Foucault News

Language teacher agency, emotion labor and emotional rewards in tertiary-level English language programs (2018)

Clare O'Farrell

15 April 2019

Miller, E.R., Gkonou, C. Language teacher agency, emotion labor and emotional rewards in tertiary-level English language programs (2018) System, 79, pp. 49-59.

DOI: 10.1016/j.system.2018.03.002

Abstract
Research on language teacher agency and language teacher emotions has demonstrated that both are central components of teacher identity and practice. However, few researchers have explored the co-constitutive effects of agency and emotion for language teachers or the role of emotion labor in producing emotional rewards. This article addresses these underexplored components of language teaching through reporting on the findings of a qualitative study with language teachers in tertiary settings in the U.K. and the U.S. The study drew on language teachers’ questionnaire (n = 30) and semi-structured interview (n = 25) responses in identifying the most common emotions experienced by these teachers and how their relationships with students engendered emotion labor as well as emotional rewards. We consider these aspects of teacher experience in terms of discourses of teaching-as-caring and Foucault’s (1983) concept of ethical self-formation. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd

Author Keywords
Emotion labor; Ethical self-formation; Teacher agency; Teaching-as-caring

Danielle Ringer, Courtney Carothers, Rachel Donkersloot, Jesse Coleman, Paula Cullenberg, For generations to come? The privatization paradigm and shifting social baselines in Kodiak, Alaska’s commercial fisheries (2018)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

14 April 2019

Danielle Ringer, Courtney Carothers, Rachel Donkersloot, Jesse Coleman, Paula Cullenberg,For generations to come? The privatization paradigm and shifting social baselines in Kodiak, Alaska’s commercial fisheries (2018) Marine Policy, 98, pp. 97-103.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2018.09.009

Abstract
This paper presents results from a study that explored a key threat to fisheries sustainability in Alaska – the graying of the commercial fishing fleet. In the Kodiak Archipelago region this research utilized a political ecology framework and mixed methods ethnography, including 70 semi-structured interviews and participant observation, to further understand this problem. Study results suggest that opportunities for young rural fishermen are increasingly constrained by interrelated socioeconomic and cultural barriers, which have created systemic equity and sustainability concerns. Furthermore, research indicates that the privatization paradigm of fisheries access is a major catalyst of change that has created and amplified barriers, transformed opportunity, and generated lasting inequities and social conflict. Foucault’s concept of governmentality is used to describe how some fishermen are internalizing and normalizing privatization discourses to advance further regulatory change. Pauly’s concept of shifting baseline syndrome is evoked to argue that current structures of degraded access and equity in the human fishery system are mistakenly assumed to be a natural state, rather than a result of a specific history of public policy choices. Due to the suite of challenges facing fishing people and communities, it is increasingly important to acknowledge the privatization of access as a key threat to sustainable coastal fishing futures. © 2018 The Authors

Author Keywords
Alaska; Fisheries privatization; Governmentality; Individual transferable quotas (ITQs); Kodiak; Shifting baseline syndrome

Index Keywords
baseline conditions, commercial activity, fishery economics, fishery management, future prospect, governance approach, privatization, quota system, sustainability; Alaska, Kodiak Island, United States

Theoretical puppets: P is for Power. Foucault (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

12 April 2019

P is for Power (Michel Foucault) Theoretical puppets
Michel Foucault from A to Z. Foucault is working on his biceps. Watch the video to find out if this has something to do with his concept of power!

Critical Work. Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought (CCCCT) (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

11 April 2019

Critical Work

Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought (CCCCT)
Friday, April 19 12:15-2:15 pm

Join the CCCCT and affiliated scholars on April 19th from 12:15-2:15 to hear about recent and on-going work in the field of critical theory. Scholars at the forefront of such research will present their current projects and discuss with other participants.

RSVP here

This event will include presentations from:
Clécio Lemos, Ph.D. of Law, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio)
“The Third Foucault and His Possible Impacts on Criminology”

Daniele Lorenzini, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Warwick & Fellow of the CCCCT,
“On Possibilizing Genealogy”

Dr Jacopo Martire, Senior Lecturer in Legal Theory, University of Bristol School of Law
“A Foucauldian Interpretation of Modern Law”

Michaela Soyer, CUNY Hunter College
“Lost Childhoods: Poverty, Trauma, and Violent Crime in the Post-Welfare Era”

Dynamic elements in regional development: an explorative genealogical analysis of the region of Southwest Finland (2018)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

10 April 2019

Ahlqvist, T. Dynamic elements in regional development: an explorative genealogical analysis of the region of Southwest Finland
(2018) European Planning Studies, 26 (12), pp. 2427-2447.

DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2018.1530198

Abstract
The paper suggests an explorative interpretative approach for conceptualizing regional change based on Foucault’s theory of genealogy. The theoretical outline is built on two key concepts of Foucault’s genealogy, (descent) and (emergence). The paper conceptualizes the heuristic notion of ‘adaptive element’ on the basis of descent, and the notion of ‘disruptive element’ on the basis of emergence. The paper demonstrates the use of these concepts in a brief case study of Southwest Finland from 1985 to 2001. © 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Author Keywords
descent; emergence; Foucault; Genealogy; regional change; regional development

Index Keywords
conceptual framework, genealogy, regional development, theoretical study, twentieth century; Finland

Foucault quote: Critique and judgement

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

9 April 2019

Delacampagne But don’t the public expect the critic to provide them with precise assessments as to the value of a work?
Foucault I don’t know whether the public do or do not expect the critic to judge works or authors. Judges were there, I think, before they were able to say what they wanted. It seems that Courbet had a friend who used to wake up in the night yelling: “I want to judge, I want to judge.” It’s amazing how people like judging. Judgment is being passed everywhere, all the time. Perhaps it’s one of the simplest things mankind has been given to do. And you know very well that the last man, when radiation has finally reduced his last enemy to ashes, will sit down behind some rickety table and begin the trial of the individual responsible.

I can’t help but dream about a kind of criticism that would not try to judge, but bring an oeuvre, a book, a sentence, an idea to life; it would light fires, watch the grass grow, listen to the wind, and catch the sea-foam in the breeze and scatter it. It would multiply, not judgments, but signs of existence; it would summon them, drag them from their sleep. Perhaps it would invent them sometimes – all the better. All the better. Criticism that hands down sentences sends me to sleep; I’d like a criticism of scintillating leaps of the imagination. It would not be a sovereign or dressed in red. It would bear the lightning of possible storms.

Michel Foucault. (1997) [1980]. ‘The Masked Philosopher’. In J. Faubion (ed.). Tr. Robert Hurley and others. Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984. Volume One. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, Allen Lane, p. 323 . [trans. mod]

Short commentary on this passage on my personal writing blog

Farmland conversion to fight climate change? Resource hierarchies, discursive power and ulterior motives in land use politics (2018)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

8 April 2019

Vinge, H. Farmland conversion to fight climate change? Resource hierarchies, discursive power and ulterior motives in land use politics
(2018) Journal of Rural Studies, 64, pp. 20-27.

DOI: 10.1016/j.jrurstud.2018.10.002

Abstract
In December 2013, local politicians celebrated with a champagne toast as the municipality of Trondheim received permission from the Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation to develop 110 ha (272 acres) of high quality farmland for housing and business. The primary reason for this decision was the promotion of a more climate-friendly city. The land in question had been singled out as especially important for agriculture in previous planning processes. Based on documents, media texts and interviews, this article utilises situational analysis to scrutinise this puzzling political decision. It emphasises the importance of discourse in local decision making regarding scarce resources. Local interests and global issues are connected and made sense of in what Foucault (1972) called a “system of meaning”, which allows powerful economic interests and climate change mitigation measures to justify the permanent loss of farmland. As food production is invisible on the local political agenda, the re-implantation of multifunctional urban agriculture in the local food system could be a viable approach to slow further conversion of high quality farmland on the urban fringe. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd

Index Keywords
agricultural land, climate change, decision making, land use change, politics; Norway, Sor Trondelag, Trondheim

Centre Michel Foucault – nouveau site web (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

7 April 2019

Centre Michel Foucault

Présentation
Le Centre Michel Foucault est une association fondée le 31 mai 1986 à l’initiative de chercheurs internationaux qui ont accompagné le développement du travail et de la pensée de Michel Foucault.

