Much recent work in the study of popular culture has emphasized the extent to which it is not only a site of signifying practices, myths, meanings and identifications, but also an arena of intensities, of affective flows and corporeal state-changes. From this perspective, many areas of popular culture (from calisthenics to social dance to video gaming) can be seen as sites at which rich and complex—if sometimes dangerous—processes of embodied learning/teaching take place. By comparison, the world of formal education can (...) seem hopelessly clumsy in its inattention to such issues. From a personal perspective, I can attest that nothing surprises my students more than when I try to get them to think about the ergonomics of studying, or advise them that getting some exercise and cutting down on sugar will probably improve their work as much as further studying will, or when I advise graduate students that their mood and physical state will make as much difference to the quality of their lectures as will their level of formal preparation; and yet experience has convinced me of the accuracy of these assertions. I would aver that I have learned more about successful lecturing—in particular about the improvisational skill of ‘reading’ a room, and adjusting an affective–informational flow accordingly—from DJing in dance clubs than from any formal training in pedagogy that I have received. What conclusions could be drawn from these observations, and how do they relate to existing strands of pedagogic theory? These are the questions which this article will ultimately seek to address. (shrink)

This paper critically engages with the theme of ‘process over product’—a theme that is argued to be increasingly problematised as an influential narrative in the construction and transmission of a philosophy of early education. The importance of producing children of ‘competence’ through appropriate educational processes is associated with assumptions regarding what counts as an appropriate educational journey for children before they reach school age. Drawing upon the work of Michel Foucault, and Jean‐François Lyotard, this paper considers the purpose and tensions (...) of articulating process as more important than product in early childhood. It is argued that the articulation of the child as a particular kind of process‐oriented player leads to an uncritical acceptance of technologies of governing the child. Furthermore, discourse asserting the importance of processes of play reveals a crisis in understanding what it means to be a player, and what the purpose of the process of play might be. Process contributes to a narrow understanding of a performative purpose of play as a processing of information. A role of the educator, this paper argues, is then to critically engage with the transmission of the theme of process. (shrink)

Source: Author: Mani Ghadamkheir, Mahboubeh Mahmoudzadeh This study employs Foucault's views on the strategies of power to analyze that the institutional world of Bleak House makes a disciplinary structure. The intrusion of these institutions in all strata of society in the novel, from the aristocratic Dedlocks to the poor area of Tom-All-Alone shapes a panoptic structure in which everyone is visible through a permanent and omniscient gaze. Under the matrix of various institutions almost all the characters in the novel, directly (...) or indirectly, are trapped and engaged. This study shows the modernity of Dickens views on power relations in society and gives readers new maps to read Bleak House and new perspectives from which to view it. ]]>. (shrink)

After decades of acrimonious debate on the nature of scientific knowledge, researchers in the human or social sciences are reaching a state of relative equanimity, a condition that may be characterized as a reflective pragmatism. Yet, even while the context has favored the development of new forms of research, the longstanding ocular metaphor of inquiry remains pervasive. That is, researchers continue the practice of observing what is the case, with the intent to illuminate, understand, report on, or furnish insight into (...) given states of affairs. And, while selectively useful, such an orientation is not only limited in potential but subject to a receding span of application. As I will propose, when the logics of reflective pragmatism are fully extended, we enter a new territory of understanding, one in which the vision of research is radically altered. We replace the captivating gaze on the world as it is with value based explorations into what it could be. This conception of a future forming orientation to research opens the way to new aims, practices, and reflections. (shrink)

Despite the ongoing consideration of the ethical nature of human resource management (HRM), little research has been conducted on how morality and ethics are represented in the discourse, activities and lived experiences of human resource (HR) professionals. In this paper, we connect the thinking and lived experiences of HR professionals to an alternative ethics, rooted in the work of Bauman (Modernity and the Holocaust, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1989; Theory, Culture and Society 7:5–38, 1990; Postmodern Ethics, Blackwell, Oxford, 1991; Approaches to (...) Social Enquiry, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1993; Life in Fragments, Blackwell, Oxford, 1995) and Levinas (Otherwise than Being, or, Beyond Essence, Duquesne University Press, Pittsburgh, PA, 1998). We argue that the study of HRM and ethics should be contextualized within the discourses used, the practices and activities of HR professionals. Through the analysis of interview data from 40 predominantly Canadian HR practitioners and managers we experiment with Bauman’s notion of ‘moral impulse’ to help us understand how HRM is both a product and perpetuator of moral neutralization in organizations. We suggest that HRM as it is practiced is concerned with distancing, depersonalizing, and dissembling, and acts in support of the ‘moral’ requirements of business, not of people. However, we also recognize that HR practitioners and managers are often confronted with and conflicted by actions and decisions that they are required to take, therefore opening possibilities and hope for an alternative ethical HRM. (shrink)

