Everyday learning in a public sector workplace: The embodiment of managerial discourses

2012 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerry Harman
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Learning ◽  
Workplace Learning ◽  
The Self ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
Negotiation Of Identity ◽  
Learning At Work ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Everyday Learning ◽  
Prevailing View

This article uses a Foucauldian conceptualization of processes of subjectification to examine the everyday learning of a manager in and through their talk about work. A Foucauldian poststructuralist approach draws attention to the discursive mechanisms whereby people are turned into and turn themselves into subjects. This process is theorized by Foucault as the interplay of technologies of power with technologies of the self (Rose, 1996, 1999a). This perspective provides an account of subjectivity as integrally interrelated with power and knowledge, thereby challenging a prevailing view in much of the organizational learning and workplace learning literature of subjectivity as autonomous and essential. A Foucauldian perspective enables power to be introduced into accounts of everyday learning at work but in a way that avoids reproducing a top-down and monolithic view of power. Importantly, it provides the analytic space for re-presenting workplace learners as active in the ongoing negotiation of identity, rather than only acted on by top down forces.

Disciplinary Relations/Sexual Relations: Feminist and Foucauldian Reflections on Professor–Student Sex

Hypatia ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 187-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chloë Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Female Students ◽  
The Self ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Sexual Relations ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bell Hooks ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
Dominant Discourses ◽  
Pedagogical Relation ◽  
The University

Drawing on Michel Foucault's writings as well as the writings of feminist scholars bell hooks and Jane Gallop, this paper examines faculty–student sexual relations and the discourses and policies that surround them. It argues that the dominant discourses on professor–student sex and the policies that follow from them misunderstand the form of power that is at work within pedagogical institutions, and it examines some of the consequences that result from this misunderstanding. In Foucault's terms, we tend to theorize faculty–student relations using a model of sovereign power in which people have or lack power and in which power operates in a static, stable, and exclusively top-down manner. We should, however, recognize the ways in which individuals in pedagogical institutions are situated within disciplinary and thus dynamic, reciprocal, and complex networks of power, as well as the ways in which the pedagogical relation may be a technique of the self and not only of domination. If we reconsider these relations in terms of Foucault's accounts of discipline and technologies of the self, we can recognize that prohibitions on faculty—student sexual relations within institutions such as the university are productive rather than repressive of desire, and that such relations can be opportunities for development and not only for abuse. Moreover, this paper suggests that the dominant discourses on professor—student relations today contribute to a construction of professors as dangerous and students as vulnerable, which denies the agency of (mostly female) students and obscures the multiplicity of forms of sexual abuse that occur within the university context.

scholarly journals Prompting Spiritual Practices through Christian Faith Applications: Self-Paternalism and the Surveillance of the Soul

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 502-516
Author(s):  
Jason Pridmore ◽  
Yijing Wang
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Investigation ◽  
The Self ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Spiritual Practices ◽  
Social Expectations ◽  
International Survey ◽  
Surveillance Studies ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Bible Reading

This paper examines the everyday use of applications designed for Christian spiritual practices, ranging from Bible reading to prayer to meditation to forms of personal and collective worship. These applications are designed to prompt and reinforce particular behaviours on the part of users to support them in their devotional efforts. As a technology that sits between the external workings of (divine) power and reaffirmations of power through personal examination, these spiritual applications seem to exemplify Foucauldian concerns about surveillance and the production of subjectivity. However, a considered examination of these technologies and an empirical investigation of their use suggests a more complicated story. Though these may be considered “technologies of the self,” their use seems to vary amongst adherents, surprisingly less used by those who may be seen as more spiritually committed. Rather than serving to “quantify” or even “gamify” spirituality fully, the use of these apps suggests a form of self-paternalism in which certain users willingly respond to features designed to encourage particular spiritual practices—a mode of governance that subtly promotes particular (personally) desired behaviours. Drawing in part on an international survey that examined users’ motivations and experiences with these applications, the contexts and results of spiritual applications raise several issues for surveillance studies more generally, including considerations needed for contextual norms, responses to and accommodation of social expectations, and a reorientation towards agency in relation to the production of subjectivity.

Back from the Future

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Rottenberg
Keyword(s):  
Positive Affect ◽  
Professional Women ◽  
The Self ◽  
Ivy League ◽  
Younger Women ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
Successful Career ◽  
Family Balance ◽  
The Future ◽  
Work Family

Chapter 4 examines two well-trafficked mommy blogs written by Ivy League–educated professional women with children. Reading these blogs as part of the larger neoliberal feminist turn, the chapter demonstrates how neoliberal feminism is currently interpellating middle-aged women differently from their younger counterparts. If younger women are exhorted to sequence their lives in order to ensure a happy work-family balance in the future, for older feminist subjects—those who already have children and a successful career—notions of happiness have expanded to include the normative demand to live in the present as fully and as positively as possible. The turn from a future-oriented perspective to “the here and now” reveals how different temporalities operate as part of the technologies of the self within contemporary neoliberal feminism. This chapter thus demonstrates how positive affect is the mode through which technologies of the self-direct subjects toward certain temporal horizons.

Drafted into a Foreign War?

