Foucault and Social Measure

Redrawing Foucault’s Social Ontology*

I propose that Foucault‟s works, since he wrote Discipline and Punish, rely on an implicit meta-theory that is compatible with the fundamentals of Critical Realism. To this end I examine the status of truth, methodology and social ontology used by Foucault. If this thesis is correct, then a critical realist reading of Michel Foucault would avoid some of the pitfalls that have been attributed to...

Foucault as Complexity Theorist: Overcoming the conundrums of classical philosophical analysis

In my book Michel Foucault: Materialism and Education, ( original Bergin &Garvey, 1999: chp. 11; paperback edition, Paradigm Press, 2006) I consider Foucault as a complexity theorist and relate him to contemporary conceptions of complexity as they are being utilised in the physical and social sciences. In order to set the background to a discussion of Foucault as complexity theorist it is neces...

Edward Said and Michel Foucault: Representation of the Notion of Discourse in Colonial Discourse Theory

Edward Said is regarded as the originator of colonial discourse theory. He deploys Michel Foucault’s notion of discourse to accomplish his project in Orientalism and emphasizes Foucault’s notion of discourse and its relation to power, rendering discourse a carceral system. Although Said explicitly expresses the similarity between Orientalism and Foucault’s discourse theory, it seems he...

Reconstructing Social Policy and Ageing

This article draws from the work of Michel Foucault to reconstruct an understanding of social policy and ageing in contemporary Britain. In many ways, policy provides three trajectories for older people; first, as independent self-managing consumers with private means and resources; second, as people in need of some support to enable them to continue to self-manage and third, as dependent and u...

the spiritualization of power:scheler and foucault