TITLE: WPR: thinking critically about reform options

In a recent Research Hub entry (26 Feb 2026), I mention the work of Rönnblom and Edwards (2025) on uses of WPR. I identify three interrelated topics under consideration in their work: (1) positions on “values”; (2) positions on political reform strategies; (3) positions on the place of intentionality in political analysis. In that entry I discussed the first of these topics, reflecting on the relationship between WPR and normativity. Today I take up the second topic and ask specifically: if WPR refuses to endorse specific reform proposals, is it of any use to those who have a reform agenda? 

To begin, I feel the need to provide a review of the point and purpose of a WPR analysis. The hope is that such a review proves useful both to those engaging with the approach for the first time and to those who have worked in the field previously. 

Just what is WPR intended to do? 

What kind of analysis is WPR intended to undertake? From 2009 (Bacchi 2009) I have described WPR as a critical approach to governing practices, writ large. That is, the approach asks how governing takes place and whether we ought to have any concerns about how governing takes place. 

I think of this as a two-stage project. First, it is important to recognise that, for WPR, governing extends beyond conventional political institutions. So, we are not talking about “government” in the usual sense of legislators and policies. Rather, the interest in governing includes a broad sweep of the many influences shaping our lives. Consider, for example, the impact of professional disciplines such as psychology and economics, the impact of schools and universities, the impact of corporate institutions and advertising practices, etc., etc. This is all “governing” (see “governmentality” in Bacchi 2026, Chapter 7) and is open to WPR scrutiny.

Stage 2 involves broadening our conception of “influence”. WPR is not solely concerned with top-down interventions such as university enrolment practices or psychological guidelines (DSM-5). Rather, it considers how the full range of “influences” represent the “problems” they purport to address. We start asking about how “issues” are problematised due to the conviction that problematisations play a significant role in how we are governed. The focus here becomes “problem representations” and how they influence lives and worlds. Consider this position as embracing a more subtle and simultaneously more comprehensive understanding of governing processes. 

So, you can see that the terrain opened up by WPR is vast – we look at the wide range of influences shaping lives and worlds, including how governing practices impose meanings on those lives and worlds. 

The starting point in WPR thinking, therefore, is that we need to think critically about this vast terrain of governing practices. Its goal is to help us consider at some depth aspects of governing practices that may need rethinking (re-problematisation, reconceptualization, re-development). The goal therefore is reform. But importantly, the task is not to develop specific reforms but to raise critical questions about directions in reform. WPR helps us to think critically about reform options. 

Critics of WPR

It is here that critics express qualms about the WPR approach. These qualms take several forms.

At one level the reaction to a WPR approach reflects disagreements about the nature of critique. There are wide-ranging disputes about how change occurs. Specifically, an argument has developed that contrasts what are called “affirmative” approaches to reform to “negative” approaches (with WPR clustered within the second of these). 

In a well-known article, Bruno Latour (2004) targets for criticism a particular style of critique, which he describes as a purely deconstructive and hence “negative” form of criticism. In his view, rather than (simply) deconstructing or “debunking”, researchers need to be involved in assembling – i.e., in bringing together collective “concerns” in a “Parliament of Things” (Latour 1993, pp. 144–145):

“The critic is not the one who debunks, but the one who assembles. The critic is not the one who lifts the rugs from under the feet of the naïve believers, but the one who offers the participants arenas in which to gather. (Latour 2004, p. 246)”. 

This typecasting of styles of critique took hold such that critique came to be discussed through an inflexible duality – “assembling” versus “debunking”, “affirming” versus “negating”, “crafting commonality or enacting disparity” (Munk & Abrahamsson 2012, p. 54; see also Lorenzini & Tazzioli 2020). In Bacchi 2026 I spend some time (Chapter 13) considering the nature of this disagreement and providing a response (see next section)

Qualms about WPR’s reform possibilities often reflect contrasting theoretical commitments. Those with an interpretive focus on policy actors and the “coalface” of policy-making find poststructural approaches limiting. They wish instead to stress the important place of “solution construction”. For example, according to Savage et al. (2021, p. 308) “scholarship that draws on poststructuralist philosophy and theory” often foregrounds “the benefits of critique and forms of problematisation but in lieu of articulating explicit solutions or visions for change”. These scholars tend to be concerned with the danger of what is called “endless regress” (see previous entry 26 Feb 2026). They stress that “at the end of the day all policy makers must do something” (Savage 2018, p. 317; see Research Hub entries 30 Dec 2021, 30 Jan 2022, 30 March 2022).

These arguments need to be taken seriously. Why should policymakers be interested in WPR, if it doesn’t provide specific directives for policy change? 

Reply to critics

Put simply, there is a need to challenge the dichotomous characterisation of reform approaches (i.e. “affirmative” versus “negative”). WPR targets the spaces betweenthese two positions. It may not provide specific directives, but it does assist in encouraging creative thinking around reform options. 

The hesitancy to endorse specific reforms stems from the concern that those reforms may inadvertently buy into established ways of thinking that need questioning. That is, there is a concern that researchers are necessarily implicated in widely accepted and unexamined ways of thinking – that they may well accept premises that ought to be questioned (Bacchi and Goodwin 2025, p. 22). As Teghtsoonian (2016, p. 341) describes, the reluctance to advance “solutions” is tied to the poststructural stance that “‘liberatory’ or ‘emancipatory’ impulses” may well be “implicated in the constitution of governing practices”. 

This argument underpins the need for “self”-problematisation (see Process 7 in Table, Bacchi 2026 p. 22) in which researchers apply the WPR questions to their own proposals or “proposed solutions”. Bringing attention to governmental problematisations, which I see as the task of a WPR analysis, can assist policy workers and researchers to question the parameters within which their work is cast. I consider this encouragement to policy workers and researchers to engage critically with the problematizations in policies and in their own proposals as a positive research contribution. Applying the WPR questions in these ways, I suggest, makes it easier to recognize the full range of issues that need to be included in any “reform” design. They also alert researchers and policy workers to facets of the issues that may well have escaped their/our attention. 

While poststructuralist analysis, therefore, does not put forward a blueprint for political change, which people are directed to adopt, it opens a space to think differently and creatively about the relations and rules through which governing takes place. I provide a few examples to illustrate the benefits of this new way of thinking. 

Reform options: examples

In my 1999 book I include a chapter that examines contrasting proposals aimed at achieving pay equity for women (Bacchi 1999, Chapter 4). I distinguish among several ways of “framing” the “problem” of pay inequity: equal pay for equal work, equal pay for work of equal value (otherwise known as “comparable worth”) and wage solidarity. In “equal pay for equal work” the target of critique is employer discrimination. In comparable worth approaches, the “problem” is represented to be the wage gap between women’s and men’s wages due to women’s location in specific undervalued jobs (e.g., the “caring” professions). In wage solidarity, the proposal to raise women’s wages by raising wages across the board creates the “problem” as worker exploitation.

The chapter on pay equity does not end up recommending one of these options in all cases. That is, if a policy worker were looking for endorsement of a singular policy framework, they would not find it in Women, Policy and Politics. Rather, I show how creative reworking can assist in responding to particular situations or contexts. Using Burton et al.’s (1987, pp. 90-94) pay equity intervention, I show how they reframed the “problem” to problematise job hierarchy. As they describe, “working through and down the hierarchy” tends to be valued over working “laterally and up”. Thinking in terms of problematisations serves, therefore, to broaden the parameters of what ought to be considered relevant to a specific area of reform (“pay equity”). 

In a different space, Razack calls for some creative re-thinking of the Canadian immigration and refugee guidelines on gender-related persecution. She is concerned about some of the effects that flow from the way in which the “problem” tends to be represented. She notes (1995, pp. 46, 49), for example, that refugee hearings are always “profoundly racialized” events in which the “outwardly compassionate process of granting asylum” creates “First World countries as benefactors”, while the people of the Third World are created as “supplicants asking to be relieved of the disorder of their world and to be admitted to the rational calm of ours”. This representation of the “problem” ignores and belies the role of the First World in creating, through economic exploitation, the circumstances of the distress suffered by refugees.

Now, importantly, Razack does not argue that feminist reformers ought to stop using “gender persecution” to advance the cause of women refugees. But she does want feminist reformers to “explore ways in which we might talk about women and the violence they experience” that acknowledge the operation of power relations between First and Third Worlds. She suggests that a way forward here is to produce gender persecution legislation “as one element of a multi-pronged strategy in which the goal would be to change social structures that propel men to be violent and condone their excesses” (Razack 1995, p. 71). Razack’s proposition does not constitute a prescribed reform program, but it highlights central aspects of the reform program that need rethinking and modification. WPR, I suggest, provides assistance in thinking through precisely what this task entails. 

I find many suggestions similar to Razack’s in recent WPR applications (see Select Reference List on  Welcome to the WPR Network! | Karlstad University (kau.se). Researchers in the main are keenly aware that their analysis leads to the possibility of creative interventions that can help reshape problem representations that are found to have deleterious effects – subjectification, objectification, discursive and lived (Question 5, Bacchi 2026, p. 24). 