In this article, I would like to consider the contribution of discourse analysis to ethnography in mental health settings. I am particularly interested in how a discourse analysis of in situ interviews can offer an important perspective to ethnographic exploration of mental health services. This theoretical consideration is complemented with two sets of data. On the one hand, it is based on an ethnographic insight into the practices in an elite Polish psychiatric hospital; on the other hand, it is based (...) on service users' account of the initial psychiatric interviews carried out immediately after their admission onto a ward in the hospital. All the interviewees had a preliminary diagnosis of the depressive disorder. I am going to demonstrate a hiatus between the ethnographic account of the practices observed through an ethnographic study and their constructions in the service users' narratives. In this process, I am going to argue that discourse analysis is a crucial complement to an ethnographic study. (shrink)

According to Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach (CA) to justice, a (liberal) society is just if it provides people with the means to actualize basic capabilities that are necessary for a dignified human life. In Frontiers of Justice, Nussbaum (2006) expands the CA to include sentient nonhuman animals in the sphere of justice (as opposed, for instance, to the sphere of compassion). As it does for humans, justice requires that sentient creatures have the ability to access capabilities necessary for their flourishing, (...) as specified by a ‘species norm’ dictating the central capabilities typical to an animal’s kind. Although Nussbaum (2006) does not extend the CA beyond sentient creatures, I will argue .. (shrink)

This paper presents some results of a case study of the usage of the social networking platform studiVZ by students in Salzburg, Austria. The topic is framed by the context of electronic surveillance. An online survey that was based on questionnaire that consisted of 35 (single and multiple) choice questions, 3 open-ended questions, and 5 interval-scaled questions, was carried out (N = 674). The knowledge that students have in general was assessed with by calculating a surveillance knowledge index, the critical (...) awareness towards surveillance by calculating a surveillance critique index. Knowledge about studiVZ as well as information behaviour on the platform were analyzed and related to the surveillance parameters. The results show that public information and discussion about surveillance and social networking platforms is important for activating critical information behaviour. In the case of studiVZ, a change of the terms of use in 2008 that brought about the possibility of targeted personalized advertising, was the subject of public discussions that influenced students’ knowledge and information behaviour. (shrink)

The graduate teaching assistant prepares to enter a classroom for the first time as its instructor beset by feelings of incompetence: indeed, learning to successfully display a professional identity is often a terrifying experience, such that promising novices may abandon it prematurely. This hermeneutic phenomenological study asks one female doctoral candidate the following question: What is the experience of feelings of competence and incompetence in the process of becoming a professor? The core finding of this interview-based study is the thematic (...) demarcation of sequential stages in the participant’s experience of the process of becoming “member enough”. In the presentation of the findings, the identification of the central themes is validated with excerpts from the interview data, and their implications for the study of competence, the sociocultural study of identity development, and the mentoring of pre-service college faculty discussed. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , May 2010, Volume 10, Edition 1. (shrink)

In this article, we will consider how the regulation of populations is not just a feature of prisons, but of all institutions and organisations that control members though hierarchies, divisions and norms. While nurses and other allied health professionals are considered to be predominantly self‐regulatory, practice is guided by a code of conduct and codes of ethics that act as rules that serve to uphold the safety of the patient, whether they are a sick person in a hospital bed or (...) an inmate in a prison. The codes of conduct espouse a number of rules that to a certain extent govern the behaviour of individual and groups of practitioners through reciprocal rewards and punishments. Supervision is one method of monitoring the effectiveness of the codes of conduct and ethics while regulating both the minimum standard of individual practice and of training organisations. It is posited that one of the possible effects of clinical supervision is to make the person effectively self‐regulatory as, an autonomous practitioner. We take the view that professional autonomy is a highly problematic concept requiring closer examination. (shrink)

