In the last entry I introduced briefly two articles that deploy WPR in their analysis of aspects of climate change. The article by Christiansen and Lund (2024) targeted corporate policies while the article by Reimerson et al. (2024) examined the “communications” of “local actors” in the forestry industry. My purpose in that entry was to encourage consideration of the diverse ways in which WPR has been and can be used. We continue that exercise in this entry.
Article 3: Olsson, D., Öjehag-Pettersson, A. & Granberg, M.2021. Building a Sustainable Society: Construction, Public Procurement Policy and “Best Practice” in the European Union. Sustainability, 13, 7142. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13137142.
Brief summary:
This article targets “soft” policies produced by the European Commission aiming to make “procurement policy” more sustainable. “Soft” policies consist of guidelines and guides to best practice. “Public procurement” refers to the purchase by governments and state-owned enterprises of goods and services. It stands for “a sizable proportion of the consumption in the EU” (p. 1). The particular focus in this article consists of policies focused on sustainable public procurement for the built environment, that is, the construction sector. WPR is adopted as a critical analysis approach “to study how unsustainability is problematized in such ‘soft’ policies for sustainable public procurement of the built environment and the potential effects of these problem representations” (p. 2).
Materials used:
This article sets out to analyse policy documents produced by the European Commission. In this sense it offers a more conventional approach to applying WPR than the examples in the first Research Hub entry on this topic as it targets Government policies (compared to the focus on corporate policies in Christiansen and Lund 2024 and “local actors’ communications” in Reimerson et al. 2024), albeit the EU policies are designated “soft” and therefore non-binding in character. Table 1 lists the eleven documents selected for analysis. The policies include guidelines and “best practice” examples of green public procurement, socially responsible public procurement and procurement of nature-based solutions for the construction sector (p. 3). Given the size of the data base the authors used coding. They explain that, guided by the WPR questions, “we started the analytical process by coding prescriptions for public procurement practice identified in our data” (p. 5). As in Reimerson et al. (2024; see previous Research Hub entry), this analytic approach fits my suggestion that to use coding in relation to WPR it is necessary to apply the theory (WPR) first (see Research Hub entries 28 Dec 2023 and 29 January 2025).
Applying WPR thinking
The authors begin the paper with a clear exposition of a grounding WPR premise: “We argue that governing any policy domain entails the construction and representation of particular policy problems” (Abstract). The governmentality scholars Rose and Miller (1992, p. 181) describe “government” as a “problematizing activity”. As Osborne (1997, p. 174) explains, the suggestion here is that “policy cannot get to work without first problematising its territory”. In other words, to intervene, to institute a policy, “government”, including but beyond the state, has to target something as a “problem” that needs fixing. Hence, Olsson et al. (2024) set out to explore how the “problems” of sustainable public procurement are represented in EU policy guidelines and best practice documents (p. 2).
We have seen in the first two articles (previous entry; Christiansen et al. 2024, Reimerson et al. 2024) how “proposals” provide an entry point for identifying how something is problematised (problematisations, problem representations). This article by Olsson et al. (2021) illustrates the nuance and complexity involved in this task. It is not always (simply) a matter of identifying explicit aims as proposals. One needs to recognise how certain kinds of statement contain problematisations. Some examples illustrate this analytic strategy.
Olsson et al. (2021) start their critical reading of the selected policies by analysing what they call “argumentation”, how the issue was being discussed and certain positions defended. They offer this quote from GPP (Green public procurement: A collection of good practices): “By using their purchasing power to choose goods and services with lower impacts on the environment, they [major consumers in Europe] can make an important contribution to sustainable consumption and production. [76] (p. 1)” (p 7). Here is a similar statement from SRPP (Making socially responsible public procurement work):
“Public buyers are major investors in Europe, spending 14% of the EU’s gross domestic product. By using their purchasing power to opt for goods and services that deliver positive social outcomes, they can make a major contribution to sustainable development [80] p. 4”.
In both statements, sustainability has something to do with wise use of purchasing power. The “problem” of unsustainability, it follows, has something to do with unwise use of purchasing power. These “arguments” in effect, therefore, form problematisations. The researcher’s task is to recognise them as such.
Olsson et al. 2021 go on to introduce other, perhaps more obvious, problematisations. They describe a range of prescriptions, recommendations and objectives which can all be approached as problematisations – recall Foucault’s focus on “practical texts” as guides to conduct (Bacchi 2009, p. 36). Prescriptions, recommendations and objectives provide guides to conduct and hence indicate what needs to change – what is being problematised. For example, the authors identify “suggestions” “on how to improve knowledge sharing of innovative technical solutions for sustainability” and suggestions to, where possible, group several small contracts together, which “may provide suppliers with an incentive to better engage with procurers on such projects” (p. 8).
