Foucault News

Dhona, H. R. (2024). Islamic communication as an invention of modern-western knowledge: critical analysis toward Islamic communication in Indonesia. Asian Journal of Communication, 34(3), 381–398.

https://doi.org/10.1080/01292986.2024.2320902

ABSTRACT
This article questions the idea that Islamic communication is rooted purely in the religion itself. By studying the field of Islamic communication studies in Indonesia, it analyzes discourses which produce knowledge of Islamic communication. Foucauldian archaeological method is employed to examine literatures, textbooks, and other sources which form regulated statements about Islamic communication tradition in Indonesia, developed by both public university scholars and Islamic scholars in the nation. The author argues that Islamic communication traditions in Indonesia are the product of modern developmentalism discourse which dominated in the New Order era (1966–1998). As a consequence, Islamic communication tradition in Indonesia is currently unable to provide an alternative perspective in much broader communication studies. This article proposes revisiting the history of Islamic communication within certain local contexts and use of the Islamic discourse as a criticism toward every kind of domination, including the domination of knowledge termed Islamic.

KEYWORDS:
Archaeology, communication history, dawah, developmentalism, Islamic communication, Indonesia, prophetic communication

Reddy Naveen K. Redefining disease in the age of blood-based biomarkers, Frontiers in Sociology, vol 10 2025

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sociology/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2025.1533429

Abstract
This article explores the sociological and ethical implications of redefining disease in the era of advanced diagnostic technologies, with a focus on blood-based biomarkers. Drawing from Foucault’s concept of medicalization and Illich’s critique of disease mongering, it highlights how diagnostic expansions, driven by corporate and institutional influences, are reshaping the boundaries of health and disease. Advances such as blood assays for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, liquid biopsies in oncology, and biomarkers for depression and diabetes, while promising, raise concerns about premature diagnoses and overtreatment. The influence of pharmaceutical and insurance industries on diagnostic criteria, as seen in the ICD updates, underscores the need to address conflicts of interest and regulatory gaps. Case studies on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s reveal how these changes could benefit stakeholders at the expense of patient welfare. The article calls for ethical oversight, stricter regulation, and research into the population-level efficacy of diagnostic and treatment protocols.

Ridgway, V. (2025). Conspiracy theories and Geography: Who gets to say where is power? Dialogues in Human Geography

https://doi.org/10.1177/20438206251316008

Abstract
Conspiracism has become a powerful explanatory category for major political events (Brexit vote, January 6th Capitol attack) and the subject of a diverse body of research. Yet geography has largely ignored such debates and has, on some occasions, adopted this term with little critical examination. I call on geographers to think through the implications of this silence. I especially highlight how conspiracism presents an opportunity to think through the questions of epistemic authority, the hegemonic control of knowledge production, and the limits of the regulation of dissent. I argue that further work is needed to understand the historical and spatial conditions that make it possible for practices, attitudes, and speeches to become available to be invested and discerned as a distinctive mode of thought called ‘conspiracy theories’. To that end, and drawing on Foucault’s method of problematisation, I make two propositions. First, conspiracism is the performance of a critical attitude that is activated in a field conditioned by the felt pressures and limits of a collective commitment to the liberatory promise of critique. Second, conspiracism, as a collective geo-historical experience, is born from the pressures of knowing, locating, and naming power. These propositions seek to destabilise the certainties that allow conspiracism to function as a category of individualised ‘bad thinking’ by inscribing it as a collective experience held together by an ensemble of affective conditions. Having established conspiracism within this affective field, I provoke geography to think through its position, as an institutional science within this field.