Policy, Theory, Politics: from problems to problematisations. Carol Bacchi Politics Discipline University of Adelaide

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1 Policy, Theory, Politics: from problems to problematisations Carol Bacchi Politics Discipline University of Adelaide

2 Conventional way of understanding (theorizing) policy-making processes Meredith Edwards (2004): Public policy addresses societal problems and is about what governments do, why they do it and what difference it makes. a reactive approach based on the assumption that governments react to fixed and identifiable social problems and do their best to solve or resolve them.

3 Foucault (1984) The Concern for Truth In Histoire de la folie the question was how and why, at a given moment, madness was problematized through a certain institutional practice and a certain apparatus of knowledge. Similarly, in Surveillier et punir, I was trying to analyze the changes in the problematization of the relations between crime and punishment through penal practices and peniteriary institutions in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

4 James Bernauer (1992) Michel Foucault s s Force of Flight,, p. 4 Foucault's style of analysis was 'employed not for the sake of resolving problems that were discovered, but rather of overturning the unquestioned status that these historically contingent problematizations held in determining our contemporary practice of thought.'

5 Paul Rabinow (2003) Anthropos Today p. 44 By the mid-1970s, at the latest, Foucault had abandoned the idea of 'systems' and was giving more and more attention to 'thinking' as a practice rather than a system. The object of his work shifted from an anonymous, discursive thing, the epistêmê, to a more dynamic and heterogeneous process of subjectifying objectivity and objectifying subjectivity.

6 Foucault (1984) The Concern for Truth Problematization doesn t t mean representation of a pre- existing object, nor the creation by discourse of an object that doesn t t exist. It is the totality of discursive or non-discursive practices that introduces something into the play of true and false and constitutes it an object for thought (whether in the form of moral reflection, scientific knowledge, political analysis, etc.).

7 Foucault (1985) The Use of Pleasure, p The domain I will be analyzing is made up of texts written for the purpose of offering rules, opinions, and advice on how to behave as one should: 'practical' texts, which are themselves objects of a 'practice' in that they were designed to be read, learned, reflected upon, and tested out, and they were intended to constitute the eventual framework of everyday conduct.

8 Foucault (1981) Practicing Criticism A critique is not a matter of saying that things are not right as they are. It is a matter of pointing out on what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought the practices that we accept rest.

9 Dominant understanding of reasons for the know-do gap on SDH how knowledge can more effectively be transformed into action, how to increase the uptake of evidence in public policy (ARACY 2005). Australian Research Alliance for Children & Youth (ARACY) (1995) Closing the Know-Do Gap, 12 August, Sydney.

10 WHO Knowledge Management Strategy: Bridging the know-do gap in global health The review highlights the fact that despite 30 years of research in this area, we still lack a robust, generalisable,, evidence base to inform decisions about strategies to promote the introduction of guidelines or other evidence-based measures into practice Grimshaw et al 2004 Effectiveness and efficiency of guideline dissemination and implementation strategies Health Tech Assess 8(6): 66.

11 Robert W. Cox (1986) Social Forces, States and World Orders,, p.208. It takes the world as it finds it, with the prevailing social and power relationships and the institutions into which they are organized, as the given framework for action. The general aim of problem-solving is to make these relationships and institutions work smoothly by dealing effectively with particular sources of trouble.

12 Graduate Attributes: University of Adelaide An ability to develop effective, creative and innovative solutions, both independently and cooperatively, to current and future political problems.

Lars Salomonsson Christensen Anthropology of the Global Economy, Anna Hasselström Exam June 2009 C O N T E N T S :

Lars Salomonsson Christensen Anthropology of the Global Economy, Anna Hasselström Exam June 2009 C O N T E N T S : 1 C O N T E N T S : Introduction... 2 Collier & Ong: Global assemblages... 3 Henrietta L. Moore: Concept-metaphors... 4 Trafficking as a global concept... 5 The Global as performative acts... 6 Conclusion...