Foucault News

Capocchi, A., Orlandini, P., Pierotti, M., Amelio, S.
The nature, roles, uses, and impacts of accounting systems in the Real Liceo of Lucca in the nineteenth century
(2022) Accounting History Review

DOI: 10.1080/21552851.2021.2025113

Abstract
This study aims to advance the literature by examining how accounting systems were used in the management of the Real Liceo in Lucca during the nineteenth century. It considers rare documents, statutes, and accounting books concerning the administration of the Real Liceo from 1819 to 1848. Focused on the importance of academic and educational organisation at the individual and societal levels, in line with Foucault’s works and theories, this research critically analyses the social and technical practice of accounting within the context of the Real Liceo, especially the nature, roles, uses, and impacts of accounting information in allocating resources and evaluating accountability. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Author Keywords
accountability; accounting; control; Education; governance; Tuscany

Dombrowsky, T.
Independent Thinking in Nursing: An Archaeology of Knowledge Perspective
(2022) The Journal of nursing education, 61 (1), pp. 12-18.

DOI: 10.3928/01484834-20211201-01

Abstract
BACKGROUND: The topic of thinking was not widely discussed in nursing literature until the 1960s. At that time, the nursing process entered nursing literature, and later, in the 1980s, critical thinking began to be examined. Critical thinking had been talked about in fields other than nursing since at least the time of educational philosopher John Dewey.
METHOD: Using Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge as a model, this article explores how and why thinking became an object of nursing discourse.
RESULTS: Modern nursing discourse emphasizes independent thinking in contrast to the discussion of comportment, attitudes, and observation found in the early nursing literature.
CONCLUSION: The emergence of thinking discourse in nursing was a response to changes in health care that began in the period after World War II and although this discourse ostensibly serves to liberate nurses’ thinking, it can actually serve to regulate the thinking of students and nurses. [J Nurs Educ. 2022;61(1):12-18.].

Index Keywords
archeology, human, nursing student, thinking; Archaeology, Humans, Students, Nursing, Thinking

McCormick, W.
Polarities of the Human and Divine: Aquinas and Schmitt on Political Theology
(2022) American Journal of Political Science, 66 (1), pp. 93-105.

DOI: 10.1111/ajps.12608

Abstract
The investigations of Carl Schmitt yielded an influential but partial recovery of the term “political theology.” In this article, I consider Schmitt’s tendentious reduction of political theology to a justifying or legitimizing function. I then turn to Aquinas to demonstrate that Christian political theology also offers robust criticism of political life. After laying out three such standards for criticism, I account for why Christian political theology exhibits this deep ambivalence toward political life. The traditions of political theology, I argue, can be understood as attempts to harmonize polar tensions with those traditions. Whereas thinkers like Schmitt and Foucault emphasize one set of polarities against another, Aquinas effects a genuine synthesis. This synthesis should be the task of political theology. I close with notes toward the renewal of political theology. © 2021, Midwest Political Science Association

Chipango, E.F.
Political ecologies of energy poverty in Zimbabwe
(2022) GeoJournal

DOI: 10.1007/s10708-021-10566-4

Abstract
Studies that attribute energy poverty to a lack of technical resources abound in Zimbabwe. However, such line of reasoning falls short of giving a rigorous analysis of the existing political-economic factors and scalar politics. These include power dynamics, gender relations, class, historic patterns of dominance and marginalisation at different geographical scales and the discourse on energy poverty. Accordingly, a political ecology framework can address these theoretical gaps given its expansive scope. Using a qualitative approach, a political ecology analysis of the Zingondi Resettlement Area in Zimbabwe illuminates the interaction between these factors. Furthermore, it extends the argument through a Foucauldian view on apparatus of security in order to understand how the state uses its calculated power to address energy poverty. It concludes that energy poverty is a processual outcome, which is socially constructed. Therefore, there is need to pay attention to the complex and diverse nature of rural development. This includes embracing a development with and for the people approach, which takes into account pertinent aspects of the intended beneficiaries’ contexts. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.

Author Keywords
Foucault; Political ecology; Political economy; Power; Socially constructed

Index Keywords
Factor analysis, Regional planning; Economic factors, Energy poverties, Foucault, Political ecology, Political economy, Power, Rigorous analysis, Socially constructed, Technical resources, Zimbabwe; Ecology

Cos, J.C.C.G.
Space___Between: Remnants of a city as catalysts for change
(2021) Cidades, (43), pp. 22-33.

DOI: 10.15847/cct.24114

Abstract
It all starts with a question… Or perhaps too many. What can be done with the remnants of any given city? Can they be transformed to create a shared, cohesive, and productive urban environment? Understanding that the city is an unfinished, ever-productive, ever-dynamic and ever-changing project, it cannot be ignored that, while transforming specific zones in a city, other zones get abandoned in the developing process for an undefined period of time. These urban slivers are often seen as negative spaces rather than positive ones; I will focus on the important indeterminacy and uncertainty that they possess.

This research project will centre on these unoccupied, abandoned, or underutilized places within the city, analysing different dynamics of reintegration into the city’s fabric while incorporating Michael Foucault’s heterotopias, as well as some case studies in Gordon Matta-Clark’s œuvre to the discourse. Specifically, I argue that terrain vagues, a term first coined by Ignasi de Solà-Morales i Rubió, and related terms should be seen as site-specific tools for critique and creativity. In order to positively take over any urban void, I address the issue of property, social attachment, and identity to the place, intertwined with the dynamics of architecture and urbanism. I propose to incorporate the concepts of memory and time inherent to these dynamics in order to develop a profound reading of any given site; generate a reinterpretation that can trigger a longstanding change to attain the reinstatement of public property with creative and straightforward approaches; and, then, perform a temporal or permanent, architectonic or artistic intervention, aiming for a new sense of social meaning. In conclusion, this paper sheds new light on the necessity to embrace the opportunities provided by these urban voids. Art and architecture can act as key elements to link people and spaces within a sociocultural context and thus create catalysts for change endowed with meaning. 2021 (Cos, J.C.C.G.)

Author Keywords
Heterotopias as counterspaces; Remnants of a city; Terrain vague; Urban void appropriation