Carol Bacchi

COMMENT: This entry is a reply to Andrew Clarke’s 2017 article in Critical Policy Studies entitled: “Analyzing problematization as a situated practice in critical policy studies: a case study of ‘customer focus’ policy in urban compliance services” (DOI: 10.1080/19460171.2017.1414619).

Clarke argues the need for a “supplement” to the WPR approach, which would offer an analysis of “the situated practices that give rise to particular problematizations” (Abstract). He wishes to provide a method to reveal “how a certain discourse came to be imbued in the policy under study” and to this end wants to foreground “the work of particular actors in shaping the formation [of] policy problems in particular times and places” (p. 2; emphasis in original).

Let me preface these brief comments by noting that I am genuinely pleased and flattered to see researchers exploring possible modifications of and additions to WPR as I have never suggested that it provides the only useful form of political analysis. However, in my reading, the focus on actors as agents locates Clarke’s analysis within an interpretive analytic tradition, which I distinguish from Foucauldian-influenced poststructuralism and the WPR approach, making his suggestion of a “supplement” difficult to support (see “The Turn to Problematization: Political Implications of Contrasting Interpretive and Poststructural Adaptations” Bacchi The Turn to Problematization].

A key distinction between interpretivism and WPR is how the political subject is conceptualized, an issue that Clarke does not address. In brief, interpretivists can be located in a hermeneutic tradition that sees people’s self-interpretations as central to understanding social organization, whereas Foucault-influenced poststructuralists support a posthumanist analysis that questions the existence of a sovereign subject who can access “true” meaning (see C. Bacchi and S. Goodwin 2016 Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 40). Put briefly, Clarke probes the competing understandings of “problems” put forward by specific subjects/actors whereas WPR interrogates governmental problematizations and how subjects are constituted within them (see “subjectification” in Bacchi and Goodwin, 2016, pp. 49-53).

Clarke (p. 4) argues that the perspective he offers derives from “the novel reading of Foucault’s later work advanced by Rabinow (2003) and Collier (2009)”, and leads to “an alternative conception of problematization that examines it at the level of situated practices”. However, Foucault uses the term “problematization” in two ways, adopting a verb form to describe a kind of analytic practice (“thinking problematically”) and a noun form, to refer to the objects for thought that emerge in historical problematizing practices, including governmental practices (“the forms of problematization themselves”) (Bacchi 2015, p. 3). Collier and Rabinow are concerned with the former usage. Their intent is to elaborate the specific form of thinking Foucault is putting forward as “thinking problematically”. Clarke correctly quotes Collier who describes this form of thinking as “critical reflection that establishes a certain distance from existing forms of acting and understanding and also works to remediate and recombine these forms” (Collier 2009, p. 80; my emphasis). This view of thinking in Foucault is reinforced in another quote from Collier (p. 90): “As we will see, he [Foucault] places particular emphasis on the work of actors – thinkers – who constitute existing ways of thinking and acting as problems, and seek to reform and remediate them.” Here Collier (p. 96) is exploring how thinking in Foucault “makes possible a certain critical distance from existing ways of understanding and acting” – an elaboration of “thinking problematically”.

The point here is that Collier, drawing on Foucault, is describing a particular way of thinking critically, not simply the thinking that goes on in the formation or development of public policies, which Clarke describes. This point is clear in Collier’s use of the italicized term “thinkers” (see above from Collier, p. 90), a term that unfortunately is cut from Clarke’s version of the Collier quote.

By contrast with Collier Clarke’s analysis looks to explain “contradictory discursive explanations” within selected policy documents. The frequent references to “strategy” and “strategic” suggest that he offers a version of strategic framing (see Clarke, pages 12 and 16), which fits within interpretivism. On this point, Clarke usefully describes WPR as “a critical and reflexive approach to studying policy problems that is more sensitive to the productive role of discourse than existing approaches to problem framing” (p. 4; my emphasis), pointing to the tensions between interpretivism and Foucault-influenced poststructuralism.