For example, Nieminen et al. (2026) adopt Poststructural Interview Analysis (PIA), a “sister strategy” to WPR (Bacchi and Bonham 2025, Chapter 8), to reflect on the subjectification effects of teacher placements in Australia. Their task, as they describe it, is to “help unpack why disabilities remain marginalised in teacher education”. They emphasise the complex identity work that the students take part in. In placements, they argue, “students become known as future professionals in relation to particular ‘able’ ideals of teachers as someone spatially fit and rational”. 

Importantly, Nieminen et al. (2026) state upfront that their research is concerned with a pressing question: 

“How to make placements more inclusive, then? This is the question future research must address, and we hope the stories we have reported could inspire such work”. (p. 21). They offer specific insights into possible ways forward: 

“Locating teacher identity formation and potential mechanisms of ableism within the practices of teacher education allows for alternative interventions to occur. If placements organise the subject formation of students, then the question is, how to reassemble the practices of placements in ways that enable other ways of being, knowing and doing?” 

That is, by acknowledging the important role of subject formation, it becomes possible to consider innovative interventions. The deconstructive theory and analysis prepare the ground for “affirmative” modes of “becoming”.

In an article on the topical issue of how University policies regulate generative AI, Driessens and Pischetola (2024) apply WPR to current policies in Denmark. They show the potential for Question 4 on silencing practices (Bacchi 2026, p. 22) to alert policymakers to aspects of AI practices that ought to be included in any policy reform. Specifically, they raise questions about the impact of generative AI in terms of labour and energy use, topics that are currently under-analysed. The authors argue that 

“Universities should integrate these considerations into both their decision-making on (not) using certain technologies and their policies and guidelines for research and teaching, just as sustainability is already a criterion in their travel or investment policies today.” (Abstract) 

Again, an analysis of problematisations produces useful and provocative insights into reform options.

On a closely related topic, Luo (2024) analysed the GenAI policies of 20 world-leading universities to explore “what are considered problems in this AI-mediated assessment landscape and how these problems are represented in policies” (Abstract). She identifies as the primary problem representation that GenAI undermines the originality of student work. As Luo points out, this problematisation highlights the need to consider what is meant by “originality” “in a time when knowledge production becomes increasingly distributed, collaborative and mediated by technology” (Abstract). To this end she calls for “a more inclusive approach to address the originality of students’ work”: “Moving forward, higher education policies can reframe originality from a collaborative perspective and situate it along a continuous spectrum” (P. 12).

 Luo’s exploration of problematisations in the “problem space” of GenAI leads to suggestions for changes in thinking and practice:

“Understanding the problem representation in university GenAI policies is crucial to underpin further moves at a practical level. This study evokes critical reflection on what makes a student’s work original in the presence of AI, prompting higher education policymakers and practitioners to review, rethink and revise current policy discourses around GenAI use and work originality. One recommended approach is to organize consultation meetings, seminars and debates to further challenge and deepen the concept of originality rather than seeing it as enshrined in the policies. Partnering with students in these consultations to understand how they approach GenAI and understand work originality will be desirable.” (p. 12)

We return now to our guiding question for this entry: can WPR assist in policy design? The examples I offer (Bacchi, Razack, Nieminen et al., Driessens and Pischetola, Luo)  – and there are many other examples in the Select Reference List ( Welcome to the WPR Network! | Karlstad University (kau.se)  – illustrate how WPR serves to broaden the parameters of what ought to be considered relevant to a specific area of reform. It highlights the need to examine how “problems” are conceptualised, including interrogation of our own premises. It sharpens an awareness of the effects of the frameworks we adopt and encourages us to find proposals that “diminish effects we want to discourage” (Bacchi 1999, p. 90). Importantly, the question of what ought to be discouraged remains an open question – one that needs to be on the table – not one that is assumed beforehand. Such critical reflections “sow the seeds of judgement” (Osborne 1998 in Rose 2000, p. 59), helping to make judgement possible. 

CONCLUSION

It is disturbing to see the forms of analysis offered by WPR and other poststructural projects misrepresented. For example, according to Hoppe (2025, emphasis added), “the critical perspective” in WPR leads to the conclusion that “any governmental-oriented effort at reform should be rejected as a rhetorical performance of government and as part of government and political reason”. 

I hope this Research Hub entry clarifies that WPR is not about acceptance or rejection of efforts at reform. Rather, it provides a tool to ensure that such efforts do not inadvertently reinforce marginalisation and exploitation. The concern is not with rhetoric (as per Hoppe’s characterisation). Rather, the analysis probes the deep-seated epistemological and ontological presuppositions in policy proposals. Hoppe’s reference to “political reason” should be understood as “political rationalities”, which invite analysis of specific political rationales to identify lacunae and political implications (Bacchi and Goodwin 2025, pp. 48-50).  

The underlying goal in a WPR analysis is to encourage a questioning attitude and a “self”-questioning attitude. Such an approach makes it possible to promote positive interventions that reshape problem representations found to be limited and at times harmful. It is an essential component of any reform toolkit. 

References

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. 2026. What’s the Problem Represented to be? A new thinking paradigm. NY: Routledge.

Bacchi, C. and Goodwin, S. 2025. Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice. Second edition. NY: 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. 

Driessens, O. and Pischetola, M. 2024. Danish university policies on generative AI:Problems, assumptions and sustainability blind spots. MedieKultur: Journal of media and communication research.  Vol 40, no. 76. 

Hoppe, R. 2025. Problems and Problematization in Public Policy. In Encyclopedia of Public Policy, DOI. 10.1007/978-3-030-90434-0_106-1

Latour, B 1993, We have never been modern, trans. C Porter, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Latour, B 2004, ‘Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 225–248.

Lorenzini, D & Tazzioli, M 2020, ‘Critique without ontology: genealogy, collective subjects and the deadlocks of evidence’, Radical Philosophy, no. 2.07, pp. 27–39.

Luo, J 2024, “A critical review of GenAI policies in higher education assessment: a call to reconsider the ‘originality of students’ work “, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, DOI: 10.1080/02602938.2024.2309963 

Munk, AK & Abrahamsson, S 2012, ‘Empiricist interventions: strategy and tactics on the ontopolitical battlefield’, Science & Technology Studies, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 52–70, DOI:10.23987/sts.55281.

Nieminen, J. H., Dollinger, M. and Finneran, R. 2026. Becoming a disabled teacher: teacher placements as sites for identify formation. The Australian Educational Researcher, 53:22, https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-025-00949-8

Osborne, T. 1998. Aspects of Enlightenment: Social Theory and the Ethics of Truth. London: UCL Press. 

Razack, S. 1995. Domestic Violence as Gender Persecution: Policing the Borders of Nation, Race and Gender. Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, 8: 45-88.

Rose, N. 2000. Powers of Freedom: Reframing political thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Rönnblom, M. & Edwards, R. (04 Sep 2025): A critical explanation of uses of Carol Bacchi’s WPR approach, Critical Policy Studies, DOI: 10.1080/19460171.2025.2555388 

Savage, G. C. 2018. Policy assemblages and human devices: a reflection on “Assembling Policy”. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 39(2): 309-321.

Savage, G. C., Gerrard, J., Gale, T. and Molla, T.  2021. The evolving state of policy sociology: mobilities, moorings and elite networks. Critical Studies in Education, 62(3): 306-321. 

Teghtsoonian, K. 2016. Methods, discourse, activism: comparing institutional ethnography and governmentality. Critical Policy Studies, 10:3, 330-347, DOI: 10.1080/19460171.2015.1050426

I ended the last Research Hub entry suggesting that, in a WPR analysis, “we can defend egalitarian precepts so long as they remain open to interrogation, highlighting the importance of ‘self’-problematisation”. The point, in that entry, was to make the case that it is possible, within WPR thinking, to uphold certain normative positions, which is commonly considered incompatible with a poststructural theoretical position. 

Norms become possible, I argue, if they are not treated as “truth” statements. That is, room is retained to interrogate one’s declared “principles”. This is precisely where, I suggest, “self”-problematisation becomes valuable. “Self”-problematisation encourages a critical questioning of one’s stances, beliefs and deep-seated assumptions. In this way, I argue, “self”-problematisation (Process 7; Bacchi 2026, p. 24) protects us from enshrining our normative commitments as “truth”.  But a question arises – in this argument, am I not positing the benefits of “self”-problematisation as a form of “truth”? 

In this entry, I want to ask: how is it possible, within WPR thinking, to prescribe“self”-problematisation as a practice of the self, OR is there a tension here that needs to be acknowledged? 

Privileging “self”-problematisation?

There is no doubt that “self”-problematisation is treated as a “special” task or function within WPR. The format in WPR, in the main, consists of 6 questions (see Table Bacchi 2026 p. 24). Such a format (questions) encourages debate and dialogue. Questions do not tell researchers what to do. This stance is in line with the general reluctance in WPR to become prescriptive about change objectives (see previous Research Hub entry on “WPR and Normativity”). 

Process 7 is more blatant about its recommended analytic approach. If you check the wording – “Apply this list of questions to your own problem representations as a practice of the self” (Bacchi 2026, p. 24), you will see that, unlike Questions 1 to 6, it is not a question. Indeed, it is more of an instruction than a question. 

