In the preceding entry (30 August 2024) I pose a conundrum for those researchers who wish to draw upon poststructural policy analysis and WPR while retaining a commitment to social justice objectives. I point to the ambiguity involved in this enterprise since poststructuralism puts in question analytic categories, including “justice”. To work past this theoretical concern, I introduce the concept of “doubling practices”, suggesting the need to work with two strategies at the same time – treating social justice as a fixed and desired goal, while opening up conceptions of justice to WPR questions. The intent is to illustrate how these two proposals work together to elaborate new, more inclusive meanings of “justice”.
Dillon and “justice”
The previous entry offered the example of Dillon’s (1999) work on international relations and justice. To recapitulate, Dillan argues that it is possible to develop “another Justice” through two steps: first, noting how “normal justice” understands its place; and next, developing “another Justice” that is differentiated from the norm and displaces it. I indicate that this two-step process elaborates the operation of Question 2 in a WPR approach, probing the assumptions/presuppositions underpinning “normal justice” as a means to opening up space to think “justice” differently.
I use the example of Dillon to show how poststructuralists provide “content” to concepts they problematise. That is, “another Justice” in Dillon, and Deleuze, can be described as a “justice” that challenges the ontological presumption of human beings as independent “fungible” units comprising political “entities”, such as nation-states (see previous entry). Along similar lines, it is possible to read Foucault’s critical analysis of prison systems as endorsing certain “principles”, that is, as giving “content” to social justice proclivities.
Foucault and “justice”
As an analytic strategy Foucault recommends starting from a “problem” (or question) in the present and understanding the heterogeneous factors that contribute to the emergence of this particular way of organising and governing society. He characterises this approach as “effective history”, “a history of the present” and as genealogy (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016: 47-48).
Foucault explains his intentions in writing his genealogy of the modern penal system, Discipline and Punish (1979), thus:
“I didn’t aim to do a work of criticism, at least not directly, if what is meant by criticism in this case is denunciation of the negative aspects of the current penal system. … I attempted to define another problem. I wanted to uncover the system of thought, the form of rationality that, since the end of the eighteenth century, has supported the notion that the prison is really the best means of punishing offences in a society. … In bringing out the system of rationality underlying punitive practices, I wanted to indicate what the postulates of thought were that need to be re-examined if one intended to transform the penal system. … It’s the same thing that I tried to do with respect to the history of psychiatric institutions [in History of Madness 2006]. (Foucault 2020; emphasis added)
I have highlighted the words “if one intended to transform the penal system” because I think they help us understand what Foucault meant by starting one’s analysis from a problem (or question) in the present – he means starting from a development or issue that in your view needs questioning or challenging. The perspective of the analyst is thus decisive in selecting a topic for investigation, as is the case in choosing particular policies for critical analysis in WPR (see Bacchi 2009: 20). According to Tamboukou (1999: 213), this clear involvement of researchers in picking a starting point for critical scrutiny is not a limitation but a strength of the analysis: it “should be admitted and used by the analyst in an attempt to deconstruct possible arbitrary personal feelings and stances with regard to his/her project”.
If starting from a “problem” (or question) in the present means starting from something that concerns you or disturbs you, it becomes clear that Foucault-influenced analytic approaches (such as WPR) produce a “critical attitude” (Campbell 2007) or “an ethos of critique” (Jabri 2007). Through this starting point attention is directed to the grounds for what troubles you, providing the barebones of a social justice “agenda”.
One does not need to dig too deeply to discern the political perspective adopted by Foucault. His desire to “transform the penal system” (and psychiatric institutions) was directly connected to his concern about the marginalisation of prisoners (and patients). As Catucci (2018: 329 ff) elaborates, in Foucault’s view, “in modern times prison has been the main technology by which our societies manage marginality”. Indeed, “all the social oppositions described by Foucault in his work – normal/abnormal, healthy/pathological, mad/reasonable – were built on the contrast between inclusion and exclusion” (Catucci 2018: 330).
Foucault’s social justice agenda involved listening to the prisoners and giving them the political role in our institutions they are denied. On this point it is useful to recall that, in 1971, Foucault co-founded the Information Group on Prisons, a group dedicated to heightening public intolerance towards the prison system by facilitating the voices of prisoners themselves (Hoffman 2012).
As in Dillon, Foucault starts by clarifying the status and parameters of “normal imprisonment” (see “normal justice” in Dillon) and develops alternatives that produce “another imprisonment” (“another Justice”). The poststructural moment of deconstructive analysis – questioning “normal imprisonment” or “normal justice” – provides guidance to developing more inclusive institutions and practices. The two strategies work together to elaborate new, more inclusive meanings of “justice”.