We are left therefore with a familiar dilemma – is it possible or useful to blend paradigms? Can we adopt an interpretive focus (such as Clarke’s) to study the contributions of policy actors to the formation of understandings of “problems” and add it as a “supplement” to a poststructural analytic strategy (i.e. WPR)? Elsewhere, Malin Rönnblom and I develop the argument that it is important to consider how methodologies create realities and that there is a need therefore to reflect on the forms of politics enabled in contrasting theoretical stances. In that paper we make the case that poststructural theory offers opportunities for political challenge closed off by more empirical approaches and invite researchers to engage theories at the level of politics, to ask how they are political, and what sorts of politics they make possible. This invitation remains open! (see Research Hub entry on ‘Ontological politics’ 10 December 2017; see also C. Bacchi and M. Rönnblom 2014. Feminist Discursive Institutionalism—A Poststructural Alternative, NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, DOI: 10.1080/08038740.2013).

COMMENT: In her recent book (Struggles in (Elderly) Care: A Feminist View, Palgrave Macmillan 2017; see previous entries 21 and 28 January, 4 February 2018) Hanne Marlene Dahl embraces the language of “gendering”, to which she adds “de-gendering”. The use of gerunds (putting “ing” onto nouns) is a well-known post-structuralist device for challenging fixity (essences) and highlighting process. The goal here is to draw attention to how “things” are continually being made with the effect of opening up spaces for challenge and change (see C. Bacchi and S. Goodwin, Poststructural Policy Analysis: A guide to practice, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, p. 31).

This challenge to fixity is particularly difficult to maintain in relation to people, especially those people marked as “men” and “woman”. We are certainly not used to thinking of these categories as anything but fixed!

Poststructuralism makes the case that there is “no essential, natural or inevitable way of governing or classifying people” (M. Tamboukou 1999. “Writing genealogies: An exploration of Foucault’s strategies for doing research. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 20(2), p. 208). Rather, people are seen as in “ongoing formation” and as constituted in practices (see Bonham, J. & Bacchi, C. 2017. “Cycling ‘subjects’ in ongoing-formation: The politics of interviews and interview analysis”. The Journal of Sociology, 53(3): 687-703).

It is argued, for example, that policies as practices can play a role in producing “women” and “men” as gendered beings (Bacchi, C. 2017. “Policies as Gendering Practices: Re-Viewing Categorical Distinctions”. Journal of Women, Politics and Policy, 38(1): 20-41). Importantly, we are never completely “gendered”; rather, we are always becoming “men” and “women” (signaled through the use of quotation marks around the terms). For a helpful illustration of how research and policy are gendering practices that take part in the co-constitution of binary genders, see David Moore, Suzanne Fraser, Helen Keane, Kate Seear & Kylie Valentine (2017), “Missing Masculinities: Gendering Practices in Australian Alcohol Research and Policy”, Australian Feminist Studies, 32(93): 309-324.

De-gendering, it follows, are practices that interfere with the “ongoing formation” of “women” and “men” as particular kinds of gendered being. As Dahl (p. 39) describes, in de-gendering, “efforts are made to de-link gender from bodies with gendered signs”. An example would be the efforts in the five Nordic countries – Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden – to encourage “men” to assume more caring and domestic responsibilities (p. 40).

Deploying this theory leaves us with a dilemma – how to refer to and develop policies that aim to assist existing “women” and “men”, those who inhabit the categories. With Joan Eveline, I describe a “politics of movement” that involves strategies of “fixing” and “unfixing” the meanings we attach to concepts given the politics of the situation.

Recognising that “knowledge” is always political, a “politics of movement” relies upon willingness to self-identify as critical researchers, with the decisions about when to fix and when to unfix meanings dependent upon reflexive judgment about the political exigencies of the particular situation. (C. Bacchi and J. Eveline, Mainstreaming Politics: Gendering Practices and Feminist Theory, University of Adelaide Press, 2010, p. 13; available as a free download from University of Adelaide Press – https://www.adelaide.edu.au/press/.

