In the public interest: autonomy and resistance to methods of standardising nurses’ advice and practices from a health call centre in Perth, Western Australia The history of nursing is replete with examples of nurses battling for autonomy over their education, knowledge and work practices. The latest battleground is HealthDirect, Australia's first medial call centre, where nurses are required to meet externally imposed clinical standards while satisfying legal and financial obligations. These objectives are arguably achieved when nurses assess callers’ health problems (...) via computerised algorithms that determine an appropriate plan of action. That way, nurses’ subjective responses to callers are ruled out. To ensure nurses comply with the standard processes, calls are monitored randomly and surreptitiously in formal and informal ways. This paper explores how nurses respond to standard procedures and surveillance, in order to argue that nurses’ input partially drives reform processes. Nurses continue to seek autonomy over the advice they give and how their work is evaluated but are constrained by structural power relations. (shrink)

This paper aims to open up high-level waste management practices to a political philosophical questioning, beyond the enclosure implied by the normative ethics approaches that prevail in the literature. Building on previous insights derived from mediation theory, Foucault and science and technology studies, mediation theory’s appropriation of Foucauldian insights is shown to be in need of modification and further extension. In particular, we modify Dorrestijn’s figure of “technical determination of power relations” to better take into account the aspects of imagination, (...) and complement Dorrestijn’s work with the figures of techno-scientific mediation, and the inherently political figures of socio-technical and state-technical mediation, both based on Foucault’s notion of governmentality. Our analysis implies that the practical implementation of a high-level nuclear waste management strategy will require the “stitching together” of these different mediations, which is an inherently political task. (shrink)

At IAPS Ljubljana conference (September 2007) Dag Vidar Hanstad and Sigmund Loland presented a paper on elite-level athletes' duty to provide information on their whereabouts, to decide between two opposing positions: is this WADA demand justifiable anti-doping work or an indefensible surveillance regime? They concluded that on moral grounds this regime is conditionally acceptable, the condition being the acceptability of a general framework and objectives embodied in anti-doping global legislative foundations (the World Anti-Doping Code). But, as they said, principled objections (...) against the system have more universal relevance, which has to be taken seriously . To take this ambiguous and intriguing conclusion a step further, I propose a legal rather than ethical approach, from the aspect of constitutional and international human rights law, and the possible clash of two legally acknowledged values - the concept of elite sport without doping, and the concept of individual human rights. This conflict between ideological or moral values and the legality of individual rights is not a novelty. This paper presents three instances of this conflict: Bernard de Mandeville's differentiation between public and private values; Eug ne Sue's parallel legal and civil morals; and the contemporary moralisation of law which conflates legality into morality. The subordination of legality to morality has potentially dangerous consequences: here, Agamben's 'state of exception' comes to mind, with his analysis of potestas and auctoritas. However, in the case of sport and the war against doping, the origin of power is not in the nation state; it originates in civil society's non-governmental national and international bodies recognised as autonomous sources of legal order. (shrink)

Choo and Pittard recently have presented new attractive incommensurability arguments for remaining steadfast in religious beliefs even when disagreeing with sophisticated disputants. This article responds to the latest iteration of this genre in the work of Choo, and does double duty evaluating more generally the merits of this genre, which is becoming increasingly more popular since originally championed by Alston. Both Choo and Alston argue that it is reasonable to stay steadfast in one’s religious beliefs when there are no commensurable (...) ways of evaluating the disputant’s claims. This paper first describes four views about disagreement that inform Choo’s conclusion, one of which is the incommensurability argument similarly championed by Alston. Incommensurability arguments are attractive, but, when deployed in the most challenging disagreements, ultimately complacent. (shrink)

Foucault is one of the most widely cited thinkers across social sciences and humanities disciplines today. Foucault’s appeal, and ongoing value, across the disciplines has much to do with the power of his thought and his method to help us see the contingency of practices we take to be inevitable. It is argued in this introductory article that Foucault’s emphasis on contingency is as misunderstood as it is influential. I distinguish two senses of contingency in Foucault. A first sense, widely (...) acknowledged, concerns Foucault’s facility at showing that a taken-for-natural practice is in fact contingently produced. A second sense, widely neglected, concerns the facility of Foucauldian methods for grasping how a given practice was contingently produced. The second sense of contingency opens up possibilities for practical transformation that the former sense of contingency largely leaves to the side. (shrink)

