COMMENT: Following on from the last entry on the challenges of self-problematization, I want to reflect on the relationship between research/ers and “problems”. To prefigure the argument, I feel disquiet at the extent to which “problems” as self-evident givens, as “problems-that-exist”, become the bread and butter of many, if not most, researchers. I refer to this phenomenon as “the investment in problems”. Clearly, this disquiet is due to my conviction that “problems” are not self-evident givens but are produced through the proposals purported to address them. Hence, treating them as givens misses out on the politics involved in their formation.

I have argued for some time and in many places that there is a need to disrupt the common impression in political deliberation that policy needs to solve “problems-that-exist”. Rather, I have argued that governing takes place through the production of “problems” as particular sorts of problems. In order to govern, governments (and other agencies) have to problematize their territory – to put forward proposed changes as “solutions” to “problems”. In the process of doing this, “problems” are shaped or problematized in particular ways. I am not talking about deliberate manipulation, but about the way in which proposed “solutions” necessarily produce a “problem” as a particular kind of “problem”. An example I often use is that a proposal to offer women training programs as a way to increase their representation in high status positions produces the “problem” as women’s lack of training. My argument, therefore, is that it is misleading to refer to problems as simply existing, waiting to be “solved”. There are no problems separate from their problematizations, and the analytic task becomes to interrogate these problematizations – to ask what presuppositions and discourses they rely upon, how they have come to be (i.e. “the circumstances, practices, historical conjunctures and relations that have produced them” (Foucault, 1991)), how they function and with what effects.

Given this view, I am keenly interested to explore how problems have come to acquire a self-evident status as “things-that-exist” [I’d like to thank Angie Bletsas for this useful phrase] and, relatedly, how problem-solving has come to dominate our political and intellectual landscape. An important contributing factor, I argue, is the symbiosis between researchers and “problems”, the ways in which researchers become involved in studying “problems-that-exist”. As an example, evidence-based policy invites researchers to propose studies on pre-set problems. Problems, therefore, become taken-for-granted foci for analysis, and researchers become invested in both the thinking behind problem-solving and in the methods associated with such thinking (e.g. empirical studies of alternative interventions along the lines of scientific problem-solving).

For example, in my study of alcohol and other drug policy (Bacchi 2015: 140), I found that the notion of “alcohol problems” emerged as a category of analysis in part due to researchers’ concerns to establish credibility for their work. The category “alcohol problems” raised the profile of associated research. Moreover, since – as conceptualized – “alcohol problems” – e.g. domestic violence, drink drinking, absenteeism – could be counted, they fitted the prevailing positivist research paradigm. “Alcohol problems” thus are sociological and political creations, not “facts”.

In more recent research I have been investigating the political fallout accompanying international “skills” assessment programs, specifically the OECD’s PISA [Programme for International Student Assessment] and PIAAC [Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies] programs.  I believe it is important to consider how these programs establish their authority. One factor appears to be the way in which researchers become “co-opted” into research projects devoted to counting and assessing student and adult “skills”. As just one example, Waldow (2009: 481) notes: “The enormous resonance of the PISA debate has led to a massive expansion of empirical educational research of the PISA-type in Germany”. And with this research, Radhika Gorur (2016) argues, it is becoming increasingly difficult not to “see like PISA”.

Making these sorts of observations is a fraught exercise, unlikely to make you popular. In a keynote address at a 2009 conference at the University of Surrey on the “mother war” problem, I drew attention to the ways in which social attitude surveys – through the questions asked – played a part in producing a presumed dichotomy between “stay-at-home” mothers and “working” mothers. In this way the research reproduced the “problem” of the “mother war”.

In discussion I was taken to task for suggesting that researchers abandon reliance on social attitude surveys, a method associated with “solid research” and “defendable” “outcomes”.  I was told that the Vice Chancellor Research, for one, would be deeply unhappy should researchers follow this advice (Bacchi 2012: 149)!