You may have detected a pattern in these proposals. The authors certainly did. In their critical commentary on the “soft” policies they examined, they note that “the market and homo economicus are, thus, largely presumed capable to deliver and define sustainability in a seemingly objective and neutral fashion” (p. 9). They identify as a “core assumption” underpinning all the analysed guides to practice that “sustainability can, and should be, pursued through innovations, which in turn are to emerge from market competition” (p. 10)
Insights generated
The authors conclude that it is useful to talk about two groups of problematisations. The more salient, which in their view “structures, more or less, all of the analysed policy documents”, represents unsustainability as a technical design flaw. They also identify a few “counter representations” that constitute unsustainability as unjust politics (p. 12). As an example of the latter, they quote Public procurement of nature-based solutions (2020) to the effect that the objective is “creating a fairer, more active and happier place, with a focus on supporting the most disadvantaged and vulnerable” (p. 12). This attention to “counter representations” makes a useful contribution to a WPR analysis, though each such proposal requires critical interrogation to identify its grounding premises – e.g. the makeup of a group labelled as “vulnerable”.
Olsson et al. (2021) indicate that they draw on specific WPR questions, notably 1, 2 and 5 (though there are many references to silences, invoking Question 4). The inclusion of Question 5 on effects signals that this contribution offers a constitutive understanding of WPR (as opposed to an interpretive understanding; see previous entry). Constitutive effects involve the shaping of the world and beings in specific ways. For the topic of sustainability, “The overall dominant and, perhaps, most important effect is the discursive effect produced by the prominent position of the market and technological innovations as ways to reach sustainability and facilitate sustainable development”. Crucially, the prevalence and dominance of this problem representation naturalises the “production perspective on sustainability, making it appear as neutral and apolitical”, rendering “competing understandings of sustainable development, sustainability and the causes of unsustainability” silenced. Provocatively and perhaps somewhat ominously, Olsson et al. (2021, p. 13) conclude that “this problem representation also legitimizes, and perhaps even reinforces, a continuation of the high-emitting consumption that characterizes much of the public and individual consumption in the EU” (p. 15).
It is at this level that WPR comes into its own. The analysis it offers goes beyond consideration of competing views on issues to reflect on how problem representations help to shape lives and worlds in ways that are deeply troubling.
Article 4: Fischer, K. et al. 2024. Progress towards sustainable agriculture hampered by siloed scientific discourses. Nature Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-024-01474-9
Brief summary: In the previous entry (29 March 2025) I describe the Fischer et al. (2024) article as a form of systematic review of articles that target climate change. Specifically, it analyses highly cited articles on agroecology (AE) and sustainable intensification (SI). The authors explain that “agroecology prioritizes diversity while sidelining productivity and adheres to relational epistemology, while sustainable intensification emphasizes boosting crop production while reducing environmental impact within a reductionist epistemology” (Abstract). The purpose of the exercise is to elaborate the contrasting epistemological assumptions of these two positions. The authors argue that it is useful to clarify the distinctions between the two positions to encourage interdisciplinary dialogue on possible ways forward.
Materials used:
This article is markedly different from the three preceding articles, in this and the preceding entry, in terms of materials used. It offers a study of academic articles rather than of policies or local actors’ contributions. Elsewhere I have suggested the possibility of using WPR to analyse theoretical or academic analyses, “which are in effect forms of proposal” (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016, p. 17). Following WPR thinking an academic article defends a position (proposal) thereby indicating what is being problematised. Hence this application of WPR to academic articles seems apt.
Fischer et al. (2024) use two “techniques” to study academic publications in the identified fields of agroecology and sustainable intensification: bibliometrics and discourse analysis:
“Drawing on peer-reviewed literature on AE and SI published in the period from 2012 to 2022, we combine bibliometric network analysis of a total of 7,266 articles featuring ‘agroecology’ or ‘sustainable intensification’ with discourse analysis of 7 selected highly cited articles on AE and 5 on SI (Fig 1 and Methods)”.