I have been sensitive to the imperious tone in Process 7 for some time. Over the years I have experimented with different terms to describe it – as a “directive” (Bacchi 2009, p.19), as an “injunction” (blurb on back cover of Bacchi 2009), and currently as an “undertaking” (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016, p. 19). An undertaking is described as a task that is (simply) taken on, though it also carries the implication of a formal promise (Cambridge Dictionary). In Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice, the privileging of “self”-problematisation is clear: 

“In terms of practical application of WPR, it is possible to draw selectively upon the forms of questioning and analysis just described, so long as a self-problematizing ethic is maintained” (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016, p. 24; emphasis added).”

I should note in passing that the commitment to questioning one’s own proposals for change has been a part of the WPR approach from at least 2009. If you check the chart of questions in the 2009 Analysing Policy book (p. xii) it states: “Apply this list of questions to your own problem representations”. Unfortunately, because the instruction was not assigned a number (here I was undone by grammar – since it was not a question, I felt I could not list it with the other questions), researchers tended to miss it. To ensure attention was directed towards this crucial part of the analysis, I (with Sue Goodwin) called it “Step 7” in 2016 (Poststructural Policy Analysis, p. 20). In my recent book I change Step 7 to Process 7 (Bacchi 2026 p. 24) because of the unfortunate tendency for researchers to treat the matter as an incidental “step” that can be added (or not) at the end of one’s WPR analysis. “Self”-problematisation is not an optional extra!

Questioning “self”-problematisation

In poststructuralism, there is recognition that, as researchers, we are inside the processes we are examining. In line with the so-called “reflexive turn”, it is necessary, therefore, to acknowledge that the researcher/theorist plays an active role in constructing the very reality s/he is attempting to investigate (Eveline and Bacchi 2010, p. 154). It is time, therefore, to ask myself just what “reality” WPR creates. 

Even with its question format, in descriptions of WPR (e.g. Bacchi 2009), there is the implication that WPR produces an organized way to proceed that ought to be followed. The power implications of this form of analysis need to be recognized. As already indicated, within this framework, Process 7 stands out as a didactic form of intervention. To deal with its power effects, I suggest subjecting Process 7 (“self”-problematisation) to a WPR analysis. In an earlier Research Hub entry, titled “Applying WPR to WPR” (30 August 2023), I initiated precisely this form of interrogation. 

Applying WPR thinking, Process 7 constitutes a proposal, a designated starting place for WPR analysis (Bacchi 2026, pp. 18 ff.). With this “directive” as our proposal, we can ask the WPR questions: What is problematised? What presuppositions underlie this problematisation? Where did it come from? What does it omit? What are its effects? How is it replicated and reinforced and can/has it been disputed? 

In thinking about Question 2 on deep-seated presuppositions, I decided to make a modification to the “self”-problematisation proposal. In Poststructural Policy Analysis (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016, p. 38) there are no quotation marks in “self-problematisation”. Quotation marks around the term “self” (in “self”-problematisation) appear only in the new book (Bacchi 2026). This alteration reflects important theoretical commitments, as I now discuss. 

The point and purpose of placing quotation marks around terms in poststructuralist analysis is stated clearly in Poststructural Policy Analysis (p. 5). There, Sue Goodwin and I note that 

The skepticism poststructuralism brings to knowledges and other “things” is signaled through the use of what are called scare quotes, such as we have inserted. Indeed, wherever we fear that the contingency of a term is not immediately visible we will place it in quotation marks to make it so, e.g., “subjects”, “objects”, “places”, and “problems”. 

In the 2026 book I decided that the term “self” in “self”-problematisation had itself to be problematised. That is, I recognised that the term “self” in my original version of “self-problematisation” was too fixed, that it sat too close to the very kind of “subject” WPR interrogated. As I explain in the text (2026 p. 81): “The term ‘self’ is placed in quotation marks to keep a focus on the ‘ongoing development” of provisional selves (Bonham & Bacchi 2017)”. 

I continue to probe the presuppositions underpinning “self”-problematisation (Question 2 in WPR) and also about its effects (Question 5). The recent work among WPR researchers on developing WPR as a “group exercise” (see Research Hub entry 29 Jan 2026) raises an important question. How is “knowledge” conceptualized in Process 7? Do individualist premises underpin a call to scrutinize one’s own knowledge processes? What difference to the analysis would a focus on group processes and group “knowledges” produce? 

In response to this thinking, in the 2026 book, I introduce two new “practices of the ‘self’”, a practice of “deep listening” (Bacchi & Eveline 2010, p. 328); and a practice of “allyship” (Dixit 2023). The Aboriginal concept of Dadirri (or “deep listening”), adopted among transcultural mental health practitioners, emphasises that listening is both an inter-subjective and an inter-active practice. Dadirri refers to listening with both “heart and ears”, challenging the assumption that listening is a purely “cognitive” activity. 

We can see here an expanding of the boundaries around assumed forms of “knowledge”. 

In the Research Hub entry on “WPR as a group exercise” (29 Jan 2026), I mention the work of Dixit (2023, p. 1) who introduces “allyship” as a practice of the self in her elaboration of “self-problematisation”. “Allyship” is described as a practice “in which researchers must ask ourselves what we come to problematise and what is left unproblematic in our own work”. In Dixit’s (2024) account, self-problematisation is not confined to individual refection or “reflexivity”. Rather, it involves a practice of building “allyship” and inviting scrutiny, from peers, of one’s research and observations: “Self-problematisation went from so-called ‘formalised knowledge’ practices to substantive discussions and engagements within a peer group and a gradual changing of who is a ‘knower’” (Dixit 2023, p. 11). The recent chapter by Dahl (in M. Rönnblom and R. Edwards (eds) Innovations in Critical Policy Analysis: What’s the Problem Represented to Be? Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 149-160) makes important contributions to this topic. 

As with Dadirri, there are attempts here to expand understandings of “knowledge”. I find these interventions a useful corrective to a tendency to produce “self”-problematisation as an “academic” analytic practice. In other words, there is a need to acknowledge the extent to which the concept “‘self’-problematisation” may remain captured within conventional views of rationality. 

Are we facing “infinite regress”? 

I suggest that the kind of questioning introduced in this entry is useful, if uncomfortable (Foucault 2000). I am well aware of the view that the practice of “self”-problematisation is a self-defeating form of analysis, that it initiates a circular argument with researchers endlessly seeking out lacunae in their analyses. A common critique is that “reflexivity” induces a kind of paralysis (Davies et al. 2004, p. 374) – we become so concerned to ensure that we are not imposing our assumptions and views on others that we become afraid to do anything. 

Contra this view I believe that there is a need for a critical device such as WPR to examine the complex relations of power through which we are governed. We should not be surprised to find that inadvertently we adopt rationalities that we believed we put in question. As Brown (1998 p. 40) describes, the goal becomes: 

“to make visible why particular positions and visions of the future occur to us, and especially to reveal when and where those positions work in the same register of ‘political rationality’ as that which they purport to criticize’.” 

Unsurprisingly, in this project, there is always more work to do. With Foucault (1994, p. 612), the task involves a practice of continuous critique, engaging in “a work of problematisation and of perpetual reproblematisation” (“un travail de problématisation et de perpétuelle reproblématisation”). 

Conclusion

This entry takes on the unusual task of subjecting part of the WPR template (Process 7) to critical scrutiny. Subjecting “‘self’-problematisation” to a WPR analysis in this way allows us to see that every research enterprise is an exercise in power relations. No such exercise is innocent. Working on “oneself” in this way – critically engaging with one’s assumptions and presuppositions – proves to be analytically and politically useful. 

References

Bacchi, C. 2009. Analysing Policy: What’s the Problem Represented to be?Frenchs Forest: Pearson Education. 

Bacchi, C. 2026. What’s the Problem Recommended to be? A new thinking paradigm. NY: Routledge.

Bacchi, C. and Eveline, J. 2010. Gender mainstreaming or diversity mainstreaming? The politics of “doing”. In C. Bacchi and J. Eveline (eds) Mainstreaming Politics: Gendering practices and feminist theory. Adelaide: University of Adelaide Press. pp. 311-334.

Bacchi, C. and Goodwin, S. 2016. Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice. NY: Palgrave Macmillan. See also second edition 2025.

Bonham, J & Bacchi, C 2017, Cycling “subjects” in ongoing-formation: the politics of interviews and interview analysis. Journal of Sociology, vol. 53, no. 3, pp. 687–703. DOI: 10.1177/1440783317715805. 

Brown, W 1998, ‘Genealogical politics’, in J Moss (ed), The later Foucault: politics and philosophy, Sage, London, pp. 33–49.

Dahl, H. M. 2026. Enabling self-problematising? Strategically choosing re-analysis and co-authorship with an attention to difference. In M. Rönnblom and R. Edwards (eds) Innovations in Critical Policy Analysis: What’s the Problem Represented to Be? Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 149-160.

Davies, B, Browne, J, Gannon, S, Honan, E, Laws, C, Mueller-Rockstroh, B & Petersen, EB 2004, The ambivalent practices of reflexivity. Qualitative Inquiry, vol. 10, 

no. 3, pp. 360–389. DOI: 10.1177/1077800403257638.