Using mainly historical material fromAustralia, the paper seeks to understand earlyforms of school physical training, sport andmedical inspection as specialised means ofschooling bodies. The study adopts a socialepistemological perspective in seeking tounderstand the meaning-in-use of notions suchas physical training. It explores the socialconsequences of the practices carried out inthe name of physical training, particularly inrelation to shifts in the social regulation ofbodies over time from a mass, externalised, andcentralised form to a relatively moreindividualised, internalised and diffuse form.This focus on the (...) body is of key importance fora social epistemological study of physicaleducation because it forces us to look closelyat the practices constituting physicaleducation. (shrink)

The self has been a consistently central theme in philosophy and the social sciences and, in the last decades of the 20th century, the fragmentation of the modern self has engendered extensive academic commentary. In order to contribute to current discussions about self, it is perhaps most effective to map the transformation of a single representation of the self in contemporary culture. As a cultural ‘flashpoint’, the serial killer could provide an apposite analytical focus. Drawing critically on Mark Seltzer's work (...) on serial killers this article interprets serial killing as a form of commodified transgression. In contrast to the modern self, established through state-institutionalized routines, serial killers establish their identities through ecstatic intercourse. These acts of bodily and ethical transgression are facilitated by the use of commodities. In this way, the serial killer represents a self which is consistent with the colonization of interpersonal relations by multinational capital. The serial killer signifies the appearance of a postmodern self. (shrink)

The paradigm case of power as ?power over? (not ?power to') betrays a concern (1) more with the capacity to dominate others than with the unqualified capacity to act as such; (2) more with the fact, than with the morality, of dominance ? underscoring the key analytical distinction between ?power? and ?authority'; and (3) more with compulsion than co?operation. The three moves to combine (1) ?power over? with ?power to?, (2) ?power? with ?authority?, and (3) ?power? with ?co?operation?, are all (...) seen as inflationary, diminishing the value of the paradigm case, and assisting in rendering power, in its actual operations, both more obscure and insidious. Tumbling down this slope, there is a further argument, to the same effect, but secured by deflating, rather than inflating, the paradigm case. This deflationary argument (4) views luck as an alternative to power. In a world of dizzying technological innovation, marked by a deepening gap between rich and poor in the cities, between advanced and dependent states, we confront an inclination in many quarters both to expand and to contract power, so that it is everything and everywhere, thus nothing and nowhere. In attempts to substitute luck for power, it becomes difficult to assign to power responsibility, as heretofore. This paper is the first of two parts, taking a critical look at the overwhelming of power by inflation. The second part of this paper will be published in a subsequent issue, and it critically inspects the argument for deflation. (shrink)

The global city is a contested site of economic innovation and cultural production, as well as profound inequalities of wealth and life chances. These cities, and large cities that aspire to ‘global’ status, are often the point of entry for new immigrants. Yet for political theorists (and indeed many scholars of global institutions), these critical sites of global influence and inequality have not been a significant focus of attention. This is curious. Theorists have wrestled with the nature and demands of (...) global justice, but have for the most part supposed that the debate is between statist and cosmopolitan formulations. Questions of redistribution, immigration, humanitarian obligations, coercion at borders, and territorial rights have correspondingly been cast as either the domain of sovereign territorial states, or of the nascent web of supranational institutions that might bind those states and peoples, morally and legally. Examining some of these issues and arguments through the lens of the global city casts them in a new and informative light, and buttresses an associative turn in thinking about global justice. (shrink)

The essay probes the limits of social ontology as a grounding project for interpretation and explanation in the social sciences. The argument proceeds by challenging the exemplary and influential ontology of John Searle by means of Jim Bohman’s hermeneutic approach. While both share the interest in establishing the validity basis of social-scientific claims, Bohman reconstructs in this regard the situated standpoint of the hermeneutic interpreter, in contrast to Searle’s building block approach to social reality. A careful analysis of Bohman’s argumentation (...) reveals the need for differentiating a variety of interpretive stances, which leads back to important revisions of the intentionality-based social ontology of Searle. The discussion results in the need to ground methodological pluralism in a universal hermeneutics of interpretive capabilities to safeguard the social sciences against relativistic as well as metaphysical challenges. (shrink)