An early proponent of the social sciences, Frédéric Le Play, was the occupant of senior positions within the French state in the mid- to late 19th century. He was writing at a time when science was ascending. There was for him no doubt that scientific observation, correctly applied, would allow him unmediated access to the truth. It is significant that Le Play was the organizer of a number of universal expositions because these expositions were used as vehicles to demonstrate the (...) ascendant position of western civilization. The fabrication of linear time is a history of progress requiring a vision of history analogous to the view offered the spectator at a diorama. Le Play employed the design principles and spirit of the diorama in his formulations for the social sciences, and L’Exposition Universelle of 1867 used the technology wherever it could. Both the gaze of the spectators and the objects viewed are part and products of the same particular and unique historical formation. Ideas of perception cannot be separated out from the conditions that make them possible. Vision and its effects are inseparable from the observing subject who is both a product of a particular historical moment and the site of certain practices. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates how the problematic kinds of epistemic power that physicians have can diminish the epistemic privilege that pregnant women have over their bodies and can put them in a state of epistemic powerlessness. This result, I argue, constitutes an epistemic injustice for many pregnant women. A reconsideration of how we understand and care for pregnant women and of the physician–patient relationship can provide us with a valuable context and starting point for helping to alleviate the knowledge/power problems that (...) are symptomatic of the current system and structure of medicine. I suggest that we can begin to confront this kind of injustice if medicine adopts a more phenomenological understanding of bodies and if physicians and patients—in this case, pregnant women—become what I call “epistemic peers.”. (shrink)

According to some interpreters, Foucault's encounter with the Greek and Roman ethics led him to reconsider his earlier work and to turn away from politics. Drawing mostly from Foucault's last and hitherto unpublished lecture course, this paper argues that Foucault's turn to ethics should not be interpreted as a turn away from his previous work, but rather as its logical continuation and an attempt to resolve some of the outstanding questions. I argue that the 1984 lectures on parrhesia should be (...) interpreted as Foucault's philosophical apology, as an attempt to defend himself against the charges of moral and epistemological nihilism, which were raised in response to his earlier work. In his last lectures, the Nietzschean Foucault somewhat surprisingly describes his earlier work as authentic Socratic philosophy and as ethical practice of freedom. In the conclusion, I assess the plausibility of Foucault's apology and speculate in which direction his work might have developed, had it not been cut off by his death. (shrink)

Poststructuralism and nursing: uncomfortable bedfellows? The benefits and limitations of the application of poststructuralist in nursing research are discussed. The debate concerning the use of poststructuralist theory in feminist research is drawn on to argue a divergence between a deconstructionist poststructuralism and nursing aims. It is argued that there are strong parallels between nursing and social movements such as feminism. The reasons why many feminist and nursing researchers have been attracted to poststructuralist theory are explored, as are the criticisms of (...) poststructuralism as an inadequate, even reactionary theory. It is argued that poststructuralism is useful for examining or deconstructing existing discourse and practice, but incompatible and inadequate for research which aims to develop or change such discourses or practices. (shrink)

The article draws attention to the unexploited potentials in using visuals within nursing research and especially in using visuals as data. Initially, the authors give a brief description of what is meant by visual research methods and present a short overview of the different approaches that are possible. Visual methodologies are situated within different theoretical frames, often within a postmodern framework. We present a study using a postmodern approach inspired by the works of Foucault. The study demonstrates the possibilities inherent (...) in using visuals as data by exemplifying how illustrations from health journals from Scandinavia reflect otherwise veiled and/or unconscious gendered attitudes on user participation. (shrink)

I claim that Adriana Cavarero’s concept of sonorous voice is significant in feminist teaching because, as she argues, dominant concepts of voice refer to voice in semantic terms thereby discounting voice in sonorous terms. This process of ‘devocalization’, spanning the history of Western philosophy, devalues the uniqueness embodied in each sonorous voice effecting a bias against female-sounding voices. In light of women’s history and experience of being silenced, this devaluing of sonorous voice has distinct implications for feminist teaching. A person’s (...) actual sounding voice, which constitutes her or his uniqueness, is missing from prior considerations of ‘voice’ in professional ethics. Because establishing a voice of authority is a central challenge starting off as a teacher, devocalization makes this challenge greater for those with female-sounding voices who take on and try out the dispositions and attitudes of an authoritative professional. Using the example of a voice workshop I designed for pre-service teachers, I re-consider it in light of ‘devocalization’ and the frankness needed to practice feminism, asking if it is possible to be frank and sonorous using irony. I conclude that it is, that Cavarero’s philosophical practice is a model for feminist teaching, and I re-write the workshop with ‘bad intentions’; for and in more than one voice. (shrink)

