis exposes ambiguity in the institutional behaviour management policies. Second, participant responses reveal limited knowledge of the policies and third, participants’ use of personal parameters rather than policy when responding to swearing and taboo language use by students in school contexts. Therefore, policy needs to be readdressed with these data in mind and further studies relating to swearing and taboo language use in school contexts are required, specifically incorporating international perspectives, which may add insight to this linguistic issue. Short AbstractAs a result of social and linguistic change, the use of swearing and taboo language has become commonplace in Anglophone societies with varying responses to its use. Educational institutions demonstrate similar linguistic change, behaviour, and responses. Adopting a Foucaultian approach of discourse and power and Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), 19 secondary school teachers were interviewed for their perspectives of and responses to the use of taboo language and swearing by students. Data analysis exposes ambiguity in institutional behaviour management policies, limited knowledge of policies by participants and the use of personal parameters by participants in responding to swearing and taboo language use by students in school contexts. Policy needs to be readdressed with these data in mind.

A Foucaultian Approach to Lifelong Learning : Governmentality of Neoliberalism vs. Liberate Self-Caring

평생교육학은 일상에서의 의미 생성 및 경합의 문제를 다루며, 이런 점에서 사회-권력 작용에 대한 관심을 가진다. 그러나 평생교육이 어떤 사회적 장치 속에서 어떤 효과를 낳는지에 대한 연구는 별로 없었다. 푸코는 평생에 걸쳐 권력과 지배가 개인에게 작동하는 방식과, 그 결과로 사람들이 스스로에 대해 가지고 있는 지식에 대한 연구를 진행하였으며, 후기에는 ‘인간은 어떻게 권력에 맞서 자신을 돌보아야 하는가’에 대한 답을 찾고자 하였다. 이 연구는 푸코의 이론을 평생교육학적으로 분석하고 동시에 평생교육의 담론을 푸코의 시각을 통해 분석함으로써, 권력-담론-지식의 복합적 관점을 평생교육연구에 도입하고자 한다. 구체적으로 ‘신자유주의 통치성’으로서의 평생교육, ‘자기배려를 위한 일상적 쟁투’로서의 평생학습과 같은 모순적 특성은 평생교육 현장의 특성분석에 도입할 수 있는 유용한 도구가 될 수 있다. 푸코의 논의는 평생교육에서의 실천이 가지는 다양한 특성을 권력-담론-지식의 복합체의 차원에서 조명함으로써 교육학이 오랫동안 가지고 있던 ‘진공상태에서의 교육’이라는 관성을 넘어설 수 있게 해준다.

Política da narrativa sobre o corpo feminino em programa especializado em saúde

Este trabalho discute a política da narrativa sobre o corpo feminino no programa Bem Estar, da Rede Globo, especializado na cobertura de saúde. Voltado para um público majoritariamente composto por mulheres, é caracterizado por seu formato híbrido e pelo gênero utilitário, produzindo sentidos sobre o corpo, a saúde e a doença. A mulher, como centro destas matérias jornalísticas, surge com um corpo vigiado, tanto do ponto de vista ético, como estético, na perspectiva foucaultiana acerca do saber-poder da medicina e suas implicações na biopolítica. A partir da análise de dez edições do programa e de incursão etnográfica na redação, problematizamos três narrativas sobre o corpo feminino: a primeira mirando-o como objeto da higienização; a segunda como corpo suscetível à doença e a terceira como corpo materno. Conclui-se que a política da narrativa jornalística sobre o corpo feminino favorece o predomínio do discurso da ciência em detrimento de saberes outros, além de situar a mulher como eixo preferencial do biopoder.