This essay develops the core intuition that we need to transform the objective condition of globalization into a reflexive consciousness of a cosmopolitan connectedness. We require a cosmopolitan self-understanding that allows us to respond in a normatively guided way to objective processes that undermine the usual venues of political will formation. Since our global connectedness in terms of economic and political integration is ongoing and seemingly inevitable, we need a similarly inclusive and global approach to critically respond to the challenge (...) of these unconstrained forces. The proposal is to develop a dialogical cosmopolitanism which is not based on a new meta-level of abstract universal norms, but grounded in agentive capabilities. Hermeneutic capabilities which comprise contextual perspective-taking are introduced, developing shared yet fallible norms, and critically reflecting on the power relations involved. These agent-based capabilities would allow the situated agents themselves to understand the objective forces that define current globalization and provide normative resources for a different, cosmopolitan globalization. (shrink)

This paper seeks to address the question of schooling for democracy by, first, identifying at least one form of social character, dependent, after Marcuse, on the historical emergence of a “new sensibility.” It then explores one pedagogical thread related to the emergence of this form of subjectivity over the course of the last two centuries in the west, and traces its influence in the educational counter-tradition associated with philosophical anarchism, which is based on principles of dialogue and social reconstruction as (...) opposed to monologue and reproduction. The idea of a dialogical school has been made possible by a historical shift in adult views of child as interlocutor rather than “othered” object of adult formation—a shift that can be observed in an historical process of “closer approaches” between adult and child and a recognition of childhood and adulthood as forms of subjectivity that lie on a synchronous rather than a diachronic lifespan continuum. Finally the author identifies an archetype of “school” understood as a specific type of intentional community—an experimental zone in which participants are allowed and encouraged, through explicitly dialogical practice, to develop the personal and relational habits that make authentic democracy possible—a communal form that gives practical meaning to Dewey’s notion of school as “embryonic society”: a utopian space where natality is recognized as a fundamental cultural force, and where the evolutionary possibilities inherent in neoteny are taken as normative. (shrink)

This paper argues that there is a relationship between understandings of anorexia nervosa (AN) and how the ethical issues associated with involuntary treatment for AN are identified, framed, and addressed. By positioning AN as a construct/discourse (hereinafter “AN: the diagnosis”) several ethical issues are revealed. Firstly, “AN: the diagnosis” influences how the autonomy and competence of persons diagnosed with AN are understood by decision-makers in the treatment environment. Secondly, “AN: the diagnosis” impacts on how treatment and treatment efficacy are defined (...) and the ethical justifiability of paternalism. Thirdly, “AN: the diagnosis” can limit the opportunity for persons with AN to construct an identity that casts them as a competent person. “AN: the diagnosis” can thus inherently affirm professional knowledge and values. Postmodern professional ethics can support professionals in managing these issues by highlighting the importance of taking responsibility for professional knowledge, values, and power and embracing moral uncertainty. (shrink)

In this essay, I take as a starting point Foucault’s rejection of two different ways of thinking about the future, prophecy and utopianism, and use this rejection as a basis for the elaboration of a more detailed rejection of them, invoking complexity-based epistemic limitations in relation to thinking about the future of political society. I follow Foucault in advocating immanent political struggle, which does not seek to build a determinate vision of the future but rather focuses on negating aspects of (...) the current conjuncture. I extend this argument into an ethical register, arguing that the same arguments apply mutatis mutandis to our personal lives. I conclude by engaging with Jacques Lacan’s account of subjectivity, and the interpretation of its political import furnished by Yannis Stavrakakis, drawing from these additional supports for my position, in particular the rejection of utopianism as an attempt to avoid limitation by the real. (shrink)

The concept of instinct has fallen into disrepute, due to a number of problems with the way it had been conceived, mostly related to the concept of innateness. Yet the legacy of instincts survives in sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, in the form of an emphasis on the genetic determinants of behavior. Through a consideration of the two main theories of instinct and the objections that have been raised against them, it becomes clear that existing theories of instinct founder because of (...) their inability to reconcile the psychic and physiological “faces” of instinct. Merleau-Ponty's notion of “being-in-the-world” as a third term linking the psychic and the physiological makes possible a new conception of instinct which escapes these criticisms. At the same time, it opens up a new way of understanding how instincts may operate in human beings. (shrink)