Their bibliometric analysis focuses on key words – their occurrence and patterning. As just one example, they note the appearance of the term “food security” in the SI cluster versus “food sovereignty” in the AE cluster. To this observation they add their analysis of the contrasting assumptions associated with the two terms:
“The term ‘food security’ is commonly connected with the amount of food produced, that is, closely related to crop yield, whereas ‘food sovereignty’ places the emphasis on distribution rather than on amounts of food and is strongly connected with social movements and struggles for farmers’ rights and autonomy, issues that are closely connected with agroecology as a research field.”
Through this form of analysis, the researchers are better able to characterise the contrasting epistemological assumptions in the two positions.
Their version of discourse analysis supplements the bibliometric analysis. Box
1 (towards the end of the article) specifies what their discourse analysis looks like. I pick up this topic in the next section.
Applying WPR thinking
WPR is not mentioned explicitly in Fischer et al. (2024). Still, I want to argue that they apply a form of WPR thinking. To understand how this occurs we need to look closely at Box 1.
The authors introduce the comments in Box 1 with these words: “We operationalized our study of the assumptions that guide research through a discourse analysis, identifying how problems and solutions are framed and their underlying epistemology, that is, the understanding of how we create knowledge about reality” (emphasis added). They reference Analysing Policy (Bacchi 2009) in fn 18. They proceed to produce a list of questions. These are not the exact WPR questions (as in Bacchi and Goodwin 2016, p. 20). The questions for this study read:
(1) What is the main problem (implicitly or explicitly stated) that the
article addresses?
(2) Which solution(s) are proposed?
(3) What kind(s) of evidence is/are highlighted as important?
(4) Which theories and methods are used?
(5) Which (implicitly or explicitly stated) knowledge is needed?
(6) What are the underpinning assumptions?
(7) What is missing?
(8) Which epistemology guides the reasoning?
The authors provide a brief summary of the contrasting epistemological positions of “holism” and “reductionism” (see Box 1).
I want to suggest that their Question 1 – “What is the main problem (implicitly or explicitly stated) that the article addresses?” – replicates the intent of the first question in WPR: “What’s the problem represented to be in a specific policy or policies?” (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016, p. 20). Because Fischer et al. analyse replies to their Question 1, they are not talking about a fixed problem but about how the “problem” is represented in the replies (compare my discussion of the “sensitizing questions” in CFA – Research Hub entry 30 Dec 2024).
There are other clear connections to WPR in their Question 6 on “underpinning assumptions” (see Question 2 in WPR) and in their Question 7 on “What is missing?” (see Question 4 in WPR). More to the point, the whole exercise in Fischer et al. – identifying competing epistemologies – resonates with the task in WPR to consider the importance of underlying epistemological and ontological assumptions in problem representations. Note that the authors specify that they used coding to organise their material with their questions as a guide. As with Olsson et al (2021) and Reimerson et al. (2024), coding is introduced once the theoretical lens has been applied – that is, the theory comes first.
For the previous articles in this and the preceding Research Hub entry I have stressed the importance of starting from proposals in a WPR analysis. Fischer et al. do not start from proposals in any clear sense but proposals still operate as a backdrop in the analysis. For example, in AE, they use a quote from Wezel et al. (2020) to the effect that sustainable agriculture “involves supporting diverse forms of smallholder food production and family farming, farmers and rural communities, food sovereignty, local knowledge, social justice, local identity and culture, and indigenous rights for seeds and breeds”. This, of course, is a proposal. On the other side (SI), they quote Mueller et al. (2012) to the effect that “clos[ing] crop yield gaps should be complemented by efforts to decrease overuse of crop inputs wherever possible”. Again, this wording suggests a proposal. In other words, WPR thinking, which starts from proposals and “works backwards” to identify problem representations, is at work in the analysis produced by Fischer et al. As with Olsson et al. (2021; above), this article shows us some of the nuance and complexity involved in the study of problematisations. It is not always simply a matter of identifying explicit aims. One needs to recognise how certain kinds of statement contain problematisations.
Insights generated
The Fischer et al. article provides insights into the importance of identifying epistemological assumptions in one’s analytic target – be it a policy or a text produced by local actors (see Reimerson et al. 2024 in previous entry). It draws these important conclusions:
“The dominant discourse in AE portrays the key sustainability problem as the ‘monoculture nature of dominant agroecosystems’ and the associated ‘production-oriented or productivist model of agriculture’ that dominates the food system.
… The analysed SI literature starts from the premise that the main challenge that science needs to address is the requirement to boost food production because of ‘Population growth and increases in per capita consumption, as people become richer’ and ‘can afford a more diverse dietary fare that includes meat and dairy’.”