Universities and Social Science in the pincers of Knowledge and Power: A Foucaultian Approach

İnsanların birbiriyle ilişkisi sonucu, iktidar ortaya çıkar. Bu nedenle bilinen tarihsel sürece göre insanlar, toplum halinde yaşadığından dolayı iktidar da devamlı olagelmiştir. İktidar, iktidarını sürdürebilmek için her zaman bilgiye ihtiyaç duymuştur. Tarihsel süreç içerisinde de ihtiyaç duyulan bilginin boyutu sürekli artmıştır. Michel Foucault, iktidar ilişkilerine odaklanarak bilginin bu ilişkiler sonucu üretildiğini belirtmektedir. Foucault’a göre iktidar, söylem vasıtasıyla hakikati üretmektedir. Bedenlere ise baskı ve denetim yoluyla üretilen hakikati benimsetir. Foucault, iktidarın her yerde olduğunu belirtir. Bilgi sahasının merkezi olan üniversiteler ve üniversitelerin bünyesinde faaliyet gösteren sosyal bilimler, iktidarın etkilerine doğrudan açıktır. Dolayısıyla üniversiteleri ve sosyal bilimleri Foucault’un iktidar ve bilgi yaklaşımıyla değerlendirmek mümkündür. Bu çalışmanın amacı, Foucault’un bilgi ve iktidar yaklaşımlarıyla üniversiteler ve sosyal bilimlerin bir çözümlemesini yapmaktır.

Noções de sujeito e poder em leituras foucaultianas e sua influência nos estudos de organizações e gestão de pessoas

Resumo O objetivo deste artigo é refletir sobre a noção de sujeito e poder caracterizada por Michel Foucault (1926-1984), considerando suas três fases intelectuais e suas possibilidades nos estudos de organizações e gestão de pessoas. Argumenta-se que os modos como o sujeito foi caracterizado em suas fases intelectuais reflete os modos como o indivíduo fora gerido nas organizações, bem como aponta o potencial que a abordagem foucaultiana oferece para as análises sobre os sujeitos e as relações de poder nas organizações. Na fase arqueológica, propõe-se priorizar o estudo dos discursos organizacionais; na genealogia, argumenta-se sobre a proposta de avançar nas análises do poder disciplinar, poder relacional e biopolítica; na ética, sugere-se a necessidade de analisar a constituição de subjetividades no espaço de trabalho.

MICHEL FOUCAULT E O PROBLEMA DA RACIONALIDADE

O presente artigo objetiva discutir a abordagem foucaultiana das formas de racionalidade enquanto uma importante atualização crítica do problema da racionalização das sociedades modernas. Desse modo, em sua primeira parte, o artigo se concentra nas principais premissas e cautelas metodológicas do uso do conceito de racionalidade no esquema teórico de Michel Foucault. Por último, exploro como o filósofo francês discorre sobre os vínculos históricos entre racionalidade, poder e crítica.
 Palavras-chave: Michel Foucault. Racionalidade. Racionalização. Teoria Social

Uses of multimodal statements on the playground: a Foucaultian approach to multimodal discourse analysis

ABSTRACTIn this study, I draw upon the concept of a statement (l’énoncé), Foucault’s fundamental discursive unit, as developed in The Archaeology of Knowledge, extending and applying the concept to a group of children’s multimodal discourse operations on the playground, and thereby developing the concept of a multimodal statement. I do this by focusing on Foucault’s semiotic grounding of the statement, which he describes as being constituted by a group of signs. My analytical approach involved developing a form of multimodal transcription that enabled the isolation of individual multimodal statements within a focal discursive event. In later stages of analysis, I identified the signifiers (from across multiple modes) that comprised the students’ multimodal statements, and found that these multimodal statements were discursive practices that created a network of nodal point signifiers drawn from multiple modes. Through these multimodal discourse processes, the students created subjective positions as part of a local discursive formation, which I refer to as a multimodal discursive microformation: a social semiotic web of subjectification that the children produced.

Representations of individuals in discourses of laïcité from Le Monde: confirming or challenging the republican framework of identity?