In a useful exchange on the work of the criminologist Hulsman, Foucault clarifies his stance further. To summarize much too briefly, Hulsman argued that the majority of violations (“crimes”) escape the penal system without imperilling society. Hence, he suggested replacing the concept of crime with that of “problem situations”, settling most conflicts through non-judicial arbitration and reconciliation procedures (Foucault 2020: 389-390). Foucault found Hulsman’s proposal interesting, but he was concerned that “problem situations” would bring about “a hyperpsychologization around the criminal himself (sic) that will constitute him as an object of psychiatric or medical interventions, with therapeutic aims” (Foucault 2020: 390).
Needless to say, I was delighted to see Foucault’s objection to identifying certain social groups as “the problem”. Moreover, through the example of imprisonment, we can grasp the rudiments of the concerns that led to Foucault’s major contributions, identified by Catucci (2018: 329 ff) as to do with inclusion/exclusion. The themes of inclusion/exclusion and marginalisation characterise numerous WPR applications (“WPR Network” WPRNETWORK@jiscmail.ac.uk). There is here, as McMahon (2024) identifies, a view of social relations markedly at odds with the world we inhabit. Attempts to change these relations can be associated with the concept of social justice. This conclusion comes with three provisos, which I now proceed to consider.
Challenges for researchers
- The dilemmas of language use
It is a difficult task to talk about, or even to problematise, “social justice” without invoking other categories of analysis that require critical interrogation. This point is illustrated in the pivotal article by Parkes and Gore (2022) targeting the contradictions and ambiguities involved in “social justice pedagogy”. They identify three common orientations underpinning Foucauldian-influenced poststructuralist theorizing: the critique of universalism, the critique of foundationalism, and the critique of essentialism. They insist that “from a poststructural perspective, the concept of social justice must be problematised, rather than accepted uncritically as a universal truth or desire” – so far so good, I would say.
Parkes and Gore illustrate what poststructuralism can offer pedagogy through a close reading of Nieto and Bode’s (2008) elaboration of social justice interventions in schools. The purpose in Parkes and Gore is to illustrate the need to “push” the critical analysis further, paying heed to key terms/concepts that may require rethinking. For example, they note that Nieto and Bode suggest “that a social justice perspective means providing all students with the resources necessary to learn to their full potential”. Parkes and Gore endorse the emphasis on providing students with material resources but query the notion of “full potential”. “The very notion of ‘full potential’, or indeed any ‘potential’ that can be measured, assumed or implied”, in their view, needs to be interrogated. Again, I say – so far so good.
However, I want to draw attention to the closing sentence in this useful illustration of a poststructural critical approach:
“Engaging in pedagogy with all the insights that poststructuralism offers may make the project of social justice pedagogy less grand, but it also equips us with insights that may be marshalled to refuse and resist those discourses that erase difference and naturalise disadvantage” (Parkes and Gore 2022).
I wish to highlight the reliance of the analysis on the contested concept of “disadvantage”. Joan Eveline’s (1994) classic piece entitled “The Politics of Advantage” explains how a disadvantage discourse operates to target outgroups as needy and in deficit while disregarding the privileges social arrangements accord ingroups. Eveline’s analysis is critically important given the continuing reliance among many reform groups on appeals to redress “disadvantage”. This lacunae in Parkes and Gore does not undermine the usefulness of poststructural interventions; rather, it confirms them, illustrating only the need to be wary of inadvertently adopting concepts weighted in favour of the sociopolitical status quo.
2. The discomfort of critique
The point just made about the inadvertent reliance on terms that need questioning highlights the discomfort caused by this form of critique. I imagine that Nieto and Bode would be somewhat disconcerted to read Parkes and Gore’s analysis of their work. And, I would be curious to know if Parkes and Gore recognise their reliance on the concept of disadvantage.
There is no doubt that poststructural analysis causes disquiet among and between academics. The issue becomes more serious when it involves critiques of lobby or advocacy groups. In a previous Research Hub entry (20 August 2018) I refer to the disagreement between the authors of an article (Pienaar et al. 2018) critical of the ways in which three LGBTIQ health organisations problematise LGBTIQ consumption of alcohol, and representatives of those groups. The organizations’ leaders stressed that, unlike academics who “may be in a position to ignore or sidestep existing policy and political contexts”, they had to “work for change while operating within the existing system” (Ruth et al. 2018: 195). Pienaar et al. acknowledge that
“As researchers, we engage in similar practices for the purposes of grant funding applications: to attract increasingly competitive research funding, we are obliged to frame research questions as ‘problems’ of national concern requiring urgent attention.” (Pineear et al. 2018: 190).
