Foucault News

Schweber, L.
Jack-in-the-black-box: Using Foucault to explore the embeddedness and reach of building level assessment method
(2017) Energy Research and Social Science, 34, pp. 294-304.

DOI: 10.1016/j.erss.2017.08.005

Abstract
Environmental policy in Western countries is marked by extensive reliance on voluntary self-regulation, designed to influence market behavior. In many instances, these policy tools fail to deliver on their promise, while nonetheless influencing professional and user behavior. This paper draws on Foucault’s theory of governmentality and the Sociology of Standards to explore the effect of voluntary policy tools. Whereas most research focuses on the effect of tools on either intended outcomes or formal policies, this paper considers their effect on the people who directly engage with them. The paper uses the case of the Building Research Establishments Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) to consider the embeddedness and reach of policy tools across communities of practice. The contribution of the paper lies in its focus on the way in which organizational features of BREEAM contribute to its effect on the definition of green building and peoples’ engagement with them. Theoretically, the focus on organizational aspects of governing techniques draws attention local variations in the power/knowledge effect of techniques, thereby contributing to a relatively neglected aspect of governmentality. The paper concludes with reflection on the relevance of this approach for research into other types of policy tools and technical standards. © 2017

Author Keywords
BREEAM; Building environmental assessment methods; Governmentality; Policy tools; Standards; Voluntary governance

Bouilloud, J.-P., Deslandes, G., Mercier, G.
The Leader as Chief Truth Officer: The Ethical Responsibility of “Managing the Truth” in Organizations
(2017) Journal of Business Ethics, pp. 1-13. Article in Press.

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-017-3678-0

Abstract
Our aim is to analyze the position of the leader in relation to the ethical dimension of truth-telling within the organization under his/her control. Based on Michel Foucault’s study of truth-telling, we demonstrate that the role of the leader toward the corporation and the imperative of organizational performance place the leader in an ambiguous position: he/she is obliged to take the lead in “telling the truth” internally and externally, but also to bear the consequences of this “truth-telling” for the organization and for himself/herself. In this process of construction and implementing the truth, the leader is organizer and figurehead of the corporation’s truth-telling practices: determining the frontiers between truth that can be said and that which should remain hidden, both inside and outside the corporation; establishing a dialogue based on truth (i.e., an authentic, sincere relationship with all partners); guaranteeing that the rules of truth-telling are respected; and offering a truth which is compatible with the firm’s economic and ethical interest. Invested with the authority—the office—of managing truth within the corporation, the leader can be considered to be the “Chief Truth Officer.” From this perspective, we demonstrate that this role requires specific skills, like courage and practical wisdom. © 2017 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

Author Keywords
Aletheia; Foucault; Parrhesia; Secrecy; Truth-telling; Truthfulness

Macneill, P.
Balancing bioethics by sensing the aesthetic
(2017) Bioethics, 31 (8), pp. 631-643.

DOI: 10.1111/bioe.12390

Abstract
This article is critical of “bioethics” as it is widely understood and taught, noting in particular an emphasis given to philosophical justification, reason and rationality. It is proposed that “balancing” bioethics be achieved by giving greater weight to practice and the aesthetic: Defined in terms of sensory perception, emotion and feeling. Each of those three elements is elaborated as a noncognitive capacity and, when taken together, comprise aesthetic sensitivity and responsiveness. This is to recognise the aesthetic as a productive element in bioethics as practice. Contributions from the philosophy of art and aesthetics are drawn into the discussion to bring depth to an understanding of “the aesthetic”. This approach is buttressed by philosophers – including Foucault and 18th century German philosophers (in particular Kant) – who recognized a link between ethics and aesthetics. The article aims to give substance to a claim that bioethics necessarily comprises a cognitive component, relating to reason, and a non-cognitive component that draws on aesthetic sensibility and relates to practice. A number of advantages of bioethics, understood to explicitly acknowledge the aesthetic, are proffered. Having defined bioethics in conventional terms, there is discussion of the extent to which other approaches to bioethics (including casuistry, virtue ethics, and narrative ethics) recognize aesthetic sensitivity in their practice. It is apparent that they do so to varying extents although not always explicitly. By examining this aspect of applied ethics, the paper aims to draw attention to aesthetic sensitivity and responsiveness as integral to ethical and effective health care. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Author Keywords
Aesthetics; Bioethics; Emotion; Feeling; Medical humanities; Reason

Index Keywords
attention, bioethics, casuistry, human, human experiment, medical humanities, narrative, perception, sensibility

Jordan, T.
A genealogy of hacking
(2017) Convergence, 23 (5), pp. 528-544.

DOI: 10.1177/1354856516640710

Abstract
Hacking is now a widely discussed and known phenomenon, but remains difficult to define and empirically identify because it has come to refer to many different, sometimes incompatible, material practices. This article proposes genealogy as a framework for understanding hacking by briefly revisiting Foucault’s concept of genealogy and interpreting its perspectival stance through the feminist materialist concept of the situated observer. Using genealogy as a theoretical frame, a history of hacking will be proposed in four phases. The first phase is the ‘prehistory’ of hacking in which four core practices were developed. The second phase is the ‘golden age of cracking’ in which hacking becomes a self-conscious identity and community and is for many identified with breaking into computers, even while non-cracking practices such as free software mature. The third phase sees hacking divide into a number of new practices even while old practices continue, including the rise of serious cybercrime, hacktivism, the division of Open Source and Free Software and hacking as an ethic of business and work. The final phase sees broad consciousness of state-sponsored hacking, the re-rise of hardware hacking in maker labs and hack spaces and the diffusion of hacking into a broad ‘clever’ practice. In conclusion, it will be argued that hacking consists across all the practices surveyed of an interrogation of the rationality of information technocultures enacted by each hacker practice situating itself within a particular technoculture and then using that technoculture to change itself, both in changing potential actions that can be taken and changing the nature of the technoculture itself. © The Author(s) 2015.

Author Keywords
Cybercrime; free software; hacking; hacktivism; Open Source