This article will examine the emergence of a distinct bourgeois identity in modernity which differentiated itself from comparable social groups through its desire to exert 'virtuous' control through engagement with reform and philanthropy, and through the symbolic construction of a transgressive, socially marginal but redeemable other as subject of this reform. The ontological insecurities of late modernity had a profound impact on the sources of bourgeois identity, and this article will explore the emergence of the cultural omnivore as a new (...) form of social distinction which is no longer virtuous, but is still a manifestation of the desire to express identity through demonstrating control. It will outline the impact of the emerging omnivore on relationships between the bourgeois self and the marginal/deviant other, particularly in terms of the extent to which the reconceptualisation of 'other' as cultural univore exacerbates the exclusion and criminalisation of the marginalized other. (shrink)

As the West loses its political credibility, the search has opened for alternatives to neo-liberal parliamentary democracies, failing on their own scale of good governance. Several contemporary critical thinkers, such as Alain Badiou, turn towards a communist horizon. In this paper, we want to explore the idea of commons in contemporary Internet-based groups, as a quest for contemporary appearances of communism in the Badiouian sense. From wiki formats to the hacktivism of Anonymous, there are various Internet-based initiatives that are built (...) on a philosophy of open access to all, regardless of their identity, and a horizontal, rhizomatic organisation. We think that the organisational features of these initiatives make them suitable to carry out a struggle for new, more democratic political alternatives. (shrink)

Most critical discussions of European immigration policies are centered around the concept of Fortress Europe and understand the concept of the border as a way of sealing off unwanted immigration movements. However, ethnographic studies such as our own multi-sited field research in South-east Europe clearly show that borders are daily being crossed by migrants. These findings point to the shortcomings of the Fortress metaphor. By bringing to the fore the agency of migrants in the conceptualization of borders, we propose to (...) understand how borders are being shaped by taking as a starting point the struggles of mobility. Against the background of our two-year transdisciplinary research project TRANSIT MIGRATION European migration and border policies cannot be longer conceptualized as being simply oriented towards the prevention of migration. Since migrants cross the borders daily, what happens if the borders’ permeability is part of the way they work? If so, we have to investigate the mechanisms of border policies and practices anew. One is the concept of the border or migration regime. The other is the concept of the autonomy of migration. Our concept of ethnographic regime analyses is based on a transdisciplinary approach, comprising political studies, anthropology and sociology. (shrink)

In his very last, now famous, interview, Michel Foucault states that his philosophical thought was shaped by his reading of Heidegger, even though he does not specify what aspects of Heidegger’s philosophy inspired him in the first place. However, his last interview is not the only place where Foucault refers to Heidegger as his intellectual guide. In his 1981/1982 lecture course, The Hermeneutics of the Subject, Foucault confesses that the way Heidegger conceptualized the relationship between subject and truth was a (...) starting point for him for thinking about the relationship between truth, subject, subjective-transformation, and freedom. Accordingly, the aim of this paper is to reconstruct the Foucault-Heidegger encounter from the perspective of subject-truth relation. I will ask how Heidegger and Foucault conceptualized the relationship between truth, self-transformation, and freedom. And I will claim that for both Foucault and Heidegger, freedom lies in constantly and creatively repeating the traditional possibilities of existence in order to question the reified patterns of interpretation, and in order to reveal the anxiety–engendering–truth that what is regarded as natural and inevitable in human life is historically contingent and transformable. (shrink)

In the current paper, our aim is to explore the latent power dynamics surrounding corporate social responsibility in developing countries. To do this, we synthesize an analytic framework that borrows from both cross-cultural management literature as well as feminist considerations of power. We then use the framework to examine three streams of CSR literature. Our analysis uncovers the prevalence of arguments and discussions about indigenous and power-over themes rather than more generative, endogenous, and power-to themes. The paper concludes with the (...) suggestion for more space in the CSR literature for examining the realities and potentialities of local SME CSR expressions to counterbalance the overwhelming focus on MNCs. Such counterbalancing can better lead to the recognition that power and domination are not the only important dynamics to examine in CSR research. Just as important is the need for a more nuanced consideration of the role and contributions of different actors to the continuously unfolding CSR discourse. (shrink)

Nudges can pose serious threats to citizens’ privacy. The essay discusses several examples of nudges that must appear problematic to anyone valuing privacy. The paper also re-draws a well established connection between privacy and autonomy and argues that insofar as nudges incur too great a loss of privacy, they are incompatible with the libertarianism that libertarian paternalism is committed to by virtue of its very name.