Very little is known about how women’s experiences with inclusion or exclusion shape their entry into community after they have been incarcerated. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine inclusion from the perspective of women entering community after release from a federal prison in Ontario, Canada. This research project combined feminist participatory action research with anti-oppressive theories. Women who had been incarcerated were asked to come together to discuss ideas around inclusion and explore ways to foster a more (...) inclusive environment. As women described the kind of community they experienced before and after incarceration, themes of being pushed out of community, being pulled into community, and negotiating issues of responsibility were evident. At the core of these themes was a powerful sense of difference. Findings suggest that deep societal change is needed for women to truly experience social inclusion upon their release from federal prison. They also suggest a role for community in supporting personal change and growth. We argue that if principles of social justice guided inclusion efforts, there would be dialogue and negotiation aimed at re-imagining social inclusion and creating a space that is hopeful and inclusive for all citizens. (shrink)

This article shows how institutionalism, a theory in organisational social science, provides a model for diagnosing organisational challenges that influence the ethical practices and integration in the Norwegian Army. Institutionalism provides tools for analysing the differences between expressed values and actual practices and for understanding the organisational dynamics that unfold at the crossroads of the organisation's formal structure, informal culture and stakeholder relations. In this article we present and discuss such differences and dynamics in the Norwegian Army based on findings (...) from a survey and a number of workshops. We also provide some suggestions for effective implementation of strategies for strengthening ethics in such an organisation. We argue that the perspective taken in this project is also relevant for other highly professionalised complex organisations and that such interdisciplinary research will strengthen practical ethics' potential for real impact. (shrink)

This article discusses the metatheoretical foundations of a critical realist approach to critical discourse analysis and counterposes them to insufficiently realist tendencies in Norman Fairclough's critical discourse analysis, on the one hand, and anti-realist post-Marxist discourse theory on the other. The first section argues that Fairclough's approach is progressive in many ways, but lacks metatheoretical rigour with respect to important demarcation problems. These mainly concern CDA's understanding of discourse as mediating entity, its underlying dialectical-relational approach and overarching concept of social (...) practices. The discussion of Fairclough's approach necessitates a treatment of the relation of discourse and epistemology, in which the heritage of Foucault plays a crucial role and a brief engagement with ideology, in which Althusser is a major point of departure. The thesis is advanced that, among other things, Althusserian and Foucauldian residues in CDA's metatheory esta.. (shrink)

Although the body has become of increasing importance throughout the social sciences, it has been neglected by the discipline of social policy. The aim of this article is to rectify that neglect. It argues that the connections which some have begun to make between social welfare and the body can be strengthened by reference to the figure of the cyborg. The article develops a model that can be used to explain the cyborgization of social identity. This process of cyborgization is (...) then related to contemporary trends in social welfare: the individualization of rights and the collectivization of duties which is occurring via the prevalence of surveillance technologies and the ideology of productivism. These trends signify a drift towards what can be called post-social security. (shrink)

Philosophy and schools, children and dynamite, elephants and postage stamps: each has a place, but not necessarily in any natural combination with the other. Whether schools and philosophy belong together depends largely on what we mean by both. To the extent that schools are instruments of government regulation and a mechanism for production of economic subjectivity, philosophy might be welcome as an ancillary technique for enhancing problem-solving skills or helping students to think more logically. If, on the other hand, teachers (...) are concerned to promote education as the development of independent thought beyond the realm of instrumental utility, then philosophy is a vital, and potentially critical, engagement with power, with the way schools function, and more generally with society and its government. With reference to some recent policy moves in education, this article argues that the focus on the economic productivity of education is intensifying, and that as educational institutions become more heavily regulated and monitored, there is little provision for, or toleration of, any form of structural criticism, philosophical or otherwise. The conclusion is that philosophy may have an explicit place within the existing school programmes, but that any philosophy which provides a basis for fundamental change in our patterns and expectations of schooling is likely to be undermined. Commitment to critical philosophy becomes, then, a surreptitious activity on the part of individual teachers, operating outside the official curriculum and frustrated by increasing surveillance and demands for accountability. (shrink)

