Week 5 Flashcards
Field Theory
- Kurt Lewin
- Social Theory 1950s applied concepts from physics to psych
Importance of: - Concepts of force, tension, constraint and context
- Experimental methods - Wood & Kroger 1998
Discourses
- Textual writings that are connected by writing or speech
- Concerned with the role of languag
- Epistemology of Social Constructionisom
Discourses
- Textual writings that are connected by writing or speech
- Concerned with the role of languag
- Epistemology of Social Constructionisom
Focauldian Discourse Analysis
- A form of Social Constructionism
- Michel Foucault - 1926-1984
- Language is used to shape knowledge and power
- Historian that sought to challenge wasy of knowing
- Seek to find what worked in the past
Foucault - Knowledge & Power
- Power is all encompassing reality
- We are all trapped there and participate
- Studied punishment practices of our legal system
- Corporal punishment replaced by new forms of sanitised punishment
Foucault - New forms of Punishment
- Centralised Surveillance
- Self Surveillance
- Decentralised Surveillance
Panopticon
- A Central observation tower placed within a circle of prison cells.
- Every cell can be seen
- Inmates never know whether if they are being watched.
- Induce a state of conscous visibility that causes inmates to behave
Knowledge & Power Panopticon
- Knowledge is put to work via discourse
- Patriarchy results in men controlling female narrative
- Discourse becomes second nature - Common Sense
- People then self regulate behaviour based on narrative
e.g. Womxn narrative
Foucauldian Discourse - Subject Position
- The Speaker as the Subject
- Who or what is spoken about is the object
- Replaces the idea of a Coherent Subject like the ‘Self’ existing before discourse
- Notion of stable, fixed unchangeable subject like Identity is challenged
Positioning
- Central to Foucauldian Discourse Analysis
- In medicine those who are sick are the subject and are passive
- In 19th century homosexuality was constructed as sick, illegal and needing punishment
- When Position is deconstructed our understanding of sexual orientation changes.
Critical Methodology
- Used terms like Archaeology (History of Madness) & Genealogy (Discipline and Punish)
- Captured Criticial Methodology this way
Foucault’s 5 Procedures of Critical Methodology
- Reversal
- Marginality
- Discontinuity
- Materiality
- Specificity
Foucault’s 5 Procedures of Critical Methodology
- Reversal
- Marginality
- Discontinuity
- Materiality
- Specificity
Foucault’s 5 Procedures of Critical Methodology - Reversal
- Take a standards historical perspective
- Overturn it as a way of refuting it
- Requires critical unpacking
e.g Australia Day vs Invasion Day
Foucault’s 5 Procedures of Critical Methodology - Marginality
- Examine aspects of culture and history that have been excluded
- Foucault was interested in morality - Difference between religion and morality
e.g. The notion of what is normal
Foucault’s 5 Procedures of Critical Methodology - Discontinuity
- Looking for gaps, breaks and catastrophes
- Not just focus on a lineary human progress
- Look at significant moments in time
- Critique moments of progress that caused disruption
e.g. COVID
Foucault’s 5 Procedures of Critical Methodology - Materiality
- Look at concrete practices instead of belief systems and ideologies
- Purity Balls - Father as the boyfriend
Foucault’s 5 Procedures of Critical Methodology - Specificity
- Focus on single instances
- Illuminate larger points and claims
- Idiographic
- Small Data Sets
Henriques 1984 - Changing the Subject: Psychology, social regulation and subjectivity
- Critical Reflection with post structuralus theory perspective
- Examines the role in constructing objects and subjects they claim to explain
Epistemological Framework - Foucault
- Role of Language in social life
- What kinds of objects and subjects are constructed through discourse
- What ways of being does discourse make available
- Words have power to drive our conduct
- What is appropriate according to the language rulebook?
Epistemology - Discursive Resources
- Ways to construct Subjectivity, Selfhood and Power Relations
- This makes Foucauldian Discourse different from Discoursive Analysis
- FDA is Critical Social Constructionism
FDA Questions of Power
- What is Knowledge?
- How did it arise?
- Whose interests are served by this knowledge?
- Whose interests does the knowledge oppress?
e.g. terms Victim vs Survivor position the Object differently in the dialogue
* Terms impact our social reality in different ways.
Dallos Dallos 1997
- Discourses are Shared Assumptions about how the world works
- Assumptions are taken for granted
- Used to negotiated Power Relations - Reproduction/Resistance
- Statements must have been spoken at some stage
- Therefore Discourse involves language
Dominant Discourses
- Discourse creates expectations and consequently influences behaviour
- Implicated in excerise of power and domination
e.g. Neoliberal Discourse
affords privelage to sections of society that sanction the discourse