Abstract. To understand the problem of torture in a democratic society, we have to take up a political-theological perspective. We must ask how violence creates political meaning. Torture is no more destructive and no more illiberal than other forms of political violence. The turn away from torture was not a turn away from violence, but a change in the locus of sacrifice: from scaffold to battlefield. Torture had been a ritual of mediation between sovereign and subject. Once sovereignty is located (...) in the people, it no longer makes sense to speak of being sacrificed for the sovereign. Instead, sovereign presence is now realized in an act of self-sacrifice. The wars of modern nation-states have been acts of reciprocal self-sacrifice. Terror invokes torture in response because both speak a primitive language of political sacrifice, denying the enemy the privilege of self-sacrifice. (shrink)

(1993). Two conceptual problems for the theory of Evolution: Causality and the explanation of emergence. World Futures: Vol. 38, Theoretical Achievements and Practical Applications of General Evolutionary Theory, pp. 123-129.

Ponte City is a project by Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse that uses photographs, architectural diagrams, text, interviews, fiction, found objects, oral history, and archival material to critically explore a particular urban landscape in Johannesburg. The exhibition and book, which comprise this project, manifest in different ways, but both work together to cut across disciplines and incorporate the languages of fine art, photography, architecture, urban planning, history, economics, popular culture, and literature. The publication comprises a book of photographs and pamphlets (...) in which the artists have collaborated with former and current residents, gathered personal stories, delved into the archive, invited authors to contribute essays on a variety of topics, and worked with material found at the site. This article examines the notion of a ‘portrait of a city’ in relation to the Ponte City project, and asks the questions: What is a portrait of a city? Is it possible to take a ‘portrait of a city’, and what techniques are used when a photographer portrays places and people, or attempts to take, or make, a ‘portrait’ – of a city, a place or even a building such as Ponte? Can a building come to stand in for a city? And how have these strategies been put into play by Subotzky and Waterhouse in the Ponte City project? (shrink)

While it is sometimes thought that free Athenian women were hemmed in by surveillance within the oikos, this article argues that the obstacle that impeded them when they attempted to control property was that they were excluded from the impersonal and formal systems of surveillance of male citizens. Athenian public life, lived in the view of others, dramatically extended the agency of those within it. While women could compensate for their legal incapacities by cultivating the personal trust of men, this (...) required them to treat some of the people closest to them instrumentally, thus transforming their affectionate relationships. (shrink)

This article examines a social accounting cycle in a Danish savings bank with specific focus on how employees interacted with the cycle. The case study is based on archival material and observations of employee engagement sessions that were a significant part of the cycle. The article exposes the ways in which the cycle can be understood as an initiative that prompts different forms of accountability. The cycle had the potential to bring different forms of accountability together, but the cycle also (...) faced challenges that threatened its relevance from an employee perspective. These challenges might have implications for the way we perceive social accounting and the role of employees. (shrink)

Feminist scholars have long demonstrated how women are constrained through dieting discourse. Today’s scholars wrestle with similar themes, but confront a thornier question: how do we make sense of a food discourse that frames food choices through a lens of empowerment and health, rather than vanity and restriction? This article addresses this question, drawing from interviews and focus groups with women (N = 100), as well as health-focused food writing. These data allow us to document a postfeminist food discourse that (...) we term the do-diet. The do-diet reframes dietary restrictions as positive choices, while maintaining an emphasis on body discipline, expert knowledge, and self-control. Our analysis demonstrates how the do-diet remediates a tension at the heart of neoliberal consumer culture: namely, the tension between embodying discipline through dietary control and expressing freedom through consumer choice. With respect to theory, our analysis demonstrates how the embodied dimensions of neoliberalism find gendered expression through postfeminism. We conclude that the do-diet heightens the challenge of developing feminist critiques of gendered body ideals and corporeal surveillance, as it promises a way of eating that is both morally responsible and personally empowering. (shrink)