Initialement créé pour rassembler documents, archives et travaux liés à l’œuvre de Foucault, pour faciliter et coordonner des recherches se rapportant à sa pensée ou s’inspirant de ses orientations et de ses méthodes, et pour développer les échanges internationaux autour de cette œuvre, le Centre Michel Foucault a également accompagné durant les trois dernières décennies la publication des Dits et écrits puis des cours au Collège de France, en lien avec des activités de recherche menées à partir des archives déposées à l’Institut Mémoires de l’édition contemporaine et, depuis 2013, à la Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Le Centre Michel Foucault continue à ce jour d’accompagner la publication de cours, conférences et matériaux inédits, notamment la série « Foucault inédit » chez Vrin et la série « Cours et travaux antérieurs au Collège de France » chez Seuil-Gallimard.

Activités
Le Centre Michel Foucault s’est fixé comme objectif, depuis sa création, de soutenir et de promouvoir les recherches en cours sur l’œuvre de Michel Foucault.

Cette mission principale comporte plusieurs volets :

Rencontres doctorales
Bourse de recherche
Financements ponctuels

Christian William Callaghan, Critical perspectives on international pharmaceutical innovation: Malthus, Foucault and resistance (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

6 April 2019

Christian William Callaghan, Critical perspectives on international pharmaceutical innovation: Malthus, Foucault and resistance (2019) Critical Perspectives on International Business, 15 (1), pp. 68-86.
https://doi.org/10.1108/cpoib-11-2017-0078

Abstract
Purpose: This paper aims to argue that certain insights offered by Kuhn and Foucault may be of use to those seeking to resist a global paradigm of inequality in access to the outcomes of pharmaceutical development. It is further argued that these relationships are not independent of certain power relationships. This critical review seeks to highlight certain of these power relationships, and to suggest how they might be better managed to ensure more equitable outcomes for those in society that are most vulnerable to innovation failure.

Design/methodology/approach: This research takes the form of a critical review paper, seeking to develop theory though a synthesis of literature. Findings: Unlike market incentives, it might be the research process itself that is most vulnerable to stakeholder resistance to slow and unequal delivery of life-saving pharmaceutical development. Given that a lack of responsiveness to societal needs can itself be considered unethical, Kuhnian theory predicting pharmaceutical innovation failure is related to what Foucault describes as a system of oppression, whereby power relationships disadvantage those most vulnerable and powerless. Research limitations/implications: Given the rise of movements like citizen science and participant-led research, as well as new ethical frameworks premised on increasing accountability in science, Foucault’s principles are considered to echo a general trend towards the democratisation of science, and towards increasing the responsiveness of pharmaceutical development to societal needs.

Originality/value: A novel synthesis of literature is undertaken, offering useful theoretical insights into how social actors might contribute to enabling a more responsive system of international healthcare business. © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Author Keywords
Citizen science; Foucault; Innovation failure; Pharmaceutical development; Research productivity; Resistance

Revisiting neoliberalism in the oceans: Governmentality and the biopolitics of ‘improvement’ in the Irish and European fisheries (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

5 April 2019

Bresnihan, P. Revisiting neoliberalism in the oceans: Governmentality and the biopolitics of ‘improvement’ in the Irish and European fisheries
(2019) Environment and Planning A, 51 (1), pp. 156-177.

DOI: 10.1177/0308518X18803110

Abstract
Foucault’s account of the emergence of biopolitics in the late 18th century helps frame the political economy of ‘improvements’ as an environmental project linked to the well-being of the population. Since the 1970s, biopolitical concerns have shifted towards non-human populations and the reproduction of natural resources and ecosystems. This has become evident in the European fisheries, where after decades of exploitation greatly intensified since the 1960s, the extractive demands of the fishing industry have caught up with the reproductive capacities of most commercially targeted fish stocks. This contradiction has given rise to a new political economy of ‘improvements’ that seeks to sustain the biological health of commercially targeted fish populations while maintaining an economically profitable fishing industry. Central to this transition is the active role that fishers are expected to play in sustainably managing the fish stocks they exploit while adapting to ‘green’ market opportunities. Tradeable quota systems, eco-accreditation schemes and community-based resource management have all emerged as managerial strategies for inciting the active participation of fishers in this ‘common’ project of sustainable development. Drawing on Foucault’s perspective of governmentality, this paper argues that these strategies represent distinct but overlapping apparatuses of neoliberal governmentality that are representative of broader tendencies within environmental governance today. © The Author(s) 2018.

Author Keywords
Biopolitics; environmental governance; fisheries; governmentality; neoliberalism