Dixit, A 2023, Caste(d) knowledges: (self)-problematising epistemic impunity and caste-privilege in academia.  Organization, advance online publication, DOI: 

10.1177/13505084231204102.

Dixit, A 2024, Anti-sexual harassment laws in India: Problematising caste(d), postcolonial and neoliberal policies, Palgrave Macmillan, New York.

Eveline, J. and Bacchi, C. 2010. Power, resistance and reflexive practice. In C. Bacchi and J. Eveline (eds) Mainstreaming Politics: Gendering practices and feminist theory. Adelaide: University of Adelaide Press. pp. 139-161.

Foucault, M 1994, À propos de la généalogie de l’éthique: Un aperçu du travail en cours, in D Defert & F Ewald (eds), Michel Foucault: dits et écrits 1954–1988, tome IV: 1980–1988, Gallimard, Paris, pp. 609–631. Foucault M. 2000. For an ethics of discomfort. In J. D. Faubion (ed.) Power: Essential Works of Foucault, 1954– 1984, Volume III. New York, NY: The New Press. pp. 443–448.

I believe it is time to revisit a topic I considered in a Research Hub entry on 30 April 2019 about WPR and normativity. The topic remains of interest to many people. Most recently, Rönnblom and Edwards (2025) raise the question of normativity in WPR in their overview of developments in the WPR approach. I start my reflections on this question by stating briefly the argument as put by Rönnblom and Edwards (2025). I use direct quotes to ensure that the terms of the discussion are clear. I proceed to refer back to the 2019 entry to make a case for a specific understanding of normativity in relation to WPR. To put it briefly, I see WPR as a deeply normative enterprise. Disagreements on this stance tend to reflect competing understandings of normativity. I hope to clarify the basis of these disagreements in an attempt to move the discussion forward. I will also be defending the compatibility of poststructuralism and normativity, as elaborated in this post. 

Normativity in Rönnblom and Edwards

Rönnblom and Edwards (2025: 2) identify what they describe as a disagreement “within the post-structuralist field” about “value stances”:

“On one end of the post-structural spectrum of ideas, power is regarded as operating through politically located sets of value understandings and political alternatives, such as feminism and decoloniality (themselves each involving different versions within a shared core). At the other end of the spectrum are post-structuralist analyses that, while they acknowledge power and politics, largely eschew normative responses and specific ideas about alternative political solutions. The WPR approach is located toward this latter end of the field.” 

Later in the article, the authors restate their proposition that WPR is characterised by “the refusal of any normative or political position”. They draw a contrast with 

“post-structural analysis such as discourse theory with a post-Marxist legacy (Laclau and Mouffe) or interpretative analysis that also takes the intentions of subjects into account in the analysis, as well as includes suggestions for political change (c.f. Frank Fischer), or relational approaches concerned with power dynamics and class interests (e.g. Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992).”

In contrast, they conclude that “the WPR approach does not include any normative suggestions for political change and avoids assumptions of intentionality”. They describe this position as “in some tension with the intellectual, political, and personal normative concerns of feminism”. 

It seems to me that the distancing of WPR from normative concerns in this argument involves several different claims. 

These include: (i) a distancing from “value stances”; (ii) a distancing from “specific ideas about alternative political solutions”; and (iii) a distancing from “assumptions of intentionality”. 

As a modification of these claims, I will put the case that WPR reflects “value stances” and, going further, that the refusal of “specific ideas about alternative political solutions” and distancing from “assumptions of intentionality” actually reflect value commitments and hence indicate a deep-seated normativity. The argument here is that political commitments and political strategies – e.g., whether, or not, it is deemed appropriate and/or wise to endorse specific reform options – are normative in character. 

Meanings of normativity

Clearly, in these discussions, we are dealing with competing understandings of normativity. The debate about “normativity” in political theory relates to whether, or not, researchers are entangled in value commitments and/or whether, or not, they prescribe, on the basis of these commitments, what ought to be done. I suggest that there are two separate points here – first, the extent to which researchers’ views and positions reflect “values”; and second, the extent to which they are prepared to impose these values on others. Along these lines Kelly (2012: 2; emphasis added) distinguishes between what he describes as an “inflationary” understanding of normativity as broad value commitments, and a “much stricter definition of the ‘normative’ … which takes it as merely a by-word for prescription, which is to say for ‘oughts’”.

Accepting this distinction, WPR presumes some “broad value commitments” but it refuses to make those commitments prescriptive. Instead of promoting specific reforms, it advances strategies for interrogating reform proposals, looking to identify their assumptions, their genealogy and their effects (WPR questions; Chapter 1 Bacchi 2026). The argument is that such interrogation is required to prevent or modify reforms/policies that can do damage (“harm”) to specific groups. 

In Poststructural Policy Analysis (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016: 25), Sue Goodwin and I directly confront the question of whether, or not, it is possible to support an egalitarian politics while refusing to advocate specific reforms (i.e. to refuse to be prescriptive). There we argue that, not only are the two perspectives compatible, they are actually necessary to each other. This is because reform programs often buy into problematic premises that need highlighting and questioning. We offer the examples of “social inclusion”, “literacy” and “wellbeing” from Chapter 6 in the book.

 With Foucault (2001: 1431), therefore, the objective is a practice of continuous critique, engaging in “a work of problematisation and of perpetual reproblematisation”. In this Research Hub entry, I suggest that such a stance is itself normative – that it reflects a decision to take nothing at face value and to test interventions in relation to their effects (subjectification, objectification, discursive, lived; WPR Question 5 Bacchi 2026, p. 24). 

I am not suggesting that the issues at stake here can or should be reduced to semantics – that it’s just a matter of different definitions of “normativity”. Rather, I pursue the implications of Tanesini’s (1994: 207) argument that concepts (e.g. “normativity”) have no fixed meaning but “are proposals about how we ought to proceed from here”. It follows that the varied uses of the term “normativity” reflect specific political visions. The critical task, therefore, involves examining how “normativity” as a concept functions in diagnosing future directions. Following this argument, I make the case that normativity as “broad value commitments” allows us to consider the widest possible range of political and theoretical positions within its ambit while prescribing specific reform options carries the danger of imposing interventions with deleterious consequences for specific groups. 

So, what are the “broad value commitments” associated with WPR? I would suggest that there is a commitment to improve the lives of specific groups commonly marginalised and oppressed. I could call this a “social justice” agenda. My hesitation here relates to the many debates about what “justice” means and entails. In earlier Research Hub contributions (30 August 2024, 29 Sept. 2024), I deal with this ambiguity through, first, examining WPR through a social justice lens, and second, through examining “social justice” through a WPR lens. This “double” research strategy, associated with post-structuralism, is discussed later. 

Where is the evidence that WPR supports a social “justice” agenda? Here I provide a few extracts from my recent book, What’s the Problem Represented to be? A new thinking paradigm (Routledge 2026). Chapter 3 (p. 51) emphasises how a WPR form of analysis provides policy workers and researchers with a means to “resist practices deemed to have deleterious consequences for specific people and groups of people” (the examples include people with disabilities, gender and the Sámi in Nordic countries). Chapter 8 highlights the role of a “genealogical sensibility” in WPR analyses. Genealogy is described as a “mindset” that “asks researchers to bring a critical eye to present injustices and inequities”. Chapter 19 (p. 229) states clearly that the point and purpose of identifying governmental rationalities, as in governmentality analyses (Chapter 7), is “to interrogate critically their premises and possible deleterious effects”.

I believe that there is no confusion in the research community about the point and purpose of a WPR form of analysis. I have been maintaining a Select Reference list of WPR applications (Welcome to the WPR Network! | Karlstad University (kau.se) for almost a decade. It is long and growing, with close to 1000 articles, chapters and theses explicitly adopting “what’s the problem represented to be?” as their starting research question. In absolutely every article, chapter or thesis, the expressed commitment is to, for example, “equality”, “diversity”, “inclusion”, reducing stereotyping, attacking oppression, reducing marginalisation, improving “rights”, improving the treatment of LGBTIQ subjects, Indigenous peoples, the Roma, those with disabilities, migrant groups, etc., etc. In each instance there is expressed concern with oppressive norms and normalisation. Clearly there are normative concerns at stake in the uptake of WPR as analytic strategy. In this spirit, the 2026 book (p. xii), acknowledges “the usefulness of the approach in supporting social justice commitments”. 

Rönnblom and Edwards (2025, p. 4) express concern about tensions between the WPR approach and “the intellectual, political, and personal normative concerns of feminism”. They acknowledge the important role of reflexivity but are unhappy that “WPR does not include any normative suggestions for political change and avoids assumptions of intentionality”. Again, here, I suggest it is not a matter of WPR lacking normative commitments (to feminism) but disagreements about political agendas. Specifically, in WPR emphasis is placed on recognition of contesting “versions” of feminism. The suggestion is that reforms that presume a singular feminist ethic (e.g. The Feminist Ethic of Care, Bacchi 2026: 123) can have deleterious political consequences for certain groups of women. 

As in the discussion above, I consider such political disagreements to be normative. Questioning the existence of a singular feminist ethic is a form of normative engagement, concerning what feminism (or “feminisms”) means. So too with disagreements about whether, or not, political analysis should target the intentions of political subjects. Decisions about analytical targets are, in my view, normative since they constitute proposals about how we ought to proceed from here (see Tanesini 1994, above). 