ABSTRACTIn recent decades, the notions of laïcité and identity have been subjects of controversy in France. The two concepts have become sufficiently co-associated since the 1990s to ensure each almost systematically entails the other. Findings from previous studies have pointed out harmful implications of this pervasive association for minorities in France, especially Muslims. This study examines further the ways laïcité and identity are interwoven by exploring who is represented (and how) in newspaper articles from Le Monde dealing with laïcité. Informed by critical intercultural communication scholarship, intersectionality, and a Foucaultian approach to discourse, this study pays particular attention to the way identity categories are articulated with one another and in which power structures they are embedded. A selection of articles published in the leading national newspaper Le Monde between 2011 and 2014 was collected for in-depth analysis. Results indicate tensions as regards the use of identity categories and representations of individuals within discourses of laïcité. Implications concerning the overall republican framework and the concept of laïcité are discussed.

English

This paper describes the current monetary system, identifying different components and the relationship between them. It is part of the Foucaultian approach of power relations and forms part of a body of work on the monetary conformation of corporate governmentality. It also forms part of the theoretical framework: the general monetary theory and, in particular, the quantity theory of money and the theory of business cycles. It describes four major components such as international organizations with effects on the money supply, states from dominant or dominated economies, the economy of large financial and non-financial companies and the real economy, made up of families and small and medium size companies. Within these four main components, there are different levels of action and influence in the money supply. The relationships, that are addressed, are the relationships which occur within each one of the components and the relationships between the different components. In these relationships between components of the monetary system, the creation of excess money supply is explained which produced the economic crisis as a result of the structure of the monetary system and its historical conformation. This document also describes the conformation of rent appropriation and yields, together with the process of the concentration of wealth, where the monetary system acts as an essential tool for achieving these purposes by large companies.

Monetary conformation of the corporate governmentality II The monetary system and the privatization process

The global governance of large corporations or corporate governmentality changed over time through the penetration of the economy in all aspects of society but which has shaped the monetary system as an integral part of corporate governmentality and which gave it a big push in the last forty years. The conformation of the monetary system and the introduction of the neoliberal model which brought about the private process and which started from the late seventies of the twentieth century and marked the turning point in the acceleration of wealth will be discussed in this document. The shaping of this accelerated private process would not have been possible without the establishment of the monetary system. These conformations are described through Foucault’s approach to power relations and its manifestations such as discourse, discipline, ethics and governmentality. This document uses the archaeological and genealogical method Foucaultian approach and therefore looks at historical, philosophical and economic aspects. The period covered in this document corresponds from the interwar period to the beginning of the 21st century in terms of monetary aspects that have influenced the formation of the monetary in the privatisation process and the effects of both on the economy.

English

From the perspective of the Foucaultian approach and using the archaeological and genealogical methodology, this paper describes the origins of the first monetary institutions which are those that have the greatest impact on the development of the monetary system that took shape over time. The origin of the first central Banks, the gold standard system, the origins of the FED (Federal Reserve) and the birth of neoliberal governmentality, institutions whose conformation gave rise to the origins to, from a monetary standpoint, corporate governmentality. This document, of a historical, philosophical and economic character, describes relationships of power which shaped and defined the lines of development of a monetary system in conformation and is based on the concentration of wealth and the appropriation of income and their yields. The crisis, monetary shocks or monetary imbalances began to be more frequent and linked to the monetary conformation of institutions that give rise to the rising monetary system.

Beyond the transparent body: a consideration of the methods and strategies for examining the homosexual subject

The aims of the study are to look at methods and strategies used for analyzing people and classifying them as homosexual and to discuss how certain mechanisms which have been established have made it possible to look at their bodies and arrive at conclusions with regard to such persons. We analyze articles from Science Direct, using a Foucaultian approach. We observe the operation of two technologies: medical body imaging techniques and examinations. These techniques transform the individuals into parts of a strategic device which can be used to build up knowledge, produce files and data, and classify the subjects. The development of this research makes it possible for us to identify certain relationships between homosexuality, the production of scientific knowledge, prejudice, politics and health.

