Foucault News

Sánchez-Pinilla, M.D., González, D.J.D.
Punitive rationalities. An epistemology for the objectification and historicity of punishment policies [Racionalidades punitivas. Una epistemología para la objetivación y la historicidad de las políticas del castigo]
(2021) Enrahonar, 67, pp. 131-157.

DOI: 10.5565/rev/enrahonar.1358
Open access

Abstract
Michel Foucault’s idea of rationality does not refer to a universal criterion of reason as pure and neutral knowledge, but rather is understood in the plural, as «rationalities». His perspective functions as a regime of truth that not only produces new concepts and a historical organisation of observation, but also areas of regulation and political and technical intervention. Applied to the punitive economy, and by extension to the economy of power, punitive rationalities have enabled an unusual critical analysis of punishment systems to flourish. This analysis is produced through different concepts, apparently usual, that reach an unusual radicality in the objectification of the networks of power/knowledge that spread beyond both the field of penal policy and that of rigid materialist explanations. And ultimately it has allowed a macro-social punitive order and macro-forms of domination to be constructed out of the diversity of micropower. © 2021 Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and Universitat de Girona. All rights reserved.

Author Keywords
Foucault; Norm and law; Objects of knowledge; Punishment of the body; Punitive rationality; Strategy

Vallentin, S., Murillo, D.
Ideologies of Corporate Responsibility: From Neoliberalism to “varieties of Liberalism”
(2021) Business Ethics Quarterly

DOI: 10.1017/beq.2021.43

Abstract
Critical scholarship often presents corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a reflection or embodiment of neoliberalism. Against this sort of sweeping political characterization we argue that CSR can indeed be considered a liberal concept but that it embodies a “varieties of liberalism.”Building theoretically on the work of Michael Freeden on liberal languages, John Ruggie and Karl Polanyi on embedded forms of liberalism, and Michel Foucault on the distinction between classical liberalism and neoliberalism, we provide a conceptual treatment and mapping of the ideological positions that constitute the bulk of modern scholarly CSR debate. Thus, we distinguish between embedded liberalism, classical liberalism, neoliberalism, and re-embedded liberalism. We develop these four orientations in turn and show how they are engaged in “battles of ideas”over the meaning and scope of corporate responsibilities – and how they all remain relevant for an understanding of contemporary debates and developments in the field of CSR and corporate sustainability. © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for Business Ethics.

Author Keywords
classical liberalism; CSR; embedded liberalism; ideology; neoliberalism

Nørup, I., Jacobsen, B.
Not seeing the elephant in the room: How policy discourses shape frontline work with child poverty
(2021) Social Policy and Administration

DOI: 10.1111/spol.12784

Abstract
Based on strong discourses of individualization, active welfare reforms in Denmark have changed the financial security of vulnerable families and increased numbers of children are growing up in poverty. This study investigates how poverty is reflected in frontline workers’ categorizations of children considered vulnerable. Empirically, the study draws on qualitative group interviews with 56 informants and descriptive results from two surveys with almost 2000 respondents each. Findings are analysed using Foucault’s theory of disciplinary power. The findings give an important insight as to how policy discourse influences and steers the moral and professional judgement in the frontline and why social work with vulnerable clients takes on particular forms. The results show that frontline workers implement and reproduce an individualised discourse found in recent social policy reforms while overlooking societal structures defining the individual’s possibilities. In particular, poverty is left unrecognised, as categorizations of ‘normal’ versus ‘vulnerable’ revolve around family relations and perception of personal shortcomings of the parents. © 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Author Keywords
children’s services; implementation; public policy making; regulation and accountability; social work and workers