Poststructuralism and normativity

The question arises: can someone with declared poststructural sympathies (me and WPR) defend certain “values”? Isn’t there a basic contradiction? Don’t references to “values” imply truth statements inconsistent with a poststructural troubling of truth claims? I suggest: not necessarily!

There are long-standing debates about Foucault’s value commitments. Habermas coined the term “cryptonormativist” to describe Foucault, suggesting that he was a kind of secret or “closet” normativist, “publicly rejecting normative commitments while tacitly relying on them for criticism” (in Kolodny 1996: 67). Nancy Fraser (1989) also believed that Foucault’s unwillingness to declare his political ideals undermined his political analysis.

Kolodny (1996) provides a way forward in these discussions. Based on Foucault’s political commitments, he (64-65) argues that “Foucault’s work was self-consciously critical, and criticism is inescapably normative”. 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). His defence of “subjugated knowledges” (Bacchi 2026, Chapter 9), includes the knowledge of the psychiatric patient, the ill person, the nurse and the delinquent. 

Kolodny (1996: 65; emphasis in original) argues that the “later Foucault resisted not the demand for norms, therefore, but rather the demand of a normative theory”. As Cynthia Coe (2011) explains, Foucault “refuses the polarity of nihilism and normative foundationalism”:

“If we are searching for normative foundations, what Foucault is up to will look like nihilism. But the purpose of his genealogical work is to illuminate the contingency of our intellectual quests in order to open up new practices of resistance to particularly modern forms of oppression.” 

Accepting Kolodny’s argument (above) that criticism is inescapably normative, WPR seeks likewise to explore the space between nihilism and normative foundationalism. In this view, “cryptonormativism” is “not a gratuitous evasion of normative theory, but an agonism with its uncertainties and imperfections” (Kolodny 1996: 78-79). 

In other words, in the argument I develop here, it becomes possible to endorse certain “values” (e.g. justice, equality, etc.) so long as space is retained to examine them critically (e.g. “justice”, “equality”, etc [notice the insertion of quotation marks in this application]). This position is described as a “doubling research strategy”. Lather (2001) introduces the notion of a “doubled research practice” to deal with what she calls “stuck places”: “a way of thinking through of some of the complexities, ambiguities and contradictions involved in the process of doing qualitative research that is concerned with recognizing difference and with pursuing social justice” (Gunaratnam 2003: 3).

A “doubled research strategy” involves working with and against analytic categories at the same time. Gunaratnam (2003) illustrates the usefulness of this strategy in relation to racial categories. While recognising “race” as a constructed category, she points out that dissolving the category of “race” makes it difficult to claim the experience of racism. At the same time, poststructuralist critiques of essentialist notions of “race” can “be used in empirical research to generate more complex insights into the production of social location and experience”. It is therefore possible, and politically useful, to work with and against racial categories.  

In Mainstreaming Politics (2010), Joan Eveline and I describe this double move as embracing the simultaneous fixing and unfixing of meanings. In that book, for example, at times we adopt the convention of putting “women” and “men” in quotation marks to trouble the categories; at other times we use women and men, without quotation marks, as having an assumed meaning. This shifting of position reflects the complex political circumstances within which we navigate. 

For political reasons it is sometimes necessary to question the category “women” but at other times it is necessary to adopt the category. There is no confusion here. Rather, there is a determination to shape one’s strategy to particular political objectives, with the decisions about when to fix and when to unfix meanings dependent upon reflexive judgment about the political exigencies of the particular situation. The fixed meanings we necessarily impart on some occasions must be regarded as temporary and subject to continuous critical scrutiny in order to elaborate new, more inclusive meanings. The question is not whether to fix meaning – since for a range of reasons fixing must occur – but when to fix meaning and who to involve in the “fixing” exercise. 

To capture this double move in relation to “justice” or “social justice” I suggest approaching the topic through two perspectives: first, reflecting on WPR through a social justice lens; second, questioning “social justice” through a WPR lens. The reference to social justice in the first position has no quotation marks, signalling a desire to fix meaning. The use of quotation marks in the second position signals a willingness to unfix meaning. As a strategic intervention, these two proposals work together to elaborate new, more inclusive meanings. 

With this strategy I feel comfortable declaring my “broad value commitments”, recognising that they are not truth statements, but targets for critical analysis. It is this route that WPR travels in its normative positioning. This “self”-problematising stance produces reluctance to become prescriptive about change agendas, along with preparedness to practise, and indeed embrace, scepticism about the “truths” that are produced (Bacchi 2026, Chapter 6).

Conclusion

My hope in this entry is to encourage ongoing discussion of these important politico-theoretical issues. I find it useful to identify the three separate topics that are under consideration in these discussions: (1) positions on “values”; (2) positions on political reform strategies; (3) positions on the place of intentionality in political analysis. It is also useful to clarify (at least) two meanings of normativity: (1) as broad “values”; and (2) as willingness to endorse specific reforms. 

I make the case that WPR is normative in the sense of endorsing “broad value commitments” but that it resists translating these into specific reforms. A supplementary argument is that it is possible to characterise political positions (e.g. the refusal to advance specific reforms) as themselves normative in character. Finally, I argue that sustaining a critical approach to declared “values” makes it possible to produce a “normative” poststructuralism. We can defend egalitarian precepts so long as they remain open to interrogation, highlighting the importance of “self”-problematisation (“reflexivity”; see Chapter 6 in Bacchi 2026 on the need to sort through some of the complexities surrounding this issue).

References

Bacchi, C. and Eveline, J. 2010. Mainstreaming Politics: Gendering practices and feminist theory. Adelaide: University of Adelaide Press. 

Bacchi, C. and Goodwin, S. 2016. Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice. NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bacchi, C. 2026. What’s the Problem Represented to be? A new thinking paradigm. NY: Routledge.

Catucci, S. 2018. The Prison Beyond its Theory: Between Michel Foucault’s Militancy and Thought. In E. Fransson, F. Giofrè and B. Johnsen (eds) Prison Architecture and Humans. Olso: Cappelen Damm Akademisk.

Coe, C. D. 2011 Review of: D. Taylor (Ed.) Michel Foucault: Key Concepts. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews: An Electronic Journal. Available at: https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/michel-foucault-key-concepts/ (viewed on 21 January 2019).

Foucault, M. (2001) [1984]. À propos de la généalogie de l’éthique: Un aperçu du travail en cours (rewritten version). In D. Defert, & F. Ewald (Eds.), Michel Foucault: Dits et Écrits, tome II. Paris: Gallimard.

Fraser, N. 1989. Foucault on Modern Power: Empirical Insights and Normative Confusions. In N. Fraser, Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. 17-34.

Gunaratnam, Y. 2003. Researching Race and Ethnicity: Methods, Knowledge and Power. London: Sage.

Kelly, M. 2018. For Foucault: Against Normative Political Theory. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Kolodny, N. 1996. The ethics of cryponormativism: A defense of Foucault’s evasions. Philosophy and Social Criticism  22(5): 63-84.

Lather, P. 2001. Postbook: Working the Ruins of Feminist Ethnography. Signs, 27(1): 199-227.

Rönnblom, M. & Edwards, R. (04 Sep 2025): A critical explanation of uses of Carol Bacchi’s WPR approach, Critical Policy Studies, DOI: 10.1080/19460171.2025.2555388 Tanesini, A 1994, ‘Whose language?’, in K Lennon & M Whitford (eds), Knowing the difference: feminist perspectives in epistemology, Routledge, New York, pp. 203– 216, DOI: 10.4324/9780203216125

In the previous entry (28 Dec 2025) I mentioned the increasing interest in incorporating collective research in WPR analyses (see for example Hickman and Muir 2025). Here I want to offer some preliminary thoughts on this proposal – why I find it exciting, and the challenges involved in such a project.

Exploring the boundaries of WPR

On several occasions, I have described WPR as a “work in progress”. In my new book (Bacchi 2026) I describe important developments in the approach – e.g. bringing a genealogical sensibility to the analysis; shifting the emphasis from constructionism to “performativity”, broadening the target beyond “problems” to encompass “risks”, “difficulties”, etc. The goal in each case is to encourage clarification and elaboration of the critical potential of WPR. 

In a short history of WPR produced in a recent entry (28 Nov 2025) I mention that more work needs to be done on expanding this potential:

“It has become clear to me that several of the WPR questions would benefit from providing more guidance on how to proceed. More work is needed, therefore, on developing approaches that give effect to the WPR questions. I enthusiastically welcome new contributions that address this task.”

In this entry I explore the place collaborative and collective research may play in expanding the critical potential of WPR. I use the term “collaborative” to refer to work produced by cooperating researchers, and “collective” to describe research based on wider community involvement. The next section highlights contributions where collaborative and collective research proves useful in identifying silencing practices and crafting alternative problematisations (Question 4 in WPR). The subsequent section considers how collective research can feature usefully in understanding “lived effects” and “subjugated knowledges” (Questions 5 and 6). The final section reflects on possible theoretical challenges to the crafting of these arguments. 