Testimony to Muzil: Hervé Guibert, Michel Foucault, and the “Medical Gaze” examines the fictional/autobiographical AIDS writings of the French writer Hervé Guibert. Locating Guibert's writings alongside the work of his friend Michel Foucault, the article explores how they echo Foucault's evolving notions of the “medical gaze.” The article also explores how Guilbert's narrators and Guibert himself resist and challenge the medical gaze; a gaze which particularly in the era of AIDS has subjected, objectified, and even sometimes punished the body of (...) the gay man. It is argued that these resistances to the gaze offer a literary extension to Foucault's later work on power and resistance strategies. (shrink)

Working in and around the ‘chain of command’: power relations among nursing staff in an urban nursing homeBy most accounts, the discipline of nursing enjoys considerable hegemony in US nursing homes. Not surprisingly, the ethos of this setting is influenced, in large part, by nursing’s value system. This ethos powerfully impacts both the residents who live in nursing homes and the staff who work there. Using ethnographic methods, this project explored power relations among nursing assistants and nurses in an urban (...) nursing home in the United States. Factors contributing to tensions among nursing staff were the stigma attached to nursing homes and those who work in them, as well as the long history of class conflict and power struggles within the discipline of nursing. The latter struggles, in turn, reflected nursing’s quest for professional status in the face of medicine’s hegemony over health‐care. Ultimately, these factors coalesced to produce a local work environment characterized by conflict — and by aides’ resistance to nurses’ domination. (shrink)

This article explores the differences between two strategies of persuasion. The first strategy, called drawing things together, is Actor-Network Theory's classic analysis of how modern science has gained tremendous persuasive powers through systematic inscription and centralized accumulation of information traces. The second strategy, called drawing contrasts together, is derived from the author's empirical analysis of the rhetorics and materialities of a Scandinavian New Economy firm. The persuasive powers of this firm, it is argued, are based on its ability to evoke (...) and articulate a series of pointed contrasts between the attractive working life within the firm and the ordinary and problematic work life elsewhere. The article argues that both persuasive strategies work in a pragmatic sense. But where “drawing things together” enacts a relatively stable and knowable world, the persuasive strategy of “drawing contrasts together” depends on, and enacts, a world of dramatic epochal changes. (shrink)

This paper uses Actor Network Theory to examine two cases of device-mediated educational change, one involving a computer-assisted interactive video module that provided a half-hour of instruction for a university course, the other an assistive communication device that proved a supposedly retarded pre-school child to be intelligent. The paper explores how device construction instigated by middle-level organizational workers can ramify into organizational change, and extends Actor Network theory by augmenting some of its conceptual tools. I argue that the organizational change (...) processes initiated by work on the devices played out in non-linear ways across the decades-long careers of their makers, and that to understand them we not only have to look across such extended time frames, but must also consider how agency and identity positions emerge and shift over time through the mediation of devices. (shrink)

The paper suggests that the state is subject to assessment according to principles of social justice because state institutions or practices exercise forms of power over which no particular person has control. This rationale for assessment of social justice equally applies to legally optional or informal social practices. But it does not apply to individual conduct. Indeed, it follows that principles of social justice cannot provide a basis for the assessment and guidance of individual choice. The paper develops this practice-based (...) conception of the subject of justice by rejoining G. A. Cohen's influential critique of Rawls’ focus on the “basic structure” of society. (shrink)

Humanism in forensic psychiatry: the use of the tidal nursing model The humanist school of thought, which finds resonance in many conceptual models and theories designed to guide nursing practice, needs to be understood in the context of the total institution, where the individual is subjected to a mortification of the self, and denied autonomy. This article will engage in a critical reflection on how humanism has influenced nursing theorists and the subsequent production of conceptual models and theories, especially as (...) they relate to the field of forensic psychiatric nursing. Although humanism provides optimism for nurse–patient relations, this article explores the incapability of such a philosophy to acknowledge the power relationships between individuals and its inability to explain the day‐to‐day realities experienced in forensic nursing, where the possibility of interpersonal violence reshapes nursing care. The tidal model will be discussed in detail as an example of a recently developed humanistic nursing model. Viewed from this perspective, it is clear that humanistic philosophy and its subsequent models of care are in discordance with the highly specialized field of forensic nursing. (shrink)