Clearly, the suggestion that our research needs to be monitored for its political effects is contentious. This suggestion follows from the argument developed in an earlier entry on “ontological politics” [10 December 2017], that research practices produce realities. As Annemarie Mol (2002: 155; emphasis in original) says, “Methods are not a way of opening a window on the world, but a way of interfering with it. They act, they mediatebetween an object and its representations”.

This issue is clearly linked to the question of research funding and research “utilization” (Bacchi 2008). Put simply, how research is funded affects the extent to which researchers become “invested” in “problems”. If researchers are compelled to seek and accept research projects funded from external (non-university) sources, including private sector and government funding, they are likely presented with pre-set “problems” to “solve”. We need more studies of this dynamic so that we can envisage how to intervene – how to shift the research focus from presumed “problems-that-exist” to governmental problematizations and their effects [note that in line with a governmentality perspective “governmental” encompasses conventional political institutions and the many agencies and groups involved in the “conduct of conduct”]. We also need analytic “tools” that serve to dislodge the commonsense understanding of problems as self-evident referents. WPR is put forward as one such analytic strategy (Bacchi 2009).

In the next entry I reflect briefly on the implications of this thinking for relationships between researchers and the groups they research.

REFERENCES

Bacchi, C. (2008). The Politics of Research Management: reflections on the gap between what we “know” [about SDH] and what we do. Health Sociology Review, 17(2): 165-176.

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

Bacchi, C. 2012. Strategic interventions and ontological politics: Research as political practice. In A. Bletsas and C. Beasley (eds) Engaging with Carol Bacchi: Strategic interventions and exchanges. Adelaide: University of Adelaide Press, pp. 141-156.

Bacchi, C. 2015. Problematizations in Alcohol Policy: WHO’s “Alcohol Problems”, Contemporary Drug Problems  42(2): 130-147.

Foucault, M. (1991). Questions of method. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon, & P. Miller (Eds.).The Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality (pp. 73–86). Harvester Wheatsheaf :Hemel Hempstead.

Mol, A. (2002) The Body Multiple: Ontology in medical practice. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Comment: In the last entry Foucault’s analytic approach of “thinking problematically” was briefly introduced. I suggested there that WPR applies this form of analytic strategy. Today I want to reflect further on the challenges associated with “thinking problematically”.

Foucault’s argument is that, as a mode of analysis, “thinking problematically” (or problematization as a form of analysis) introduces a distinctive mode of thought. He distinguishes this mode of thought from Hegelian dialectics, an interpretive method in which the contradiction between a proposition (thesis) and its antithesis is resolved at a higher level of truth (synthesis). In a review of Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition and The Logic of Sense, published in 1970, Foucault wrote:

“The freeing of difference requires thought without contradiction, without dialectics, without negation; thought that accepts divergence; affirmative thought whose instrument is disjuncture; thought of the multiple… We must think problematically rather than question and answer dialectically … And now, it is necessary to free ourselves from Hegel – from the opposition of predicates, from contradiction and negation, from all of dialectics.” (Foucault 1978 [1970]: 185-6)

When researchers apply this form of analysis they become, in Webb’s (2014) coined expression,  “policy problematizers”. As policy problematizers, researchers refuse the problem-solving framework which still dominates policy thinking, and work to defamiliarize present categories and practices, opening up indeterminate spaces for creative possibilities.

There is a challenge here, which Webb acknowledges – how are researchers to defamiliarize categories and practices within which they are clearly immersed? Alvesson and Sandberg’s (2011; see also Alvesson and Sandberg 2013) work on how to develop interesting research questions assists with this task. It is important to note that these authors use the term “problematization” in a broad sense to describe five different forms of analysis, linked to the level of assumptions one interrogates: in-house, root metaphor, paradigm, ideology and field assumptions. The last category of assumptions – “field assumptions” – they associate with Foucault. By contrast, in WPR, the term problematisation as a mode of analysis is reserved for Foucault’s usage – i.e. “thinking problematically”. In WPR the assumptions interrogated through this mode of analysis are characterized as deep-seated epistemological and ontological presuppositions, rather than as “field assumptions” (see Question 2 in Bacchi WPR CHART).