This article deploys sadomasochism as a framework for understanding medical practice on an institutional level. By examining the case of the factitious illness Munchausen syndrome, this article analyzes the operations of power in the doctor-patient relationship through the trope of role-playing. Because Munchausen syndrome causes a disruption to the dyadic relationship between physicians and patients, a lens of sadomasochism highlights dynamics of power in medical practice that are often obscured in everyday practice. Specifically, this article illustrates how classification and diagnosis (...) are concrete manifestations of the mobilization of medical power. (shrink)

This research considers the myths of empowerment through interactivity and the use of online communication technologies to serve commercial ends as opposed to communicative needs. It explores, through discourse analysis, ‘community’ sections on retail-oriented websites as a manifestation of the notion that interactivity can encourage communal interaction among consumers and promulgate goodwill for the retailer. Building on Habermas's theories on the commodification of fundamental social institutions, this work posits that these websites use the rhetoric of community to entice new consumers (...) and fulfill business goals. This work also uses Foucault's theories on technology as means of social control to examine the possibility that these communities are used as surveillance mechanisms for the purposes of data mining. (shrink)

Shrinking resources and the increasing complexity of clinical decisions are stimulating research in knowledge-intensive computer applications for the delivery of social services. The expected benefits of knowledge-intensive applications such as expert systems include improvement in both the quality and the consistency of service delivery, augmentation of institutional memory, and reduced labour costs through greater reliance on paraprofessionals. This paper analyses the likely impacts of knowledge-intensive systems on social service organisations, drawing on trends in related service-delivery fields, and on known impacts (...) of computer applications in organisations. A structural change may be anticipated: decision making and planning functions will shift increasingly from social service professionals to administrators. (shrink)

This paper argues, against technological and economic determinism, that the dominant model of industrial society is politically contingent. The idea that technical decisions are significantly constrained by ?rationality? ? either technical or economic ? is shown to be groundless. Constructivist and hermeneutic approaches to technology show that modern societies are inherently available for a different type of development in a different cultural framework. It is possible that, in the future, those who today are subordinated to technology's rhythms and demands will (...) be able to control it and to determine its evolution. I call the process of creating such a society ?subversive rationalization? because it requires technological advances that can only be made in opposition to the dominant hegemony. (shrink)

The debate between Marcuse and Habermas over technology marked a significant turning point in the history of the Frankfurt School. After the 1960s Habermas's influence grew as Marcuse's declined and Critical Theory adopted a far less Utopian stance. Recently there has been a revival of quite radical technology criticism in the environmental movement and under the influence of Foucault and constructivism. This article takes a new look at the earlier debate from the standpoint of these recent developments. While much of (...) Habermas's argument remains persuasive, his defense of modernity now seems to concede far too much to the claims of autonomous technology. His essentialist picture of technology as an application of a purely instrumental form of nonsocial rationality is less plausible after a decade of historicizing research in technology studies. The article argues that Marcuse was right after all to claim that technology is socially determined even if he was unable to develop his insight fruitfully. The article derives a new approach to technology criticism from both constructivism and Habermas's communication theory. The essence of technology is shown to be historical and reflexive, like the essence of other social institutions. As such an institution, its rationality is always implemented in value?biased forms subject to political critique. (shrink)

This paper explores the sense in which modern societies can be said to be rational. Social rationality cannot be understood on the model of an idealized image of scientific method. Neither science nor society conforms to this image. Nevertheless, critique is routinely silenced by neo-liberal and technocratic arguments that appeal to social simulacra of science. This paper develops a critical strategy for addressing the resistance of rationality to rational critique. Romantic rejection of reason has proven less effective than strategies that (...) conceptualize modern artefacts, systems, and organizations as rationally underdetermined. This approach first appears in Marx's analysis of capitalist economics. Although he lacks the concept of underdetermination, Marx gets around the silencing effect of social rationality with something very much like it in his discussion of the length of the working day. Frankfurt School Critical Theory later blended romantic elements with Marxian ones in a suggestive but ambiguous mixture. The concept of underdetermination reappears in contemporary science and technology studies, now clearly articulated and philosophically and sociologically elaborated. But somewhere along the way the critical thrust was diluted. Critical theory of technology attempts to recover that thrust. Here its approach is generalized to cover the three main forms of social rationality. (shrink)

: Even as feminist analyses have contributed in important ways to discussions of how gender is raced and race is gendered, there has been little in the way of comparative analysis of the specific mechanisms that are at work in the production of each. Feder argues that in Michel Foucault's analytics of power we find tools to understand the reproduction of whiteness as a complex interaction of distinctive expressions of power associated with these categories of difference.