Rhizomata ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-217
Author(s):  
Matthew Sharpe
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Philosophy ◽  
The Self ◽  
Spiritual Practices ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
Analytic Tradition ◽  
Modern Conception ◽  
The Past ◽  
Rational Inquiry

Abstract This paper examines the central criticisms that come, broadly, from the modern, ‘analytic’ tradition, of Pierre Hadot’s idea of ancient philosophy as a way of life.: Firstly, ancient philosophy just did not or could not have involved anything like the ‘spiritual practices’ or ‘technologies of the self’, aiming at curing subjects’ unnecessary desires or bettering their lives, contra Hadot and Foucault et al. Secondly, any such metaphilosophical account of putative ‘philosophy’ must unacceptably downplay the role of ‘serious philosophical reasoning’ or ‘rigorous argument’ in philosophy. Thirdly, claims that ancient philosophy aimed at securing wisdom by a variety of means including but not restricted to rational inquiry are accordingly false also as historical claims about the ancient philosophers. Fourthly, to the extent that we must (despite (3)) admit that some ancient thinkers did engage in or recommend extra-cognitive forms of transformative practice, these thinkers were not true or ‘mainline’ philosophers. I contend that the historical claims (3) and (4) are highly contestable, risking erroneously projecting a later modern conception of philosophy back onto the past. Of the theoretical or metaphilosophical claims (1) and (2), I argue that the second claim, as framed here, points to real, hard questions that surround the conception(s) of philosophy as a way of life.

scholarly journals Alternative Forms of Spirituality and the Socialization of a Self-Enhancing Subjectivity: Features of the Post-Secular Religious Space in Contemporary Romania

2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sorin Gog
Keyword(s):  
Spiritual Development ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
The Self ◽  
Traditional Religion ◽  
Religious Transformation ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
Counselling Services ◽  
Distinctive Type ◽  
Self Discovery ◽  
Development Literature

AbstractMy paper focuses on the shift in religious values in post-socialist Romania and explores the emergence of alternative spiritual beliefs and practices among the younger generations socialized during the post-communist period. It analyses some of the changes that occurred in the wider traditional religious field and looks at the various spiritualized technologies of the self that produce a distinctive type of religious subjectivity and an immanent ethics of authenticity. By departing from the idea of an integrated religious community and from the relational understanding of religious transformation, the field of alternative spiritualities operates a radical break with traditional religion and emphasizes the possibility of spiritual self-realization and self-discovery. It is this process of the individualizing sacralization of the self that constitutes the object of various workshops, blogs, personal and spiritual development literature, courses, spiritual retreats and counselling services. My research looks at how innovative technologies of the self are developed within these spaces that emphasize creativity, wellbeing and a new understanding of subjective interiority that learns how to find in itself the resources it needs to live in a spiritualized ontology of the present.2

The Spiritualization of Politics and the Technologies of Resistant Body

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-211
Author(s):  
Ashjan Ajour
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Political Prisoners ◽  
Decisive Factor ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Hunger Strike ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
Principal Tool ◽  
A Site

Abstract This article explores the body as a site of subjectivity production during a hunger strike in Occupied Palestine. It further explores the former political prisoners’ theory of subjectivity as it emerges through their praxis and philosophy of freedom. Although the body is the principal tool that the hunger strikers use, they don't consider it the decisive factor in attaining their goal. For that they build on the immaterial strength that develops with the deterioration of the body and from which they construct the concept of rouh (soul). This is expressed through the formation of contradictory binaries: body versus soul and body versus mind. The article shows that the hunger strike not only is a political strategy for liberation; it also moves into a spiritualization of the struggle. It uses and problematizes Foucault's “technologies of the self” to theorize the specific formation of subjectivity in the Palestinian hunger strike under colonial conditions, and it contributes to theories of subjectivation. The hunger strikers, in their interaction with the dispossession of the colonial power, invent technologies of resistance to transcend the colonial and carceral constraints on their freedom and create the capacity for the transformation from a submissive subject to a resistant one.

scholarly journals Transformasi Makna dan Fungsi Ruang di RPTRA Kalijodo dalam Pergulatan Citra Kota Jakarta

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-27
Author(s):  
Eka Permanasari ◽  
◽  
Thomas Lientino ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Human Trafficking ◽  
Community Center ◽  
Highway Bridge ◽  
City Image ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Green Belt ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

Kalijodo has a long history in terms of gambling, prostitution, human trafficking and other illicit activities. Although it is a green belt area, the location had always being filled with semipermanent buildings. The area was changed its meaning in 2016 when the late Governor of Ahok with the help of the police and army, eradicated these housing and transformed this place as the community center (RPTRA-Ruang Publik Terpadu Ramah Anak). Together with Yori Antar, Basuki changed Kalijodo into a new center for Jakarta with its mural and skatepark. Former illicit users have been pushed out from the site. Some built a temporary shelter under the highway bridge while others went to their villages. After the fall of Basuki due to the blasphemy crime, the image of RPTRA Kalijodo was contested. Within a day, the area was filled with illegal parking and prostitution returned in different forms taking place under the highway bridge. Layers of meaning and use of Kalijodo transforms rapidly and in results changes the image of the city. Through observation, interviews and archival research, this paper analyses the contestation of the city image by investigating the relationship between the top-down approach and the everyday life uses of space.

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