Despite these differences in approach, Alvesson and Sandberg (2011: 257) have useful things to say about the difficulty of questioning the deep-seated assumptions in “ways of thinking”. They recognize that   “Field assumptions are difficult to identify because “everyone” shares them, and, thus, they are rarely thematized in research texts.”

They proceed to make suggestions about how to identify and interrogate such assumptions:

“One option is to search across theoretical schools and intellectual camps to see whether they have anything in common regarding the conceptualization of the particular subject matter in question. Another option is to look at debates and critiques between seemingly very different positions and focus on what they are not addressing – that is, the common consensual ground not being debated”. (emphasis in original)

Alvesson and Sandberg (2011: 258) also recommend checking other critical literature.

Because it is so very difficult to move outside assumptions that form the backdrop to how we live and think, problematization as a form of Foucault-influenced analytic strategy requires critical self-reflection. Supporting this view Alvesson and Sandberg (2011: 252; emphasis in original) recommend using “problematization as a methodology for challenging the assumptions that underlie not only others’ but also one’s own theoretical position”. Recognizing how challenging this task is, they note:

“The ambition is therefore not, nor is it possible, to totally undo one’s own position; rather, it is to unpack it sufficiently so that some of one’s ordinary held assumptions can be scrutinized and reconsidered in the process of constructing novel research questions.”

WPR directly confronts this issue of critical self-reflection in Step 7 of the approach, where researchers are encouraged to engage in self-problematization [see Bacchi WPR CHART]. WPR offers a practical exercise to engage in this necessary undertaking: it is suggested that one apply the WPR questions to one’s own proposals or proposed “solutions”, interrogating one’s own “problem representations”. The objective, as Chantal Mouffe (1996: 6) describes it, is to avoid complacency.

The key points to take away from the last two entries include:

• “thinking problematically” is a way of describing problematization as a Foucault-influenced analytic strategy;
• “thinking problematically” means “thinking in terms of problematics” (or problematizations);
• “‘problem’-questioning”, as intended in Bacchi 2009: 271-2, is a way of “thinking problematically” and involves applying the WPR questions to identified problem representations [the “forms” themselves];
• “thinking problematically” [problematization as an analytic strategy] requires self-problematization.

References

Alvesson, M., & Sandberg, J. 2011. Generating Research Questions through Problematization. Academy of Management Review, 36, 247-271. http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/AMR.2011.59330882

Alvesson, M., & Sandberg, J. 2013. Constructing Research Questions: Doing Interesting Research. London: Sage.

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

Foucault, M. 1978 [1970]. Theatrum Philosophicum. In D. F. Bouchard (ed.) Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, trans D. F  Bouchard and S. Simon. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. pp. 165-96.

Foucault, M. 1984. Polemics, politics and problematizations, based on an interview conducted by Paul Rabinow. In L. Davis. (Trans.), Essential works of Foucault (Vol. 1), Ethics, New York: New Press. Available at: https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/4256765/mod_resource/content/1/FOUCAULT_Polemics_Politics_Problematizations.pdf

Foucault, M. 1986.The use of pleasure: The history of sexuality (Vol. 2). New York: Vintage.

Mouffe, C. 1996. Deconstruction, Pragmatism and the Politics of Democracy. In C. Mouffe (ed.) Deconstruction and Pragmatism: Simon Critchley, Jacques Derrida, Ernesto Laclau and Richard Rorty.NY: Routledge. pp. 1-12.

Webb, P. T. 2014. Policy Problematization. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 27, 364-376.

Comment: The previous two entries in the Research Hub [11 June, 25 June 2018] focused on the targets for analysis in WPR – problem representations, or problematizations. These are the “forms of problematizations themselves” in Foucault’s formulation (1986, pp. 17-18; see below for full quote), though, as explained in the last entry [25 June], WPR identifies these “forms” [problematizations] in every proposal or policy, rather than in “crises”, which are central to Foucault’s analysis.

