This book takes a close-up and critical look at both the elusive and blatant workings and consequences of power in a range of everyday sites in universities. Chapters focus on specific locations in which power shapes personal and institutional knowledge including student-supervisor relationships, research teams, networking, and literature reviews.
Feminist scholarship is sometimes dismissed as not quite ‘proper’ knowledge – it’s too political or subjective, many argue. But what are the boundaries of ‘proper’ knowledge? Who defines them, and how are they changing? How do feminists negotiate them? And how does this boundary-work affect women’s and gender studies, and its scholars’ and students’ lives? These are the questions tackled by this ground-breaking ethnography of academia inspired by feminist epistemology, Foucault, and science and technology studies. Drawing on data collected over a decade in Portugal and the UK, US and Scandinavia, this title explores different spaces of academic work and sociability, considering both official discourse and ‘corridor talk’. It links epistemic negotiations to the shifting political economy of academic labour, and situates the smallest (but fiercest) departmental negotiations within global relations of unequal academic exchange. Through these links, this timely volume also raises urgent questions about the current state and status of gender studies and the mood of contemporary academia. Indeed, its sobering, yet uplifting, discussion of that mood offers fresh insight into what it means to produce feminist work within neoliberal cultures of academic performativity, demanding increasing productivity. As the first book to analyse how academics talk (publicly or in off-the-record humour) about feminist scholarship, Power, Knowledge and Feminist Scholarship is essential reading for scholars and students in gender studies, LGBTQ studies, post-colonial studies, STS, sociology and education. Winner of the FWSA 2018 Book Prize competition The Open Access version of this book, available at https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315692623, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Michel Foucault has become famous for a series of books that have permanently altered our understanding of many institutions of Western society. He analyzed mental institutions in the remarkable Madness and Civilization; hospitals in The Birth of the Clinic; prisons in Discipline and Punish; and schools and families in The History of Sexuality. But the general reader as well as the specialist is apt to miss the consistent purposes that lay behind these difficult individual studies, thus losing sight of the broad social vision and political aims that unified them. Now, in this superb set of essays and interviews, Foucault has provided a much-needed guide to Foucault. These pieces, ranging over the entire spectrum of his concerns, enabled Foucault, in his most intimate and accessible voice, to interpret the conclusions of his research in each area and to demonstrate the contribution of each to the magnificent -- and terrifying -- portrait of society that he was patiently compiling. For, as Foucault shows, what he was always describing was the nature of power in society; not the conventional treatment of power that concentrates on powerful individuals and repressive institutions, but the much more pervasive and insidious mechanisms by which power "reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their discourses, learning processes and everyday lives" Foucault's investigations of prisons, schools, barracks, hospitals, factories, cities, lodgings, families, and other organized forms of social life are each a segment of one of the most astonishing intellectual enterprises of all time -- and, as this book proves, one which possesses profound implications for understanding the social control of our bodies and our minds.
The essays in this volume explore the educational implications of unsettling shifts in contemporary culture associated with postmodernism. These shifts include the fragmentation of established power blocs, the emergence of a politics of identity, growing inequalities between the haves and the have-nots in a new global economy, and the rise in influence of popular culture in defining who we are. In the academy, postmodernism has been associated with the emergence of new theoretical perspectives that are unsettling the way we think about education. These shifts, the authors suggest, are deeply contradictory and may lead in divergent political directions?some of them quite dangerous. Power/Knowledge/Pedagogy examines these issues with regard to four broad domains of educational inquiry: state educational policy and curriculum reform, student identity formation, the curriculum as a text, and critical pedagogy. The book contributes to the dialogue on the forging of a new commonsense discourse on democratic educational renewal, attuned to the changing times in which we live.
The ‘knowledge turn’ in curriculum studies has drawn attention to the central role that knowledge of the disciplines plays in education, and to the need for new thinking about how we understand knowledge and knowledge-building. Knowing History in Schools explores these issues in the context of teaching and learning history through a dialogue between the eminent sociologist of curriculum Michael Young, and leading figures in history education research and practice from a range of traditions and contexts. With a focus on Young’s ‘powerful knowledge’ theorisation of the curriculum, and on his more recent articulations of the ‘powers’ of knowledge, this dialogue explores the many complexities posed for history education by the challenge of building children’s historical knowledge and understanding. The book builds towards a clarification of how we can best conceptualise knowledge-building in history education. Crucially, it aims to help history education students, history teachers, teacher educators and history curriculum designers navigate the challenges that knowledge-building processes pose for learning history in schools.