The article presents the results of an analysis of the academic dispute about the scholarly ethos, conducted at the time of intense higher education reforms in Poland. Previous analyses of the academic debate on the change of the traditional university towards its entrepreneurial organization emphasize the polarization, that is, the criticism or affirmation of neoliberal reforms. The presented research proves that this discourse loses its dichotomous power when it focuses on ethical issues. The analysis shows the ‘polyvalence’ and ‘strategic integration’ (...) of discourse in the Foucauldian sense of the terms. Firstly, the issue of the traditional scholarly ethos is clearly present both among the opponents and supporters of the current changes in higher education. Secondly, both critical and affirmative discourses refer to the traditional ethos, i.e. they do not attempt to develop any new ethopoiesis, which may be surprising especially in the case of the latter. Instead, they use a ‘peculiar reversal’, pointing to factors located outside the university and yet affecting academic standards. Thirdly, individual attributes of the traditional ethos are taken over by neoliberal discourse, which modifies them and adjusts them to its own purposes. The term ‘ethicalization’ of higher education reform describes ethical problematizations of the contemporary university transformation. (shrink)

E-patients are increasingly using the Internet to gain knowledge about medical conditions, thereby problematizing the biomedical assumption that patients are ‘lay’. The present paper addresses this development by investigating the epistemic identities of patients participating on an online health forum. Using poststructuralist discourse analysis to analyze a corpus of cardiology-related threads on an ‘Ask a Doctor’ forum, we compare how patients are discursively constructed by online professionals as ‘knowing’ or ‘not knowing’ with the online knowledge identities patients choose for themselves. (...) Analysis reveals a complex picture, with patients positioning themselves and being constructed as biomedical novices, as well as claiming the subject positions of experts challenging medical expertise. This paper provides a snapshot of an important social identity in transition, illustrates a procedure for comparing language use around imposed and self-appropriated identities, and considers discursive choice in relation to the metapragmatic matter of “sayability”. (shrink)

FADYL JK and NICHOLLS DA. Nursing Inquiry 2013; 20: 23–29 Foucault, the subject and the research interview: a critique of methodsResearch interviews are a widely used method in qualitative health research and have been adapted to suit a range of methodologies. Just as it is valuable that new approaches are explored, it is also important to continue to examine their appropriate use. In this article, we question the suitability of research interviews for ‘history of the present’ studies informed by the (...) work of Michel Foucault – a form of qualitative research that is being increasingly employed in the analysis of healthcare systems and processes. We argue that several aspects of research interviewing produce philosophical and methodological complications that can interfere with achieving the aims of the analysis in this type of study. The article comprises an introduction to these tensions and examination of them in relation to key aspects of a Foucauldian philosophical position, and discussion of where this might position researchers when it comes to designing a study. (shrink)

In analogy with Rousseau's concept of ?civil religion? as a system of ?positive dogmas?, ?without which?, as he observed, ?a man cannot be a good citizen?, this paper advances the concept of ?civil epistemology? as the positive dogmas without which the agents of government actions cannot be held accountable by democratic citizens. The civil epistemology of democracy shapes the citizen's views on the nature of political reality, on how the facts of political reality can be known and by whom. Modern (...) liberal democratic politics assumes that the exercise of political power can be manifest in a visible domain of publicly accessible facts. It rests on the Enlightenment faith in the powers of light and visibility to demystify political power, render political actors more exposed and therefore more honestly accountable and enlist the sense of sight as a vehicle of universal political participation. It is, in this context, that technology has come to play such an important symbolic role in the construction of the particular democratic genre of public action as a political spectacle. Democratic civil epistemology, and technology ? in the widest sense of the word ? as the prototype of action which can be observed in the field of visual perception, uphold the democratic conception of politics as a view. Together they define political actors as visible performers, journalists as observers (who translate actual seeing into virtual seeing) and the citizens as witnesses. (shrink)

One of the puzzles of the current era is the divide between optimists and pessimists on the question of human rights. The prominence of human rights on the international political agenda sustains the optimist’s hopes for the future, while pessimists point to continued and widespread reports of civil, political, economic, social and cultural violations. This article looks at the tensions and apparent contradictions between these two approaches. Following a discussion on the construction of global human rights discourse(s), the article concludes (...) that the pretensions of law act to mask the socioeconomic normative framework that acts to discipline global society. (shrink)