COMMENT: In her recent book (Struggles in (Elderly) Care: A Feminist View, Palgrave Macmillan 2017; see entry for 21 January 2018) Hanne Marlene Dahl makes the point that “struggles over elderly care have intensified” (p. 160). She highlights the increasing emphasis, in Denmark and elsewhere, on making the elderly more independent and “self-responsible” (p. 169). Dahl identifies this “active aging” (p. 167) concept as related to a neo-liberalizing form of regulation (in tune with her post-structuralist perspective she notes that neo-liberalizing is never the only form of regulation; p. 169). One of her concerns is that not all those who are ageing may feel comfortable with this emphasis on independence and indeed may want to resist it.

Elsewhere in Struggles Dahl notes the tendency to stigmatize ageing (p. 140). I am reminded here of Betty Friedan’s 1993 book, The Fountain of Age (Jonathon Cape, London), which sets out to overturn this stigma. Friedan mounts a careful challenge to the view of ageing as “decline” and offers in its place a model of “vital aging” (p. 46). “Vital aging” considers “old age” as another step in human development where we come to display more contextualized understandings of events and people. How far, I want to ask, is “vital aging” from the “active aging” discourse that Dahl convincingly questions?

Set side by side, these accounts pose the challenge of how to critique both the stigma attached to ageing that Friedan emphasizes and the “self-responsibilising” that Dahl identifies. The concept of “social flesh”, which Chris Beasley and I developed, proves useful in challenging this dichotomy (see C. Beasley and C. Bacchi, “Envisaging a new politics for an ethical future. Beyond trust, care and generosity – Towards an ethic of ‘social flesh’”, Feminist Theory, 8(3): 279-298). As argued in the Research Hub entry on “Theorizing care” (28 January 2018), emphasizing human interdependence and reliance on shared resources and space provides a lever to defend both the need to acknowledge the exigencies of ageing alongside ways to facilitate growth and development.

COMMENT: This entry continues reflections prompted by Hanne Marlene Dahl’s recent book Struggles in (Elderly) Care: A Feminist View (Palgrave Macmillan 2017) (see 21 January, 2018, for previous entry).

One of Dahl’s projects is to consider existing research on care and how to develop a new analytic. She notes that for some years feminists have worked assiduously to ensure that “care” is treated seriously as a political issue. Her Chapter 3 provides a helpful review of many of these interventions.

Drawing on Mol (The logic of care – Health and the problem of patient choice, Routledge, 2008) Dahl endorses the need for a new question to guide research on care. It is time, she suggests, to stop asking “What is care?”, a question that risks essentializing “care” (p. 61). Instead we need to reflect on how we think about care, asking: “How are the changing conditions of care and an attention to power and struggles reframing our theorizing about care?” (p. 62; italics in original). Here the point is that how we talk or theorize about care reflects the changing political landscapes we inhabit. Hence “care” is a “moving feast”; it is unwise theoretically to speak about “it” as a “thing”.

Along similar lines Mol et al. (“Care in Practice: on Normativity, Concepts and Boundaries”, Technoscienza, 21(1), p. 84) refuse to define “care”. The authors explain the limitations imposed by definitions. Put (much too) simply, if we provide a definition of an apple, from that point in time we see, as apples, only those things that fit that description. The same is the case with “care”. How confining!

Changing the target of analysis from “care” as a “thing” to how we talk about or theorize care means examining critically the concepts we use – asking what they allow us to see and what they (may) leave out. This reflexive or self-problematizing approach to research is highlighted in Step 7 of the WPR approach, which states: “Apply this list of questions to your own problem representations”.

One concept that may deserve more scrutiny of this nature is “vulnerability”. A good deal of current feminist analysis deploys this concept or close synonyms (e.g. “precarity”; Puar J 2012. “Precarity talk: a virtual roundtable with Lauren Berlant, Judith Butler, Bojana Cvejic, Isabel Lorey, Jasbir Puar, and Ana Vujanovic”. TDR: The Drama Review 56(4): 163–177).