How today's unjust global order is shaped by uncertain expert knowledge—and how to fix it A World of Struggle reveals the role of expert knowledge in our political and economic life. As politicians, citizens, and experts engage one another on a technocratic terrain of irresolvable argument and uncertain knowledge, a world of astonishing inequality and injustice is born. In this provocative book, David Kennedy draws on his experience working with international lawyers, human rights advocates, policy professionals, economic development specialists, military lawyers, and humanitarian strategists to provide a unique insider's perspective on the complexities of global governance. He describes the conflicts, unexamined assumptions, and assertions of power and entitlement that lie at the center of expert rule. Kennedy explores the history of intellectual innovation by which experts developed a sophisticated legal vocabulary for global management strangely detached from its distributive consequences. At the center of expert rule is struggle: myriad everyday disputes in which expertise drifts free of its moorings in analytic rigor and observable fact. He proposes tools to model and contest expert work and concludes with an in-depth examination of modern law in warfare as an example of sophisticated expertise in action. Charting a major new direction in global governance at a moment when the international order is ready for change, this critically important book explains how we can harness expert knowledge to remake an unjust world.
Michel Foucault’s work profoundly influences the way we think about society, in particular how we understand social power, the self, and the body. This book gives an innovative and entirely new analysis of is later works making it a one-stop guide for students, exploring how Foucauldian theory can inform our understanding of the body, domination, identity and freedom as experienced through sport and exercise. Divided into three themed parts, this book considers: Foucault’s ideas and key debates Foucault’s theories to explore power relations, the body, identity and the construction of social practices in sport and exercise how individuals make sense of the social forces surrounding them, considering physical activity, fitness and sport practices as expressions of freedom and sites for social change. Accessible and clear, including useful case studies helping to bring the theory to real-life, Foucault, Sport and Exercise considers cultures and experiences in sports, exercise and fitness, coaching and health promotion. In addition to presenting established Foucauldian perspectives and debates, this text also provides innovative discussion of how Foucault’s later work can inform the study and understanding of sport and the physically active body.
The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Discourse has received the 2004 Outstanding Book Award from the Organizational Communication Division of the National Communication Association `Organizational discourse is not a new topic but is one that has grown in significance and citations in recent years. Thanks to the new The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Discourse there is now a definitive set of up-to-the-minute resources available, by distinguished as well as emergent researchers. It should have a prominent place on all organization researchers bookshelves′ - Professor Stewart Clegg, University of Technology, Sydney `Organizational researchers interested in discursive philosophies, methods and practices will be grateful for the much-needed background and guidance this handbook provides′ - Mary Jo Hatch, Professor, McIntire School of Commerce, University of Virginia. Co-author The Three Faces of Leadership: Manager, Artist, Priest (Blackwell) `Discourse analysis has become increasingly popular in organizational studies over the past decade or two. The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Discourse will make it even more popular by helping scholars of organizations understand the range of domains, methodologies, perspectives and focal organizational phenomena available to them within this analytic approach. Beyond classifying and describing current literature in the various areas, the chapters in this important new handbook suggest new directions for research using discourse analysis, a valuable service that should help novice and experienced researchers alike′ - JoAnne Yates, Sloan School of Management An increasingly significant body of management literature is applying discursive forms of analysis to a range of organizational issues. This emerging arena of research is not only important in providing new insights into processes of organizing, it has also informed and influenced the broader fields of organizational and management studies. The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Discourse is the definitive text for those with research and teaching interests in the field of organizational discourse. It provides an important overview of the domains of study, methodologies and perspectives used in research on organizational discourse. It shows how discourse analysis has moved beyond its roots in literary theory to become an important approach in the study of organizations. The editors of the Handbook, all renowned authors and experts in this field, have provided an invaluable resource on the application, importance and relevance of discourse to organizational issues for use by tutors and researchers working in the field, as well as providing important reference material for newcomers to this area. Each chapter, written by a leading author on their subject, covers an overview of the existing literature and also frames the future of the field in ways which challenge existing preconceptions. The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Discourse is indispensable to the teaching, study and research of organizational discourse and will enable readers to develop a level of understanding of organizations commensurate with the most recent, state of the art, theoretical developments in the broader field of organization studies.
This book covers the topics Foucault helped make the core agenda of Western political culture - medicine, prisons, psychiatry, government and sexuality - emphasising Foucault's practical concern with discrimination, coercion and exclusion in human society.
Academic freedom rests on a shared belief that the production of knowledge advances the common good. In an era of education budget cuts, wealthy donors intervening in university decisions, and right-wing groups threatening dissenters, scholars cannot expect that those in power will value their work. Can academic freedom survive in this environment—and must we rearticulate what academic freedom is in order to defend it? This book presents a series of essays by the renowned historian Joan Wallach Scott that explore the history and theory of free inquiry and its value today. Scott considers the contradictions in the concept of academic freedom. She examines the relationship between state power and higher education; the differences between the First Amendment right of free speech and the guarantee of academic freedom; and, in response to recent campus controversies, the politics of civility. The book concludes with an interview conducted by Bill Moyers in which Scott discusses the personal experiences that have informed her views. Academic freedom is an aspiration, Scott holds: its implementation always falls short of its promise, but it is essential as an ideal of ethical practice. Knowledge, Power, and Academic Freedom is both a nuanced reflection on the tensions within a cherished concept and a strong defense of the importance of critical scholarship to safeguard democracy against the anti-intellectualism of figures from Joseph McCarthy to Donald Trump.