Abstract
This chapter offers an analytic strategy, or “tool”, called “What’s the Problem Represented to be?” (the WPR approach), to facilitate poststructural policy analysis. It elaborates a poststructural understanding of politics as strategic relations and practices, and of theorizing as political practice. The WPR approach is introduced as a means to engage in such theorizing and to assist in the analytic task of making politics visible. To this end it offers seven interrelated forms of questioning and analysis to critically scrutinize problematizations (the ways in which “problems” are produced and represented) in governmental policies and practices, understood in broad terms. Policy workers and other analysts are enjoined to deploy WPR in practices of interrogating problematizations, reproblematization, and self-problematization.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge, and the discourse on language (trans: Sheridan Smith, A.M.). New York: Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M. (1978). 1 May 1978. In G. Burchell (Trans.), Michel Foucault: Security, territory, population, Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–78. South Yarra: Palgrave Macmillan.
Foucault, M. (1980). Two lectures. In C. Gordon (Ed.), Michel Foucault power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972–1977 by Michel Foucault. Gordon, C., Marshall, L., Mepham, J. and Soper, K. (trans.). New York: Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power. In H. Dreyfus, & P. Rabinow (Eds.), Michel Foucault: Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Foucault, M. (1986) [1984], The use of pleasure. The history of sexuality, Volume 2, (trans: Hurley, R.). London: Viking Press.
Foucault, M. (1987). The ethic of care for the self as a practice of freedom: An interview with Michel Foucault on January 20, 1984, with R. Fornet-Betancourt, H. Becker, A. Gomez-Müller, J.C. Gauthier, Philosophy & Social Criticism, 12, 112–131.
Foucault, M. (1991a) [1978]. Politics and the study of discourse. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon, P. Miller (Eds.), The Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Foucault, M. (1994a) [1981]. So is it important to think? In J.D. Faubion, (Ed.), Power: Essential works of Foucault 1954–1984, vol. 3, Hurley, R. and others (trans.). London: Penguin.
Foucault, M. (2001) [1984]. À propos de la généalogie de l’éthique: Un aperçu du travail en cours (rewritten version). In D. Defert, & F. Ewald (Eds.), Michel Foucault: Dits et Écrits, tome II. Paris: Gallimard.
Foucault, M. (2008). The birth of biopolitics. In M. Senellart (Ed.), Lectures at the Collège de France 1978–1979, G. Burchell (trans.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Goodwin, S. (2011). Analysing policy as discourse: Methodological advances in policy analysis. In L. Markauskaite, P. Freebody, J. Irwin (Eds.), Methodological choice and design: Scholarship, policy and practice in social and educational research. London, New York: Springer, Dordrecht, Heidelberg.
Gordon, C. (1991). Governmental rationality: An introduction. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon, P. Miller (Eds.), The Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Johnson, B. (1981). Translator’s introduction. In J. Derrida, Dissemination, B. Johnson (trans.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bacchi, C. (2009). Analysing policy: What’s the problem represented to be? Frenchs Forest: Pearson Education.
Bacchi, C. (2011). Gender mainstreaming and reflexivity: Asking some hard questions, Keynote address, Advancing Gender + Training in Theory and Practice, Conference at Complutense University, Madrid, 3 February 2011.
Bacchi, C. (2015a). The turn to problematization: Political implications of contrasting interpretive and poststructural adaptations. Open Journal of Political Science, 5, 1–12.
Marshall, N. (2012b). Digging deeper: The challenge of problematising “inclusive development” and “disability mainstreaming”. In A. Bletsas, & C. Beasley (Eds.), Engaging with Carol Bacchi: Strategic interventions and exchanges. Adelaide: University of Adelaide Press.
Bacchi, C. (2015b). Problematizations in alcohol policy: WHO’s “alcohol problems”. Contemporary Drug Problems, 42 (2), 130–147.
Mol, A. (2002). The body multiple: Ontology in medical practice. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Osborne, T. (1997). Of health and statecraft. In A. Petersen, & R. Bunton (Eds.), Foucault: Health and medicine. London: Routledge.
Bacchi, C., & Bonham, J. (2014). Reclaiming discursive practices as an analytic focus: Political implications. Foucault Studies, 17, 173–192.
Rose, N. (2000). Powers of freedom: Reframing political thought, 1st edition 1999. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rose, N., & Miller, P. (1992). Political power beyond the state: Problematics of government. The British Journal of Sociology, 43 (2), 173–205.
Rowse, T. (2009). The ontological politics of “closing the gaps”. Journal of Cultural Economy, 2 (1&2), 33–48.
Sawicki, J. (1991). Disciplining Foucault: Feminism, power, and the body. New York and London: Routledge.
Tanesini, A. (1994). Whose language? In K. Lennon, & M. Whitford (Eds.), Knowing the difference: Feminist perspectives in epistemology. New York: Routledge.
Veyne, P. (1997). Foucault revolutionizes history. In A.I. Davidson (Ed.), Foucault and his Interlocutors, Porter, C. (trans.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Chia, R. (1996). The problem of reflexivity in organizational research: Towards a postmodern science of organization. Organization, 3 (1), 31–59.
Fairclough, N. (2013). Critical discourse analysis and critical policy studies. Critical Policy Studies, 7, 177–197.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bacchi, C., Goodwin, S. (2016). Making Politics Visible: The WPR Approach. In: Poststructural Policy Analysis. Palgrave Pivot, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52546-8_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52546-8_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-52544-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-52546-8
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)