This paper suggests philosophical foundations for mixed methods research based on the philosophy of critical realism. In particular, it suggests that the critical realist idea of the primacy of ontology helps bridge the apparent paradigmatic gap between qualitative and quantitative research. It illustrates this foundational idea by showing why and how a multi-disciplinary team used a mixed methods approach to understand the significance of religion in prison through a multi-site study of religious conversion to Islam in prison and how this (...) gives a better account than a single method approach. The mixed method research design used in the project sets out a new way of mapping and understanding religious conversion and differences within a faith group that draws on the emancipatory potential of critical realist thought. (shrink)

Intersecting authority-language-and-symbolic power, this article tells the story of a group of continental Francophone African youth who find themselves in an urban French-language high school in southwestern Ontario, Canada. Through their narrative, one is confronted by the trauma of one's own language being declared an illegitimate child, hence becoming a ‘deceptive fluency’ in the ‘eyes of power’ thanks to race and post-coloniality. They are fully consciousness of this situation and their ‘linguistic return’, thus gazing back at the eyes of power (...) and declaring themselves ‘subjects’ capable of love and desire. I briefly address questions of hospitality and language ownership and conclude by addressing the need to re-think the connection between race, power and language. (shrink)

This paper examines ethics in organizations in relation to the subjectivity of managers. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault we seek to theorize ethics in terms of the meaning of being a manager who is an active ethical subject. Such a manager is so in relation to the organizational structures and norms that govern the conduct of ethics. Our approach locates ethics in the relation between individual morality and organizationally prescribed principles assumed to guide personal action. In this way (...) we see ethics as a practice that is powerfully intertwined in an individual’s freedom to make choices about what to do and who to be, and the organizational context in which those choices are situated, framed and governed. (shrink)

Workplace bullying is a significant issue confronting the nursing profession. Bullying in nursing is frequently described in terms of ‘oppressed group’ behaviour or ‘horizontal violence’. It is proposed that the use of ‘oppressed group’ behaviour theory has fostered only a partial understanding of the phenomenon in nursing. It is suggested that the continued use of ‘oppressed group’ behaviour as the major means for understanding bullying in nursing places a flawed emphasis on bullying as a phenomenon that exists only among nurses, (...) rather than considering it within the broader organisational context. The work of Foucault and the ‘circuits of power’ model proposed by Clegg are used to provide an alternative understanding of the operation of power within organisations and therefore another way to conceive bullying in the nursing workforce. (shrink)

Health‐care and public sector institutions are high‐risk settings for workplace bullying. Despite growing acknowledgement of the scale and consequence of this pervasive problem, there has been little critical examination of the institutional power dynamics that enable bullying. In the aftermath of large‐scale failures in care standards in public sector healthcare institutions, which were characterised by managerial bullying, attention to the nexus between bullying, power and institutional failures is warranted. In this study, employing Foucault's framework of power, we illuminate bullying as (...) a feature of structures of power and knowledge in public sector institutions. Our analysis draws upon the experiences of a large sample (n = 3345) of workers in Australian public sector agencies – the type with which most nurses in the public setting will be familiar. In foregrounding these power dynamics, we provide further insight into how cultures that are antithetical to institutional missions can arise and seek to broaden the debate on the dynamics of care failures within public sector institutions. Understanding the practices of power in public sector institutions, particularly in the context of ongoing reform, has important implications for nursing. (shrink)

Much literature surrounding medical technology and adherence posits that technology is a mechanism for social control. This assumes that the medical establishment can take away patients' agency. Although power relationships and social control can play a key role, medical technology can also serve as an agentive tool to be utilized. We (1) offer the alternative framework of Actor Network Theory to view medical technology, (2) discuss the literature on medication adherence and technology, (3) delve into the ramifications of looking at (...) adherence as a network and (4) use Digital Pills as a case study of dispersed agency. (shrink)

The “privacy paradox” refers to the discrepancy between the concern individuals express for their privacy and the apparently low value they actually assign to it when they readily trade personal information for low-value goods online. In this paper, I argue that the privacy paradox masks a more important paradox: the self-management model of privacy embedded in notice-and-consent pages on websites and other, analogous practices can be readily shown to underprotect privacy, even in the economic terms favored by its advocates. The (...) real question, then, is why privacy self-management occupies such a prominent position in privacy law and regulation. Borrowing from Foucault’s late writings, I argue that this failure to protect privacy is also a success in ethical subject formation, as it actively pushes privacy norms and practices in a neoliberal direction. In other words, privacy self-management isn’t about protecting people’s privacy; it’s about inculcating the idea that privacy is an individual, commodified good that can be traded for other market goods. Along the way, the self-management regime forces privacy into the market, obstructs the functioning of other, more social, understandings of privacy, and occludes the various ways that individuals attempt to resist adopting the market-based view of themselves and their privacy. Throughout, I use the analytics practices of Facebook and social networking sites as a sustained case study of the point. (shrink)