Strategic interventions: Question 4

Question 4: What is left unproblematic in this problem representation? What is silenced? Can the ‘problem’ be conceptualised differently?

In past work I identify several analytic strategies to pursue and identify silencing practices in one’s selected topic of interest. I mention the usefulness of reading and reflecting on available critical literatures around the topic area. I also emphasise the kinds of insights that can be generated through comparative analysis – showing for example how a “problem” can look quite different in different contexts. 

The practice of “self”-problematisation is also promoted as a way to draw attention to silencing practices in one’s own work. In my new book (Bacchi 2026; Chapter 6) I highlight the useful analysis produced by Weier and Farrugia (2020). Their article on the rescheduling of low-dose codeine products by Australia’s therapeutic drug regulator to prescription-only sale applies the WPR questions to generate “alternative problematisations”. The authors then apply WPR thinking to these “alternative problematisations” in a practice of “self”-problematisation (see Process 7 in Table of WPR questions, Bacchi 2006, end of Chapter 1; available Open Access). 

Through applying WPR thinking in this way, Weier and Farrugia (2020) identified important critical questions that their initial analysis had failed to address: first, the need to open the notion of chronic pain itself to analysis; second, the need to reconsider the erasure of pleasure from the authors’ analysis; and third, the need to consider which forms of knowledge were privileged in the regulator’s decision, an issue absent in the original study (p. 6). In other words, through “self”-problematisation the authors identified silences in their initial WPR analysis.

Collaborative research and silencing practices

There have been several initiatives that recommend the use of collaborative research to identify and work past silencing practices. In the previous entry (28 Dec 2025) Costello et al. (2025) collect the contrasting perspectives of seven different authors/contributors on the topic of how to problematise AI in Education (AIED). According to the lead author, Costello, such an approach generates research that is “necessarily idiosyncratic, situated in our research and teaching practices”. This methodological intervention is designed to recognise dissensus and to widen the conversation around AIED. 

In an earlier entry (28 April 2025), I refer to the research of Fischer et al. (2024) and their deliberate attempt to enlist researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds to broaden their analysis. Recalling their topic – exploring the deep-seated epistemological and ontological assumptions in academic articles on agroecology (AE) and sustainable intensification (SI) in relation to climate change – they created a space to jointly discuss their reading of contrasting problematisations “in an interdisciplinary group”. Again, the objective here is to create a space where silencing practices may be identified. 

In my new book (Bacchi 2026), I explore Dixit’s (2024) work on “allyship”, which invites scrutiny, from peers, of one’s research and observations. “Self-problematisation went from so-called ‘formalised knowledge’ practices to substantive discussions and engagements within a peer group and a gradual changing of who is a ‘knower’” (Dixit 2023, p. 11).

The Norwegian scholars, Eggebø, Lundberg and Teigen (2022) have written specifically on “silences” in Norway’s climate change policy. Drawing on WPR thinking they identify a “lack of connection between gender equality and climate policy in the Global North”. Eggebø (2020) has also developed a framework called “Collective Qualitative Analysis” which “aims to gather a research group for a collective workshop where they engage in the work of analysis together” (see https://hdl.handle.net/11250/2724396). Prospects for combining this analytic method with WPR thinking are under consideration (personal communication July 2025).

The initiatives just described defend the need to involve groups of scholars in generating research into problematisations. There is willingness to challenge the notion of the solitary scholar producing knowledge. As WPR thinking replaces the “sovereign subject” of Western consciousness with a decentred poststructuralist “subject”, it provides fertile soil for collaborative research projects of this kind. 

Collective research and silencing practices

Collective research can extend beyond the sorts of joint (or collaborative) research projects introduced above. Hickman and Muir (2025) broaden the range of contributors to WPR analyses beyond “experts” and academics. To increase user involvement in their project on cervical screening campaigns, they ran two collaborative analysis workshops, one with a “Lived Experience” group and another with a “Learned Experience” group. While the “Learned Experience” group drew on their academic and professional expertise, the “Lived Experience” group consisted of individuals who had “direct, personal experience of the issues being analyzed”.  

This expansion of the research project to include non-academics is linked to longstanding debates about involving the wider community in policy making. The issue of community consultation and its effectiveness is hotly contested. Some theorists see community consultation as a token exercise and as limited in its democratic potential (see Squires 2005 on “citizen juries”). At the same time, other theorists place a good deal of faith in the democratic promise of community participation. In other work (Osborne, Bacchi and MacKenzie 2010, p. 19), my colleagues and I question the tendency to create a sharp dichotomy “setting democratic practice against bureaucratic expertise”.

My concern in this entry is a more precise question about what exactly wider community participation can contribute to WPR analysis. I’ve chosen to examine this question through considering the potential contribution of community members to recognition of “lived effects” (Question 5) and “subjugated knowledges” (Question 6

Strategic interventions: Questions 5 and 6

Question 5: What effects (discursive, subjectification, objectification, lived) are produced by this representation of the ‘problem’?

Question 6: How and where has this representation of the ‘problem’ been produced, disseminated and defended? How has it been and/or can it be disrupted and replaced? Consider the role of ‘subjugated knowledges’. (Bacchi 2026, end of Chapter 1)

For Question 5, I restrict my comments to the category of “lived effects” because it attracts so much interest and, indeed, so much support. Specifically, among WPR researchers, there is often an expressed wish to involve non-academic participants in accessing “lived effects”. The argument, in brief, is that the wider-than-academic community has something unique to offer to researchers, their “lived experience”. This proposition links closely to discussion of “subjugated knowledges” (Chapter 9 in Bacchi 2026), again with the argument that those with “lived experience” have unique perspectives that are valuable and that tend to be devalued. 

Hickman and Muir (2025, p. 2) explain the rationale behind this contention. They argue that “research using co-production rejects the traditional hierarchical research paradigm that privileges ‘objective’ knowledge-production methods and undervalues experiential knowledges”. They identify “strong convergences between the aims of co-production and Foucault’s concept of subjugated knowledges”. Here they quote Foucault (1980) to the effect that subjugated knowledges are those that “have been explicitly disqualified as inadequate to their task or insufficiently elaborated: naïve knowledges, located low down on the hierarchy, beneath the required level of cognition or scientificity”. 

“Lived effects” is a crucially important concept in WPR thinking. It offers an answer to critics who argue that the approach deals only with representations and has little to say about “real life”. The notion of “lived effects” is also vital to the claim that problem representations create realities (Bacchi 2026, Chapter 14). For example, if welfare is constituted to be a handout rather than a right, this problem representation can affect the amount of money distributed to welfare recipients, with real lived effects. 

Given the focus in Foucault and in WPR on the need to challenge what is “in the true” (rather than some abstract notion of “truth”), the category “subjugated knowledges” provides an important strategic intervention. Illustrative of this stance, Rudolf (2017) engages in dialogue with participating South African communities to question deep-seated Western cosmological assumptions in her own work.

I should note that those who wish to use “lived effects” and “subjugated knowledges” commonly turn to interviews as a research method. Interviews are treated as supplying access to “lived experience”. It is here, as I go on to discuss, that our theoretical troubles surface. 

Challenges to collective analysis

There are two issues that require comment and reflection in relation to “lived effects” and “subjugated knowledges”. First, we need to consider how “subjects” are conceptualised in these accounts. Second, we need to engage directly with questions about claims to “truth” and “knowledge”. 

On the question of the “subject” I refer you to Chapter 4 in Bacchi 2026. There I make the case that how the “subject” is conceptualised underpins all subsequent questions and forms of analysis associated with WPR. It is not a topic that can be ignored. 

I describe the “subject” in WPR as provisional and in ongoing formation. You will recognise here a challenge to the Enlightenment subject with a separate interior consciousness. If this is the case, what possible grounds are available for claiming that researchers can access the “truth” about any selected topic? The notion of “lived experience”, and hence of “lived effects”, needs to be discussed with an eye to this question of “subject” formation. Unqualified use of these terms restricts the usefulness of the analysis. 

Relatedly, the term “lived experience” implies that research “subjects” can speak to the “truth” of their experience. The implication is that, through interviews, researchers can access this “true knowledge”. Joan Scott (1991) challenged this view of “experience” as a grounding for truth some years ago but the debates around this topic remain with us. In more recent iterations, Vitellone (2018) challenges conventional social science approaches to drug use and claims to expertise. She seeks “situated knowledge” from the users of syringes. 

“Replacing theoretical questions with drug users experience produced an alternative research practice, which directed our focus away from the reflections and interpretations of the participant observer and critical social theorist, to drug users description of shooting up and the spaces of injecting as data for learning, feeling and thinking with. (Vitellone 2018, p. 64)”.

According to Isabelle Stengers (in Vitelloni), to produce such situated knowledge requires that researchers develop ‘rapport’ with drug users. Importantly, for both Stengers and Vitelloni creating a rapport is always a “local, precarious event”. Moreover, such an intervention needs to be recognised as political and pragmatic, never innocent. With Jennifer Bonham, I have developed a framework called Poststructural Interview Analysis (PIA) that offers a way to draw upon interview transcripts to examine the politics involved in shaping the kind of person it is possible to become (Bacchi and Bonham 2025, p. 142). 