The question for today is – what are we to do with these “forms of problematizations themselves”? How are we to approach them? The simple answer is that we need to problematize them. As I suggest in Analysing Policy(2009: 25; emphasis added), “We need to problematize [interrogate] the problematisations [the “forms” themselves] on offer”. But what does this entail?

First, note that the words “to problematize”, as used in the sentence from Analysing Policy, is a verb form [an infinitive], in contrast to the noun form of problematizations as “the forms themselves”.  This grammatical distinction becomes less helpful, however, when one wants to refer to “problematization” (a noun) as a method of analysis. The distinction in usage, therefore, is best thought of as a distinction between problematization as something researchers do – i.e. researchers problematize or engage in problematization – , while problematizations are the “forms of problematization themselves”, which I call problem representations [see Research Hub entry for 11 June].  For researchers, the task becomes the need to problematize [method of analysis] the problematizations [problem representations; the “forms” themselves] that they identify.

What, then, is involved in problematizing[or problematization] as a form of analysis?

In the conclusion to Analysing Policy (Bacchi 2009: 271-2) I describe this analytic task as “problem-questioning”. However, the reference to “questioning” does not mean just any form of questioning. Foucault characterizes the kind of questioning involved in problematization (as a form of analysis) as “thinking problematically” (Foucault 1978 [1970]: 185-6). What did he mean?

Put simply, “thinking problematically” means to analyze something in terms of problematics [i.e “thinking problematic-ally”.] “Problematic” translates into French as problématique. It refers to the complex of issues associated with a topic. In France the term is often used to describe a thesis project, defining the question under examination.

In a 1984 interview Paul Rabinow asked Foucault to elaborate on what he meant by “thinking problematically”: “You have recently been talking about a ‘history of problematics’. What is a history of problematics?”

Foucault (1984) answers (obliquely of course) that this project involves a study of problematizations. His objective, he says, is to “describe the history of thought as distinct both from the history of ideas … and from the history of mentalities”. The “element that was capable of describing the history of thought” was “what one could call the problems or, more exactly problematizations”. It is useful to remember that Foucault explicitly engaged with the concept of problematization only later in his life and that he, along with many other philosophers, such as Deleuze, used the term “problems” as part of their analyses – a usage I wish to question.

The important point here is that, for Foucault, “thinking problematically” means analyzing problematizations [problem representations in WPR]. Elsewhere he elaborates that this project involves two analytic strategies, archaeology and genealogy:

The archaeological dimension of the analysis made it possible to examine the forms of problematization themselves, its genealogical dimension enabled me to analyze the formation out of the practices and their modifications (Foucault, 1986: pp. 17-18).

For example, to put the status of contemporary French prisons in question he “thinks problematically”, looking to see how systems of punishment were problematized in the past [archaeology] and tracing how current imprisonment practices relate to those earlier “problematizations” [genealogy].

WPR includes both Foucauldian archaeology and genealogy. Question 2 in WPR pursues Foucauldian archaeology while Question 3 encourages a genealogical analysis [Bacchi WPR CHART]. So, these, along with the other questions in WPR, are the questions that are intended when I recommend “problem-questioning” [more appropriately “‘problem’-questioning”] in Analysing Policy. The quotation marks, which I would now insert around “problem”, signal – lest there be any doubt – that the targets of the questioning are problem representations rather than some form of self-evident, independent problem.

The key points to take away from this discussion include:

• “thinking problematically” is a way of describing problematization as a Foucault-influenced analytic strategy;
• “thinking problematically” means “thinking in terms of problematics” (or problematizations);
• “‘problem’-questioning”, as intended in Bacchi 2009: 271-2, is a way of “thinking problematically” and involves applying the WPR questions to identified problem representations [the “forms” themselves]

In the next entry I will pursue some of the challenges involved in “thinking problematically”.