This example highlights the importance of adopting a self-critical stance on one’s research, a position I describe as “self”-problematisation (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016: 38-41). Poststructural policy analysis, and the WPR approach, “disrupts the taken-for-grantedness of all policy proposals, no matter how apparently progressive” (Marshall 2012: 61). It calls upon researchers and those campaigning for reform and change to
“consider the shape of the challenges they pose, the ways in which they perceive and represent ‘problems’, and the reasons for this … we need to reflect upon why certain reform responses get taken up, why others get dismissed, and what happens to reform proposals in the process of being ‘taken up’”. (Bacchi 1999: 7).
3. The local targets of critique
The kinds of questioning just described help us to see how poststructural analysis targets specific situations and locales. In a previous Research Hub entry (20 March 2022) I describe the importance of context to the WPR approach. The example I use is pay equity where there are debates about the optimal way to institute change, targeting equal pay for equal work, equal pay for work of equal value (otherwise known as “comparable worth”), or wage solidarity (Bacchi 1999: Chapter 4). Through a close examination of Burton et al.’s (1987: 90-94) pay equity intervention and how it produced the “problem”, I argue that in the place of sweeping generalizations about reform approaches – e.g., preferring wage solidarity over comparable worth (or vice versa), there is a need for sensitivity to specific contexts where particular forms of engagement may or may not be possible.
For example, Acker (1989: 196) shows that, in Oregon in the 1980s, constructing the problem as poverty relief (wage solidarity) proved to be a more successful reform strategy than equity agreements which, given the specific labor relations context, appeared to set worker against worker. In tune with Foucault’s own “version of emancipation”, universals are replaced with “specific transformations” that minimize domination (Moss 1998: 9). Such specific transformations constitute forms of social justice.
Conclusion
Returning to the notion of doubling (above), the suggestion in this entry is the need to move between a position in which WPR functions as a social justice strategy and a position in which WPR helps us to see what needs to be questioned in common conceptions of justice (“normal justice”). Both these analytic “balls” are kept in the air at the same time. For the first task social justice assumes a meaningful conceptual intervention; for the second, calls for “social justice” require critical interrogation. The two projects can work together to help refine an analytic strategy.
REFERENCES
Acker, J. 1989. Doing Comparable Worth: Gender, Class and Pay Equity. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Bacchi, C. 1999. Women, Policy and Politics: The Construction of Policy Problems.London: Sage.
Bacchi, C. 2009. Analysing Policy: What’s the Problem Represented to be?Frenchs Forest: Pearson Education.
Bacchi, C. and Goodwin, S. 2016. Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Burton, C., with Hag, R. and Thompson, G. 1987. Women’s Worth: Pay Equity and Job Evaluation in Australia. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service.
Campbell, D. 2007. Poststructuralism. In T. Dunne, M. Kurki, & S. Smith (Eds.), International relations theory: Discipline and diversity (pp. 203–228). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Dillon, M. 1999. Another Justice. Political Theory 27(2): 155-175.
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Foucault, M. 2020. What is called “Punishing”? In Michel Foucault, Power: The Essential Works of Michel Foucault, 1954-1984. Penguin Books.
Hoffman, M. 2012. Foucault and the “Lesson” of the Prisoner Support Movement. New Political Science, 34(1): 21-36.
Jabri, V. 2007. War and the transformation of global politics. Houndsmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Moss, J. (1998). Introduction: The later Foucault. In J. Moss (Ed.), The later Foucault: Politics and philosophy. London: Sage.
Nieto, S. & Bode, P. 2008. Affirming diversity: The sociopolitical context of multicultural education, 5th Edition, Allyn & Bacon.
Parkes, R. J. and Gore, J. M. (2022) After Poststructuralism: Rethinking the Discourse of Social Justice Pedagogy. In T. K. Chapman and N. Hobbel (eds) Social Justice Pedagogy Across the Curriculum: The Practice of Freedom. Routledge: London.
Pienaar, K., Murphy, D., Race, K. & Lea, T. 2018. Problematising LGBTIQ drug use, governing sexuality and gender: A critical analysis of LGBTIQ health policy in Australia.International Journal of Drug Policy 55: 187-194.
Ruth, S., Parkhill, N. and Reynolds, R. 2018. A response to Pienaar et al (2018). Problematizing LGBTIQ drug use, governing sexuality and gender: A critical analysis of LGBTIQ health policy in Australia. International Journal of Drug Policy,55: 195-196.Tamboukou, M. 1999. Writing Genealogies: an exploration of Foucault’s strategies for doing research. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 20(2): 201-207
Carol Bacchi 