Where do these reflections leave the commitment to draw upon “subjugated knowledges” and “lived effects” in WPR analyses? The suggestion here is that appeals to “lived experience/s” require acknowledgement of the tentative and political nature of those appeals. Following Foucault, there is no suggestion that any particular group has privileged access to “truth” because of their social location. Truth claims are always political claims.

Rather than seeking “truth”, WPR thinking targets the politics involved in “truth” production. “Subjugated knowledges”, therefore, do not represent “truth”. They provide a tactical challenge to the “centralising powers” of “an organised scientific discourse” (Foucault 1980, p. 84). 

Conclusion

I am indeed excited about the possibility of undertaking WPR analyses as a group exercise. I believe that the active working through of the WPR questions among groups of researchers or community members can stimulate useful interactions. It could, for example, raise new questions about silencing practices and “lived effects”. 

The remaining challenge, and it is immense, is to have this form of analysis recognised in mainstream political analysis. Here, I refer not just to collaborative research, which has a certain acceptance, but to research that questions conventional views of “knowledge” and “experience”. A recent article describes such research as “dangerous” (Brown and Proctor 2025) in the sense that, first, it queries widely accepted research protocols and second, relatedly, it threatens the status of vulnerable students. I share the authors’ conviction regarding “the urgency” for the “continued creation and circulation” of such research and the need for “concentrated support by faculty members” (p. 116).

References

Bacchi,C. 2026. What’s the Problem Represented to be? A new thinking paradigm. NY: Routledge. 

Bacchi, C. and Bonham, J. 2025. Chapter 8: Poststructural Interview Analysis: Politicizing “Personhood”, in C. Bacchi and S. Goodwin, Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice, second edition. NY: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 131-145.

Brown, S. and Proctor, K. 2025. Dangerous Dissertations: Alternative Approaches to Dissertation Inquiry. Impacting Education: Journal on Transforming Professional Practice. impactinged.pitt.edu Vol. 10 No. 3 (2025) DOI 10.5195/ie.2025.494 114 Pp 113-122

Costello, E., Ferreira, G., Hrastinski, S., McDonald, J.K., Tlili, A., Veletsianos, G., Marin, V.I., Huijser, H. & Altena, S. (2025). Artificial Intelligence in Education Research and Scholarship: Seven Framings. Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice, 22(3). https://doi.org/10.53761/xs5e3834 

Dixit, A 2023, ‘Caste(d) knowledges: (self)-problematising epistemic impunity and caste-privilege in academia’, Organization, advance online publication, DOI:10.1177/13505084231204102

Eggebø, Helga (2020) Collective qualitative analysis (V. Szepessy, Trans.) Norsk sosiologisk tidssskrift 4(2): 106-122. Doi: 10.18261/issn.2535-2512-2020-02-03, translation available at https://hdl.handle.net/11250/2724396 

Eggebø, H., Lundberg, A. K., and Teigen, M. 2022. Gaps and Silences: Gender and Climate Policies in the Global North. Social Politics, https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxac032

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 

Foucault, M 1980, ‘Two lectures’, in C Gordon (ed.), Power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings 1972–1977 by Michel Foucault, trans. C Gordon et al., Pantheon Books, New York, pp. 78–108.

Hickman, M. E. & Muir, R. (23 Sep 2025): Integrating co-analysis and researcher reflexivity into Bacchi’s ‘what is the problem represented to be?’ framework: A cervical screening case study, Critical Policy Studies, DOI: 10.1080/19460171.2025.2561142 

Osborne, K., Bacchi, C. and Mackenzie, C. 2010. “Gender analysis and community participation: The role of women’s policy units”, in C. Bacchi and J. Eveline (eds) Mainstreaming politics: Gendering practices and feminist theory. Adelaide: University of Adelaide Press. pp. 191-213.

Rudolph, N 2017, ‘Hierarchies of knowledge, incommensurabilities and silences in South African ECD policy: whose knowledge counts?’, Journal of Pedagogy, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 77–98, DOI:10.1515/jped-2017-0004.

Scott, JW 1991, ‘The evidence of experience’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 773–797, DOI:10.1086/448612.

Squires, J. 2005. Is mainstreaming transformative? Theorising mainstreaming in the context of diversity and deliberation”, Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society, 12(2): 366-388.

Weier, M & Farrugia, A 2020, ‘“Potential issues of morbidity, toxicity and dependence”: problematizing the up-scheduling of over-the-counter codeine in Australia’, International Journal of Drug Policy, vol. 80, article 102538, DOI:10.1016/j.drugpo.2019.07.033. Vitellone, N 2018, ‘Situating the syringe’, International Journal of Drug Policy, vol. 61, pp. 62–65, DOI:10.1016/j.drugpo.2018.07.005.

In my recent book (Routledge 2026) I describe the WPR approach as a “new thinking paradigm”. For those new to these posts, WPR is the acronym for What’s the Problem Represented to be?, initially developed as a mode of critical policy analysis (Bacchi 2009). The argument in the new book is that WPR has important uses beyond policy analysis because, in effect, it offers a way of thinking differently, captured in the term “WPR thinking”. 

“Differently from what?” you may ask. Put simply, it mounts a challenge to the problem-solving paradigm that historically and currently dominates the intellectual and policy landscape. While there have been many critics of problem-solving, WPR offers an alternative. It challenges the presumption that problems simply exist waiting to be solved and argues instead that proposals for change (“proposed solutions”) constitute “problems” as particular sorts of problem. 

This argument should be familiar to those on the WPR list ( Welcome to the WPR Network! | Karlstad University (kau.se) and to those who have used the approach in their research. The new book shows how this analytic strategy provides openings for critical thinking in areas uncharted in earlier writing. In effect then it expands the reach of WPR thinking. New target areas include: items (such as maps or buildings), theoretical assumptions (to produce innovative literature and scoping reviews), images, media reports, and many others. 

The new book also makes a claim that a range of key terms in social and political analysis – e.g. “crises”, “issues”, “difficulties”, “matters of concern”, and others – operate as placeholders in much the same way that “problems” do. Hence, as with “problems”, they need to be displaced. The new book pursues a critique of all such reactive modes of explanation and analysis. Today’s entry offers an example to illustrate how WPR operates as a useful analytic strategy in diverse sites. 

Using WPR thinking

I was prompted to produce this entry by the following article: 

Costello, E., Ferreira, G., Hrastinski, S., McDonald, J.K., Tlili, A., Veletsianos, G., Marin, V.I., Huijser, H. & Altena, S. (2025). Artificial Intelligence in Education Research and Scholarship: Seven Framings. Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice, 22(3). https://doi.org/10.53761/xs5e3834 

The article does not mention “What’s the Problem Represented to be?” in the text. And it does not apply the WPR questions (see Table at the end of Chapter 1 in Bacchi 2026). Yet, I have added it to the growing list of WPR applications that explicitly apply WPR ( Welcome to the WPR Network! | Karlstad University (kau.se)

Why have I done this? The authors use this quote as an epigraph: 

“What one proposes to do about something reveals what one thinks is problematic (needs to change)” (Bacchi, 2012, p. 21). 

The quote is taken from a chapter I wrote in 2012 introducing a WPR mode of analysis. In my new book (Bacchi 2026) I describe this argument as the key premise in WPR. It makes the point that WPR challenges the presumption that problems simply exist waiting to be solved and argues instead that proposals for change (“proposed solutions”) constitute “problems” as particular sorts of problem (see opening paragraph above). By placing this quote as an epigraph, the authors signal that they intend to deploy “WPR thinking” (though they don’t name it as such). What shape does this take? How does WPR thinking prove useful in their account? 

The Costello et al. article offers seven proposals for how to approach the topic of AI in Education (AIED). The authors refer to these proposals as “framings”.  In summary, these framings include: methodological pluralism; metaphors; ethnographic studies; imagining futures through fiction; humanistic groundings of AI design and development; third space professionals in research; and open education. The goal in adopting these “framings” is to open up for consideration a variety of ways of problematising AI in Education. 

Costello et al. (2025) describe their project as developing a “carrier bag” of “problem areas, approaches and framings” (p.1). The declared objective is to resist “‘hero narratives’ of technologies as weapons of domination”. Instead, the authors defend the usefulness of “small bags used in the practice of foraging”. There is a clear link here to a poststructuralist discomfort with grand narratives and close attention to site-specific conditions. 

Applying the thinking in the quote from my 2012 chapter set out in the epigraph, the seven proposals (see above) offer different ways to problematise AI. In the Conclusion, the authors explain that their intent is to produce research that “widens the conversation on AI so we see it through different lenses and frames”. In particular, the objective is to offer modes of analysis that assist researchers “to connect research on AI to the overarching aims of education itself”. We are told that disagreements among the seven contributing authors are to be expected. Indeed, “dissensus and diversity” are considered to be “useful”. 

This form of engagement resonates with WPR thinking and its commitment to continuous problematisation. However, importantly, the authors do not subject the seven proposed “solutions” (their seven identified “framings” or problematisations) to the WPR questions, as would be expected in a WPR analysis. I proceed to comment on the seven proposals, how they are elaborated and where such questioning would have been useful. To begin, I wish to emphasise the novelty of the methodology adopted in the article. 