References

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

Foucault, M. 1978 [1970]. Theatrum Philosophicum. In D. F. Bouchard (ed.) Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, trans D. F  Bouchard and S. Simon. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. pp. 165-96.

Foucault, M. 1984. Polemics, politics and problematizations, based on an interview conducted by Paul Rabinow. In L. Davis. (Trans.), Essential works of Foucault (Vol. 1), Ethics, New York: New Press. Available at: https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/4256765/mod_resource/content/1/FOUCAULT_Polemics_Politics_Problematizations.pdf

Foucault, M. 1986.The use of pleasure: The history of sexuality (Vol. 2). New York: Vintage.

Comment: In the last entry I explained how problem representations and problematizations are coextensive – how they cover the same analytic terrain – and why I coined the term “problem representations”. In this entry I want to reflect on the challenges associated with adopting the language of representation in “problem representation”. As might be anticipated, the use of representation in WPR does not mean accepting a correspondence view of knowledge where there is a “real” world that is then “represented”.  As stated in Women, Policy and Politics, “there is no assumption that there is a reality that stands outside representation” (Bacchi 1999, p. 37).

Problem representations, therefore, are not just images of realproblems. Nor are they competing interpretations of a real problem. Rather, they are how the “problem” is produced, or created, or constituted as real – how the “problem” is made to be a particular kind of problem within a specific policy, with all sorts of effects (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016, p. 17). A problem representation therefore is the way in which a particular policy “problem” is constituted in the real (Bacchi 2009: 35).

In the last entry I offered the example of training schemes for women and how they produced the “problem” of women’s underrepresentation in positions of influence as their “lack of training”. The argument here is that, training schemes, in their very existence, produce the “problem” as to do with women’s lack of training. In this proposal and its application in training courses, the “problem” is women’s lack of training.

As I stated in the last entry, problem representations are implicit in policies and policy proposals – so we are not talking about some sort of sequential process in which a problem is represented in a certain way and then a policy is developed. Rather, the policy contains the problem representation. The policy and the problem representation are coterminous. There is no suggestion that this problematization cannot be challenged but it is important to recognize that the proposal itself to give women training has direct consequences for how women’s position is produced as “lacking in training”.

This point is clearly delineated in Farrugia et al. (2017: 5), so I quote them at some length:

Rather than solely emphasising that policy makers and others can take different perspectives on phenomena such as problems, Bacchi argues that problems are ontologically constituted in the interventions designed to solve them. That is, there are not simply multiple perspectives on problems and solutions but onto- logically fluid problems constituted differently through different policy and practice.

This position is aligned with a focus on the performative character of practices and a productive view of power (see Bacchi and Goodwin, 14, 28-30). As Shapiro (1988, p.xi) says, ‘representations do not imitate reality but are the practices through which things take on meaning and value …’.

This key point, that representations are practices and interventions, is exactly the stance defended in what is called (apparently paradoxically) non-representation theory (see Anderson and Harrison 2010: 14), an important development in human geography:

As things and events they [representations] enact worlds, rather than being simple go-betweens tasked with re-presenting some pre-existing order or force. In their taking-place they have an expressive power as active interventions in the co-fabrication of worlds.

Dewsbury et al. (2002, p. 438) clarify that non-representation theory takes “representations seriously”: “representation not as a code to be broken or as an illusion to be dispelled rather representations are apprehended as performative in themselves; as doings”. Problem representations in WPR are performative in exactly this sense – they produce “problems”, “subjects”, “objects” and “places” (see Bacchi and Goodwin 2016). The use of quotation marks around “problems”, and the other terms, signals their ongoing production within policy practices, rather than “things” sitting outside those practices as essences. As a result the goal is not to solve “problems” but to examine how these problematized phenomena operate as governing mechanisms or technologies (see WPR questions, Bacchi WPR CHART).