Work I have undertaken with Chris Beasley suggests that such languages (e.g. “vulnerability”, “precarity”) carry within them an unstated hierarchy between those presumed to be “weak” and those who are considered to be “strong”. Even if the argument is made that we are all “vulnerable” at different stages in our lives, it is important to challenge the weak/strong dichotomy (see Dahl on the importance of trying to avoid reproducing dichotomies; p. 14). To this end Chris Beasley and I have developed the concept of “social flesh”, which draws attention to shared human reliance on social space, infrastructure and resources. In our view this shift from “vulnerability” and “dependence” to embodied interconnection provides grounds for a radical democracy and challenges taken-for-granted privilege (C. Bacchi and C. Beasley, “The Limits of Trust and Respect: Rethinking Dependency”, Social Alternatives, 24(4), 2005: 55-59; see also C. Beasley and C. Bacchi, “Envisaging a new politics for an ethical future. Beyond trust, care and generosity – Towards an ethic of ‘social flesh’”, Feminist Theory, 8(3): 279-298).

COMMENT: This entry aims to introduce the recent book by Hanne Marlene Dahl entitled Struggles in (Elderly) Care: A Feminist View (Palgrave Macmillan 2017). This rich theoretical text provides the basis for several forthcoming entries on “theorizing care”, “theorizing ageing”, and on “gendering and de-gendering”.

Here I wish to emphasize how Struggles in (Elderly) Care [hereafter referred to as Struggles] illustrates what it means to deploy a poststructural research perspective. Throughout the book Dahl’s focus is on complexity and contingency, and on the processural nature of change. She develops a repertoire of concepts to facilitate analysis of this kind, including some that will be familiar to those working with poststructural frameworks, e.g. “assemblage”, “discourses”, “logics”, “governmentality”, among others.

The key term in the book’s title – Struggles – signals Dahl’s poststructural theoretical positioning. She challenges a view that she sees as dominant in research in the area of elderly care, where the focus is on inevitable and fixed contradictory positions (e.g. “dilemmas”; pp. 76-77). By contrast she points to tensions, conflicts and points of change that produce struggles.

Reflecting her poststructural positioning Dahl notes that her analysis targets a specific context – paid elderly care in Denmark from the 1950s to 2015. Her material is drawn from several research projects conducted over the past two decades. Dahl also specifies that her analysis reflects a critical and feminist viewpoint.

Dahl deploys a range of strategies to ensure that she focuses on a level she describes as “micro”, and that she eschews grand narratives (p. 7, 47). For example, in several places she explains the theoretical benefits of using verbs rather than nouns, e.g. neo-liberalizing rather than neo-liberalism, and gendering (p. 29). At the same time she argues for and illustrates the possibility of drawing broader insights about the nature of the place of “care” in the context of a range of social and political processes – “commodifying, professionalizing, late modernizing, de-gendering, globalizing, bureaucratizing and the advent of neo-liberalism” (p. 19).

These broader insights are linked to the notion of “logics”, drawn from Annemarie Mol’s work (A. Mol, The logic of care – Health and the problem of patient choice, Routledge, 2008; see entry on “ontological politics”, 10 December 2017). Logics are described as “different ways of viewing and providing care” (p. 7), and are treated as synonymous with “governmental rationalities” (p. 129). This key term in Foucauldian-informed analysis is discussed in the Research Hub entry, 7 January 2018. In that entry I emphasize the usefulness of problematizations (brought to attention through the WPR questions; Bacchi WPR CHART) as a way to identify rationalities/logics, clearly a key task in this form of analysis.

Dahl highlights the importance of ensuring that we do not miss important struggles, those that may well be less visible or invisible due to a range of “silencing practices” within “discursive regulation”. To bring these struggles into view, Dahl elaborates three analytic techniques: deconstruction, some comparative discourse analysis and memory work (Chapter 4).