Collective and collaborative research

The Costello et al. (2025) article offers an innovative collaborative approach to the selected topic (how AI is problematised). Each of the seven “framings” is produced by a different author, generating research that is “necessarily idiosyncratic, situated in our research and teaching practices”. The article describes their “method” in some detail:

writing was conducted in a sprint over the summer of 2025 using a shared Google doc. The first author led the ideation of an initial list of topics. The group discussed topics, agreed the final set and worked on their sections in the shared document which helped authors avoid overlap and attempt to find continuities. 

Disagreements, we are told, are to be expected (see above) because authors with contrasting backgrounds were involved in the exercise.

The question of how to incorporate collective research in WPR analyses is taken up in a recent publication by Hickman and Muir (2025). How to produce WPR as a “group exercise” is pursued in a subsequent Research Hub entry. 

AI and modes of analysis

Remembering that dissensus is to be expected, what do the seven recommended “framings” achieve in terms of innovative problematisations of AI? And where could “self”-problematisation add to the analysis? 

Methodological Pluralism

This contribution challenges the tendency to describe AI in extremes, as either “a technological utopia” or “a dystopian future of human irrelevance”. In the place of this representation, it offers to illuminate “the plurality and messiness of the ways in which technologies are used in education”. To this end it endorses methodological pluralism, including interpretive approaches, “ranging from ethnography to phenomenology to discourse analysis”. At the same time, it argues that “computational and data science methods can help researchers make sense of vast datasets of user-AI interactions”. 

As already mentioned, the seven frames in the Costello et al. (2025) article are not targeted for a WPR analysis. If such analysis had been included, there would have been room to question the assumptions underpinning methodological pluralism. This form of analysis appears in my new book in its endorsement of “paradigm talk” (Bacchi 2026, Chapters 15, 16, 17 and 18). 

Problematising through Metaphors

This contribution offers a two-pronged form of analysis. First, it suggests the usefulness of critically analysing the metaphors used to describe AI; second, it recommends using AI metaphors creatively. 

The former (examining existing metaphors), it is argued, reveals “how AI is conceptualised and how education is imagined – surfacing assumptions about pedagogy, the learner and the role of teachers”. The contribution offers the example of metaphors that anthropomorphize AI, making it more “personable” and thus “easier to be unsuspectingly peddled”. 

On the latter (promoting creative use of metaphors), the author of this section of the article puts the case that “problems already given may have to be reframed”. Here the author directs attention to the vexed question of plagiarism, “perhaps an issue soon to become a non-problem due to GenAI”. In a clear example of WPR thinking, the author describes how “the ‘solution’ presents itself in the shape of a burgeoning market of AI detection platforms”. This problematisation is described as producing “a ‘Bootleg” industry of fabricated solutions to fabricated problems”. The usefulness of WPR thinking in relation to the topic of GenAI policies in higher education assessment is demonstrated in several recent articles (see Groves and Nagy 2025; Luo 2024; Mochizuki, Bruillard & Bryan 2025). 

Ethnographic Study of AI in Education

This contribution suggests the benefits of producing an ethnography of “technology hype itself”. It asks why “we can look back on previous technology hypes so critically, while at the same time convincing ourselves that this time it is going to be different”. What is needed, in this account, is “deep, extended observation and participation that tells us something about our own tendencies to adopt technologies so uncritically” and “collective autoethnographies” that focus on “localised practices”. 

As with the section on methodological pluralism, the use of ethnography to problematise AI is not subjected to a WPR analysis. My new book (Bacchi 2026) contains a chapter (Chapter 18) that undertakes this task. 

Imaging Futures through Fiction

Education fiction is promoted as a way to prompt reflection on the uses of AI in education, and to allow us “to act in the present by imaging possible futures”. Fiction is described as a “powerful practical strategy for both teaching and learning that can foster critical and technoskeptical thinking in students”. Education fiction becomes a creative tool “with which to discuss complex and often difficult topics around AI’s influence”. 

In the recent IPPA conference in Chiang Mai (2-4 July 2025), Laura Bea, in a special WPR seminar, presented a paper titled, “Can fiction help us to rethink public policy on violence” (Critical Policy Conversations, https://criticalpolicy.co.uk/icpp7/). Related issues are raised in a special Research Hub entry (29 Nov 2022) on “Sociotechnical imaginaries and WPR: Exploring connections” (see also Rahm and Rahm-Skågeby 2023). The task becomes examining the problematisations in this material to see what it can produce as useful political analysis.

Humanistic Grounding in AI Design and Development

This contribution to the Costello et al. (2025) article stresses the need for a humanistic ethics in AI research, which shifts “the focus from the outcomes that AI can achieve to the procedures through which it does”. The declared objective is to create “user-centred solutions that address the diverse needs of learners”. The question according to this author becomes: “Which humanistic principles should be considered when designing and developing AI-powered systems in education?”. 

The entire Costello et al. (2025) article reflects strong humanistic principles. The opening sentence reads: “The words you are reading right now were written by a human being”. The closing sentence to the article states emphatically that “the messiness of the collaborative activities of both teaching and research” are “never entirely determinate practices and always have passionate human beings at their heart”. 

There appears to be no place in the article to query humanist assumptions. WPR thinking would create space to consider how subjects are conceptualised in this account. 

Third space professionals in AI educational research

The author of this section stresses the need to broaden the focus on “teachers” in AI educational research to include “other actors in universities who contribute to learning and teaching”. These actors include “learning designers, academic developers and learning technologists”. These professionals are considered to “add considerable value to how the AI research agenda is conceptualised, designed and enacted”.

Entanglement of Open Education and AI

This contribution emphasises the need to consider the relationship between AI and Open Education as an “entangled pedagogy”. On the one hand, the author argues that the “potential of AI to support digital public goods” ought to be recognised. On the other hand, s/he highlights the challenges AI raises to Open Education in the form of “algorithmic bias, digital divide expansion and over-reliance on proprietary AI models”. 

The example of open licensing (e.g. Creative Commons) is put forward to illustrate the challenges and tensions in this “entangled” relationship. This author makes the case that the whole meaning of “open” in Open Education is put into question because generative AI can generate content “without reference to the aggregated sources used to produce the output”. The author expresses the need for more research “on this evolving notion of openness in the context of education”. In other words, s/he wishes to problematise “openness”, a topic that could be explored using WPR.

Conclusion

The structure of the Costello et al. (2025) article reflects what I call “WPR thinking” in several ways but stops short of applying the WPR questions to its own proposals (see Process 7 in WPR template; Chapter 1 in Bacchi 2026). It offers seven “lenses” through which to consider how AI is conceptualised. On occasion it also uses examples of application (e.g. on plagiarism) that closely follow the WPR mode of inquiry – starting from proposals (AI detection platforms) and working backwards to identify problem representations. 

The focus on competing entry-points to studying AIED with the expressed goal of widening the conversation on AI reflects the WPR intent to explore complexity in social relations. Given the diverse backgrounds of contributors, understandably, the uptake of WPR is uneven. “Self”-problematisation (Process 7) could have provided a means to surface these contrasting perspectives and their effects, an argument pursued in the next entry. 

References

Bacchi, C. 2009. Analysing Policy: What’s the Problem Represented to be?Frenchs Forest, NSW: Pearson Education.

Bacchi, C. 2012. Introducing the ‘What’s the Problem Represented to be?’ approach. Engaging with Carol Bacchi: Strategic interventions and exchanges, 21-24. in Eds Blestsas, A., & Beasley, C. Engaging with Carol Bacchi. Strategic interventions and exchanges. University of Adelaide Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/UPO9780987171856.003 

Bacchi, C. 2026. What’s the Problem Represented to be? A new thinking paradigm. New York: Routledge. 

Costello, E., Ferreira, G., Hrastinski, S., McDonald, J.K., Tlili, A., Veletsianos, G., Marin, V.I., Huijser, H. & Altena, S. (2025). Artificial Intelligence in Education Research and Scholarship: Seven Framings. Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice, 22(3). https://doi.org/10.53761/xs5e3834 

Groves, A. and Nagy, V. 2025. Crime or Failure of Integrity: What is the Problem of Contract Cheating Represented to be in Australia? Higher Education Policy,https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-025-00402-6

Hickman, M. E. & Muir, R. (23 Sep 2025): Integrating co-analysis and researcher reflexivity into Bacchi’s ‘what is the problem represented to be?’ framework: A cervical screening case study, Critical Policy Studies, DOI: 10.1080/19460171.2025.2561142 

Luo, J 2024, “A critical review of GenAI policies in higher education assessment: a call to reconsider the ‘originality of students’ work “, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, DOI: 10.1080/02602938.2024.2309963 

Mochizuki, Y., Bruillard, E. & Bryan, A. (21 May 2025): The ethics of AI or techno-solutionism? UNESCO’s policy guidance on AI in education, British Journal of Sociology of Education, DOI: 10.1080/01425692.2025.2502808 

Rahm, L. and Rahm-Skågeby, J. 2023. Imaginaries and problematisations: A heuristic lens in the age of artificial intelligence in education.  British Journal of Educational Technology, pp. 1-13. DOI: 10.1111/bjet.13319