Legal academics, our creativity and why we do it: insights from Foucault

We, as researchers and lecturers, produce new knowledge that attracts copyright, but standard understandings of intellectual property (IP) – the right as an incentive to create – do not appear to fit our circumstances. Expressed differently, the individual is at the centre of the justifications for IP law though there is little engagement, in the literature, with how the law operates on individual creators. This article addresses the problem by adopting a Foucaultian approach to explore the interaction of the (constrained) decisions of individuals and the societal policy of innovation. Foucault’s work is ideal for this endeavour as much of it focuses on the practices of the individual. For us as legal academics, and most likely for the many other innovators in society, the practices around creativity are the result of, to use Foucault’s term, the governmental rationalities that we have all been inculcated with. More specifically, the understanding of the role of “proper conduct” and the norms of behaviour provides greater insight into the previous simplistic understanding that some individuals are intrinsically motivated to create. The argument concludes with the assessment that copyright may not be important to the creativity of academics; instead, the IP right is of greater relevance to the publishers of our work – given the alternative role for copyright to facilitate the exchange of new creations.

A Foucaultian Approach to the Subjectivation of Welfare Clients and Critical Social Work Practice: A Case of the Movie Wan-deuk-yi

A Foucaultian Approach to the Subjectivation of Welfare Clients and Critical Social Work Practice: A Case of the Movie Wan-deuk-yi

Education and sexuality, a foucaultian approach

Education and sexuality, a foucaultian approach

Exclusionary inclusion and the normalization of biomedical culture

This article offers a postcolonial critique of the Foucaultian literature on neoliberal governmentality. Although the Foucaultian approach to neoliberalism moves beyond market fundamentalism to indicate how governance operates through knowledge regimes, relations of force and technologies of the self, it nonetheless serves to normalize a culturally Western paradigm of the body. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research conducted with people living with HIV/AIDS in two squatter camps in contemporary South Africa, this article argues that the public provision of antiretrovirals constitutes a shift from roll-back to roll-out neoliberalism, instigating a new regime of biomedical citizenship. Structural obstacles often impede marginalized populations from embodying the biological technologies of the self required of them to access citizenship rights. As such, biopolitics blurs into thanatopolitics at the threshold of citizenship, constituting a new form of exclusionary inclusion. But this contractual citizenship is also a tool of empire – a means of normalizing biomedical hegemony at the cost of indigenous conceptualizations of the body and health. This article argues, then, that there are both structural and cultural constraints to the imposition of neoliberal rationalities of rule, which have significant implications for the possibilities of resistance.

Governing bullying through the new public health model: a Foucaultian analysis of a school anti-bullying programme

Framed as a public health problem, school bullying led public health agencies to design anti-bullying programmes. The public health approach is invested with hope by those who are looking for an alternative to the punitive logic. Using a Foucaultian approach and a discourse analysis method, this research focuses on the way an anti-bullying intervention programme designed by a public health agency governs school bullying. The findings reveal two major logics at play. Firstly, the programme espouses the new public health model and, accordingly, governs bullying as a systemic risk rather than an individual problem. Secondly, the programme is also anchored in the classical punitive rationality. Public health and punitive logics, far from being mutually exclusive, are rather intertwined. This dual logic contributes to the ‘dangerization’ of school bullying.

Uberrima Fides, Foucault and the Security of Uncertainty

Uberrima Fides is a legal doctrine that governs insurance contracts and expects all parties to the insurance agreement to act in good faith by declaring all material facts relative to a policy. The doctrine originated in England in 1766 with the case Carter v Boehm ruled by Lord Mansfield. Ever since, it has become, with some differences in interpretation, a cornerstone of insurance relationships around the world. The role that trust plays within it, however, is not simple and should not be taken for granted. While it is expected that an idea of trust represents an order of truth, trust in itself is the outcome of a complex negotiation of moral orders. Semiotically, trust operates here not as a Kantian category for the understanding but as a signifier of an order of truth that upholds the possibility for insurance relationships. Trust, as sign, operates as a condition of possibility for the performance of insurance. In this article, a Foucaultian approach is employed to problematise the idea of trust and its role in insurance relationships. The case of mis-selling of insurance policies in the United Kingdom since the 1980s, which has given rise to numerous legal rulings, is used as the empirical site for the problematisation.