Several researchers have suggested replacing the word “representation” in “problem representation” with a different word, either “constituted” or “enacted”. Both these terms clearly describe the way in which problem representations do their work – how “problems” are actually produced as particular sorts of problems. For the reasons elaborated above, I recommend retaining the term “problem representation” and adopting the language of “constituted” and “enacted” to reinforce this key theoretical point.

To summarize WPR does not involve an interpretive exercise. The goal is not to consider people’s different views on a “problem” but to reflect on how governing takes place through problematizations – through the ways in which “problems” are produced( or constituted or enacted) as particular sorts of problems.

References

Anderson, B. & Harrison, P. (eds) 2010. Taking-Place: Non-Representational Theories and Geography. Ashgate.

Bacchi, C. 1999. Women, Policy and Politics: The construction of policy problems. London: Sage.

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

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

Dewsbury, J., Harrison, P., Rose, M. and Wylie, J. (2002) Introduction: Enacting Geographies. Geoforum, 33, 437-440.

Farrugia, A., Seear, K. and Fraser, S. 2017. Authentic advice for authentic problems? Legal information in Australian classroom drug education, Addiction Research and Theory, 26(3).

Shapiro, Michael. 1988. The Politics of Representation: Writing Practices, Photography and Policy Analysis. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Comment: The short answer to the question in the title is “yes”, as I will go on to explain. I will also explain why I coined the term “problem representation” and how it functions in a WPR analysis.

To address these issues I draw on some passages from an article I wrote in 2012 entitled: “Why Study Problematizations? Making Politics Visible” (Open Journal of Political Science, 2(1: 1-8). The whole article, with accompanying references, is attached for convenience Bacchi Why study problematizations?).

As a first step in clarifying the different terminologies, it is necessary to see how Foucault used the term “problematization”:

Foucault employs the term “problematization” in two ways: first, to describe his method of analysis and, second, to refer to a historical process of producing objects for thought. His particular method of analysis, which he calls “thinking problem- atically” (Foucault, 1977: pp. 185-186), is the method just described [above in the article], where the point of analysis is not to look for the one correct response to an issue but to examine how it is “questioned, analysed, classified and regulated” at “specific times and under specific circumstances” (Deacon, 2000: p. 127). In the second meaning problematization captures a two-stage process including “how and why certain things (behavior, phenomena, processes) become a problem” (Foucault 1985a: p. 115), and how they are shaped as particular objects for thought (Deacon, 2000: p. 139; see also Deacon, 2006: p. 186 fn 2). These problematized phenomena become problematizations, the foci for study.

The key sentence in this passage for our purposes is the last sentence: “These problematized phenomena become problematizations, the foci for study.” This same point is clear in this quote from Foucault (fn 2 in Bacchi 2012; emphasis added):

The archaeological dimension of the analysis made it possible to examine the forms of problematization themselves, its genealogical dimension enabled me to analyze the formation out of the practices and their modifications (Foucault, 1986: pp. 17-18; emphasis added).

“The forms of problematization themselves” are the “problematized phenomena”, “the foci for study”. Note how here the “problematizations” take a noun form (and a plural form) in contrast to the first meaning of problematization in the above passage where problematization describes a method of analysis (a verb form – i.e. to problematize something, meaning to subject something to critical scrutiny). The task in approaching “the forms themselves” becomes characterizing identified problematizations (noun form).

These “problematized phenomena” are precisely the target in a WPR analysis. As with Foucault, the focus is on how “things” are problematized and the aim is to scrutinize the shapes (“the forms themselves”) given to “problems”. As we shall see, however, there are differences in how I identify problematizations and where, in a WPR analysis, they are located. These differences explain why I coined the term “problem representation”.

I introduced the term “problem representation” for several reasons. First, it follows directly from asking the initial question in the WPR approach: “what’s the problem represented to be?” Reply: “The problem is represented to be …” (i.e. a problem representation).

I also found that the term “problem representation” was easier to deploy in analysis than “problematization”, which gets used in so many different ways (Bacchi The Turn to Problematization).