Fischer et al. (2024) also explore the question of “what is missing?” to great effect:
“AE clearly lacks a discussion about productivity, making it impossible to establish whether enough food can be produced in the proposed diversified farming systems. SI takes the issue of how to balance food production and environmental impact seriously, but sidelines biodiversity loss and lacks a methodology for taking account of the acknowledged inter-relationships in farming systems”.
The authors note an almost complete absence of animals in the two discourses. They also draw attention to the lack of reflection on the “wider governance of farming systems”:
“Giving smallholder farmers access to technology (SI) or supporting them to become champions of sustainable farming systems (AE) will have a limited impact if multinational companies continue to dominate seed markets and produce seed unsuited to smallholder contexts or if governments and international platforms do not acknowledge and provide opportunities for smallholders practising ‘agroecological’ farming to teach their approaches to sustainable agriculture”.
Finally, the article is exemplary in producing a “reflexive” form of analysis. Fischer et al. (2024) propose “interdisciplinary dialogue within the author team to enrich the analysis and facilitate reflexivity about our own assumptions”. They note that the team comes from different disciplines “adhering variously to holistic and reductionist epistemologies in our research” and emphasise the importance of identifying their own “hidden assumptions”. To “broaden their horizons” in this article they introduced a practice of “reading articles together, guided by the discourse-analytical perspective outlined in Box 1, and jointly discussing our readings in an interdisciplinary group”. The suggestion to bring WPR-related questions to group or team discussions adds an exciting collective dimension to the undertaking in WPR to apply the questions to one’s own proposals (“self”-problematisation) (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016, p. 20, 40). In this innovative development WPR becomes a practice and a group exercise!
In short, while WPR is not explicitly mentioned in this article, it offers highly relevant insights into WPR thinking. The authors declare that their intent is to encourage interdisciplinary dialogue on contrasting epistemologies given the importance of epistemological assumptions in discussions about sustainability. This level of discussion and analysis is precisely what WPR aims to encourage (see Question 2 in WPR; Bacchi and Goodwin 2016, p. 20).
Conclusions:
I want to stress the variety in the analytic targets in the four selected articles in this and the preceding entry: first, in Christiansen and Lund 2024 on the sustainability reports of corporate actors; second, in Reimerson et al. 2024, on the articulations of local actors; third, on “soft” policies in the EU; and fourth, in Fischer et al. 2024 on the arguments in academic publications.
The four articles also alert us to some key issues to keep in mind when adopting/adapting/applying WPR:
- The differences between an interpretive and a constitutive approach;
- What is involved in identifying deep-seated assumptions in Question 2;
- How to operationalise “self”-problematisation.
The four articles also concur on some basic insights. They identify the overwhelming tendency to produce the “problems” of climate change and sustainability as technical issues inviting technical solutions. They also emphasize how this problematisation depoliticizes the issues, presenting them as neutral. The lack of focus on consumption patterns is another shared insight alongside the operation of market-oriented rationalities. These arguments are carefully elaborated.
Looking at these four contributions allows us to see the rich possibilities in using WPR. I repeat this exercise with the topic of menstruation in the next entry. Please suggest topics you would like me to address (carol.bacchi@adelaide.edu.au).
References
Bacchi, C. 2009. Analysing Policy: What’s the Problem Represented to be? Pearson Education.
Bacchi, C. and Goodwin, S. 2016. Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice. NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Christiansen, K. L. and Lund, J. F. 2024. Seeing the limits of voluntary corporate climate action in food and technology sustainability reports, Energy Research & Social Science 118 (2024) 103798, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2024.103798
Reimerson, E. et al. 2024. Local articulations of climate action in Swedish forest contexts. Environmental Science and Policy, 151 (2024) 103626
Mueller, N. D. et al. Closing yield gaps through nutrient and water management. Nature 490, 254–257 (2012)
Osborne, T. (1997). Of health and statecraft. In A. Petersen, & R. Bunton (Eds.),
Foucault: Health and medicine. London: Routledge.
Reimerson, E. et al. 2024. Local articulations of climate action in Swedish forest contexts. Environmental Science and Policy, 151 (2024) 103626
Rose, N., & Miller, P. (1992). Political power beyond the state: Problematics of government. The British Journal of Sociology, 43 (2), 173–205.
Wezel, A. et al. Agroecological principles and elements and their implications for transitioning to sustainable food systems. A review. Agron. Sustain. Dev. 40, 40 (2020).
Carol Bacchi 