Foucault News

Knudsen, Sine Grønborg, and Peter Triantafillou. “Lifestylisation of the Social: The Government of Diabetes Care in Denmark.” Health, (January 2020). doi:10.1177/1363459319899454.

Abstract:
Since the 1970s, the public authorities of many OECD countries have emphasised the need for preventing lifestyle diseases and promoting the vigour of their populations. Based on the Foucauldian analytics of dispositive, we critically address some of the normative implications of the preventive interventions in the area of type 2 diabetes care. Through an analysis of public health documents from 1981 to 2016, it is shown that the government of lifestyle was extended and institutionalised by a reform of the Danish public sector in 2007. Following the reform, rationalities of public health policies sought to prevent unhealthy lifestyles not only through individual behaviour but also through the social surroundings of citizens. In contrast to the claim that we are seeing a retraction of state responsibility and interventions in the area of public health, it is suggested that we are witnessing an expansion in state ambitions expressed through a lifestyle dispositive. These ambitions are less about transferring the responsibility to the individual and more about governing and mobilising the social relations and environments of type 2 diabetes patients and citizens in general to make the everyday choice of a healthy lifestyle easier.

Isabella Krysa, Mariana Paludi, Albert J. Mills, The racialization of immigrants in Canada – a historical investigation how race still matters (2019) Journal of Management History, 25 (1), pp. 97-113.
https://doi.org/10.1108/JMH-09-2018-0048

Abstract
Purpose: This paper aims to investigate the discursive ways in which racialization affects the integration process of immigrants in present-day Canada. By drawing on a historical analysis, this paper shows how race continues to be impacted by colonial principles implemented throughout the colonization process and during the formation stages of Canada as a nation. This paper contributes to management and organizational studies by shedding light on the taken-for-granted nature of discursive practices in organizations through problematizing contemporary societal and political engagements with “race”. Design/methodology/approach: This paper draws on critical diversity studies as theoretical framework to problematize a one-dimensional approach to race and diversity. Further, it applies the Foucauldian historical method (Foucault, 1981) to trace the construction of “race” over time and to show its impact on present-day discursive practices. Findings: Through a discursive review of Canada’s past, this paper shows how seemingly non-discriminatory race-related concepts and policies such as “visible minority” contribute to the marginalization of non-white individuals, racializing them. Multiculturalism and neoliberal globalization are identified as further mechanisms in such a racialization process. Originality/value: This paper illustrates the importance of a historical contextualization to shed light on present workplace discrimination and challenges unproblematic approaches to workplace diversity. © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Author Keywords
Canada; Diversity management; Labour management; Management history; Organizational politics; Social norms

Weare, A.M., Walkner, T.J., Tully, M.
State of intervention: community stakeholder discourse on teen childbearing in Iowa
(2019) Critical Public Health, 29 (2), pp. 205-214.

DOI: 10.1080/09581596.2018.1440069

Abstract
The state of teen childbearing in Iowa (USA) is positioned by community leaders as a discursive battleground for intervention. In 2015 meetings with community stakeholders, participants framed ‘culture’ (which they defined as ethnicity and religion) as a barrier in decreasing the state’s teen pregnancy rate and increasing girls’ economic self-sufficiency. The childbearing teen body was, unsurprisingly, portrayed as a public health problem in need of organizational intervention. But how participants linked ‘culture’ to neoliberal ideals was surprising and specific. Utilizing McRobbie’s concept of the ‘real self’ and Foucault’s explication of governmentality, this study draws out the role of neoliberal self-sufficiency in grooming teens to perform adolescent femininity and self-govern. In doing so, it considers community stakeholders’ meaning-making processes. Findings show the interventionist discourse does more than attempt to prevent early pregnancy: it reinforces acceptable and unacceptable pregnant bodies and compels community leaders and practitioners to govern childbearing teen bodies in precise ways. © 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Author Keywords
community; culture; girls; real me; Teen pregnancy

Index Keywords
adolescent, adult, article, female, femininity, first trimester pregnancy, girl, grooming, human, human experiment, Iowa, leadership, physician

Hovey, C.
The moral aesthetics of compulsory ultrasound viewing and the theological future of abortion
(2019) Studies in Christian Ethics, 32 (1), pp. 78-87.

DOI: 10.1177/0953946818761245

Abstract
By law, women seeking abortions in some US states must undergo compulsory ultrasound viewing. This article examines the moral significance of this practice, especially as understood by pro-life religious groups, in light of Foucault’s recently published lectures on ‘The Will to Know’ and the place of the aesthetic. How does the larger abortion-debate strategy of ‘showing’ and ‘seeing’ images—whether of living or dead fetuses—work as an aesthetic form of argument that intends to evoke a moral response in the absence of reason-giving? The article draws on recent, parallel debates regarding disgust before concluding with a theological response to the priority of will over knowledge and vision over action as commentary on the future of abortion debate and law, especially in the United States. © The Author(s) 2018.

Author Keywords
Abortion; Disgust; Foucault; MacIntyre; Moral aesthetics; Visual bioethics