More than this, I introduced “problem representation” to set WPR apart from other forms of policy analysis that targeted “problem definition” and “problem identification” (see Bacchi, Women, Policy and Politics, 1999, p. 21).

I also used the term to contrast the form of analysis I encouraged from that produced by Foucault. As I explain in “Why Study Problematizations?” (2012 p. 2),

Foucault selects his sites—his “problematizing moments”— by identifying times and places where he detects important shifts in practices—for example from flogging to detention. As Flynn (1989a: 138) explains, for Foucault, “The problem in the case at hand is to account for the fact that from about 1791 a vast array of penal methods was replaced by one, incarceration”. In these “crisis” moments (Foucault, 1985a: Chapter 2), “givens” become questions, or problems, providing an opportunity to inquire into the emergence of what comes to appear self- evident because it is firmly in position, in this instance incarceration as a method of punishment.

As I go on to argue, “The WPR approach broadens Foucault’s agenda” (2012, p. 5):

It does not look for “crisis” points, places where practices change, stirring up debate. Rather, it suggests that all policy proposals rely on problematizations which can be opened up and studied to gain access to the “implicit system in which we find ourselves”.

In Analysing Policy: What’s the Problem Represented to be? (Pearson Education 2009, p. 31), I discuss another, related, distinction between WPR and Foucault:

For Foucault, that which “instigates” the process of problematisation has a more material existence than in a WPR approach (see discussion in Rabinow 2003, pp. 18-19), as seen in this quote:

Actually, for a domain of action, a behavior, to enter the field of thought, it is necessary for a certain number of factors to have made it uncertain, to have made it lose its familiarity, or to have provoked a certain number of difficulties around it. These elements result from social, economic, or political processes. (Foucault 1984, pp. 4-5)

By contrast, in a WPR approach there is no assumption that some set of “difficulties” sparks a “response” from governments.

Rather, the emphasis is on the shape of the implied “problems” within any and all proposals. “Problem representation” refers to the form of a problematization – the problematized phenonmenon – within a policy or policy proposal (and in other forms of proposal).

As an example I often use, if there is a policy or a proposal to introduce forms of training for women in order to increase their representation in positions of influence, the “problem” is represented to be women’s lack of training. The proposal for training schemes problematizes women’s underrepresentation in terms of their lack of training, producing the “problem” as “women’s lack of training”. The problem representation (“women’s lack of training”), therefore, is implicit within the proposal to introduce training schemes. Hence, in the Glossary for Analysing Policy (p. 277; emphasis added), I offer as a meaning for problem representations: “the implied “problems” in problematisations”.

Therefore, “problem representations” and “problematizations” can best be described as co-extensive and the term you select will depend on your analytic objective. However, “problem representations” involve different processes from the commonly referenced Foucauldian mode of problematization. As described above, they are not historical phenomena prompted by some external change. Nor are they uncommon “turning points” in history. Rather they are part and parcel of every policy proposal and other forms of proposal (see Bacchi 2018; see entry in Research Hub, 14 Jan. 2018, “Buildings as Proposals”). All policy proposals (and other forms of proposal) contain implicit representations of “the problem” they purport to address. These implicit representations are problem representations. Just what it means to suggest that a “problem” is represented to be a particular sort of problem will be pursued in the next entry.

References:

Bacchi, C. 1999. Women, Policy and Politics: The construction of policy problems.London: Sage.

Bacchi, C. and Goodwin, S. (2016). Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bacchi, C. 2018. Drug Problematizations and Politics: Deploying a Poststructural Analytic Strategy. Contemporary Drug Problems, 45(1): 3-14.

Foucault, M. 1984, ‘Polemics, Politics and Problematizations’, based on an interview conducted by P. Rabinow, Trans. L. Davis, in Essential Works of Foucault, Vol. 1:Ethics, New Press, New York, <http://www.foucault.info/foucault/interview.html&gt;, accessed 9 August 2008.

Rabinow, P. 2003. Anthropos Today: Reflections on Modern Equipment. Princeton: Princeton University Press.