In this article, I describe how I made use of Foucault theoretically and methodologically in a study of five specific parrhesiastic scholars. Such scholars challenge hegemony in educational policies and practices, and advocate for educational reform and societal structures that move toward equity instead of marginalization. The article begins by exploring Foucault's notion of specific intellectuals through the experiences of the scholars. It then moves to an explanation of why the five scholars selected for this study should be considered specific (...) parrhesiastic scholars. An account of how I made use of Foucault in this study follows. My interpretation of Foucault's work into a research methodology for this project has been a process of identifying illustrations of technologies of the self and technologies of power in text, dialogue, and narrative—qualitative data, which I analyzed using a framework that merged these technologies into the analytical categories of (1) application of logos, (2) engagement with politeia, and (3) practice of techne toubiou. (shrink)

I respond to a hypothetical critique of sport, drawing on primarily post-modernist sources, that would view the high performance athlete in particular as a product of the application of technical disciplines of power and that opposes sport and play as fundamentally antithetical. Through extensive discussion of possible definitions of play, and of performance, I argue that although much of the critique is valid it confuses a method of sport for the whole of it. Play is indeed a noncompellable spontaneity, but (...) one that involves the improvisational transformation of the technical skills of a sport within the context of a dynamic situation. Technique is a condition of heightened play; it does not produce it. This also means that the best play is not undisciplined. Play and sport can exist apart, but both are better combined. (shrink)

: In this essay, Houle focuses in on the ways in which a Foucauldian-framed account of violence, such as the one Gail Mason offers in Spectacles of Violence, rattles liberal (theoretical and 'common-sensical') understandings of culpability and lawfulness. Mason's analysis dares to suggest that violence is constitutive, not simply destructive of selves, of lives. Asking after the ways in which that constitution is asymmetrical in events of violence, Houle reintroduce some cautions and concerns about drawing from a poststructuralist perspective. This, (...) in turn, raises the question as to which ontology of the self such a rebalancing requires. The essays ends by making use of Mason's own distinction between our selves as 'who' and 'what,' to give a modified reading of the ways these aspects of selfhood are constituted or made possible in events of violence, which does not fall back upon the liberal conception of the self. (shrink)

In this article I discuss the problem of embodied subjectivity, viewed from the perspective of spatiality. The questions I address arise from my ethnographic study on chronic pain. My main argument is that, in contrast to philosophical understanding of space as an a priori, or as a container, space and spatiality are shaped and reshaped through the body in pain. What characterizes most patients' experiences of space is movement. This can be understood through Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological theory of the lived body (...) but needs in addition a cultural contextualization. Because of biomedical thinking, in Western settings chronic pain is liminal. It does not fit the biomedical categories of disease or space. This profoundly shapes patients' understanding of their subjectivity as homeless, and their experience of spatiality as estranged and exiled. (shrink)

Police and pastoral power: governmentality and correctional forensic psychiatric nursing Since 1978, the federal inmates of Canada have had access to a full range of psychiatric care within the penitentiary system. Several psychiatric units are now integrated into the correctional services of Canada. This paper presents the results of a grounded theory doctoral study undertaken in a multilevel secured psychiatric ward within the Canadian federal penitentiary system. The author describes and discusses the results of qualitative data that emerged from his (...) fieldwork. The concept of governmentality, as defined by the late French philosopher Michel Foucault, constitutes one of the major theoretical tools that were helpful in analyzing these data. Police and pastoral power, two dimensions of the security apparatus of governmentality, were found to be useful in understanding and characterizing nursing practice caught between the penal and the psychiatric dispositifs. A Foucauldian perspective allows one to understand the manner in which forensic psychiatric nursing is involved in the governance of mentally ill inmates through three forms of power — sovereign, disciplinary and pastoral — which have posited nursing practice as a strategic tool of the correctional services. This research consists of a study of nursing practice in an extreme setting that deserves a radical analysis. (shrink)