The inextricable link between muscularity and masculinity has been increasingly accentuated over the past fourty years, resulting in behaviours that can become unhealthy from a variety of perspectives. Gender is often enacted through manipulating and altering morphologies which can ultimately affect the way one perceives her or his own body. This thesis introduces the term megamusculinity, embodying the links between corporality, muscularity and masculinity. Primarily affecting men, megamusculinity is an exemplar of gender performance where one follows strict dietary and exercise regimens in the pursuit of (gross)muscularity. Much of the academic discussion of gender and body perception focuses primarily upon body size. Shifting the emphasis from body size to regimes of the self, this analysis posits megamusculinity and eating disorders as parallel pursuits, not antithetical realms of extreme morphologies. Foucauldian logic will be blended with Anthony Giddens’ structuration theory to examine megamusculinity as gender performativity with a multitude of social underpinnings. In a world where rules and resources (following Giddens’ articulation of structures) shape everything individuals do, what is occurring in the case of megamusculinity is individuals are actively creating a hypertrophied reality by negotiating their way through the disciplinary constraints of various social structures. This thesis builds upon the psychological construction of muscle dysmorphia as a clinical disorder and introduces megamusculinity, situated not as a “personal trouble of milieu” but a “public issue of social structure” (Mills 1959: 8). In doing so, this thesis will demonstrate that the body perception disturbances of certain men are influenced by experiences with particular social factors/institutions, and positions megamusculinity parallel to eating disorders by focusing upon the regimes of the self involved in altering one’s morphology. / Thesis (Master, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2010-12-22 20:42:33.636

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This thesis is centred on the work of Portuguese writer José Régio (1901-1969). He was a teacher-writer and, arguably, the most philosophical of Portuguese school novel authors. In his novel ‘A Drop of Blood’ (1945), Régio shows interest in the formation of the artist as the special object of education – the ‘marked man’ –, whose sensitivity distances him irremediably from the crowd. He adopted the radical individualism of Nietzsche not in order to be ‘for’ or ‘against’ this or that schooling model but to exemplify the perpetual clash, inherent in mankind, between the individual and the group, the artist and the non-artistic person, the young and the adult, the son and the father and the self and the world.

In this dissertation, Foucault’s methodologies, archaeology and genealogy, are used to explore the links between silence, knowledge and power in the area of therapeutic sexual exploitation. Underpinning this task is Foucault’s theoretical assumption that knowledge is not scientifically constructed through objective and rational methods. Knowledge, under Foucault’s theoretical framework, is influenced by the more obscure conditions of possibility which affect power relations and, therefore, power-knowledge. Therefore, New Zealand’s scientific discourse around therapeutic sexual exploitation is analysed by moving between the discursive and the extra-discursive. This is undertaken to highlight the more obscure conditions of possibility which may have affected the political construction of knowledge and its material effects in the area of therapeutic sexual exploitation. New Zealand’s academic discourse on therapeutic sexual exploitation is examined with reference to the social conditions which have influenced the origins of counselling and psychotherapy in New Zealand. This includes an exploration of the links between counselling and psychotherapy to other New Zealand based psy-professions. In particular, an investigation is conducted as to how disciplinary procedures have been applied to those connected to, and affected by, therapeutic sexual exploitation. This, however, is studied by locating New Zealand’s discourse within an international discourse on therapeutic sexual exploitation. This wider lens shows how New Zealand’s discourse around therapeutic sexual exploitation, as other countries’ discourses on this matter, has developed in response to local social conditions and changing power relations. Through this broader analysis of New Zealand’s discursive formation on therapeutic sexual exploitation one can see the interplay between silence, knowledge and power, and its material effects on the lives on people. This dissertation highlights not only what knowledge-power might be restricting, but also what it might be producing in the area of therapeutic sexual exploitation, the impacts of which, it will be argued, extends well beyond the particular domain under examination.

Early childhood teachers spend their professional lives in social interactions with children, families and colleagues. Social interactions shape how people understand themselves and each other through discourses. Teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand negotiate their subjectivities, or self-understandings, within initial teacher education (ITE), professional expectations, education and society. They are shaped by historical and contemporary discourses of early childhood teaching professionalism as they gain status as qualified and registered teachers. Early childhood teachers’ understandings of their personal professional identities influence self-understandings of everyone they encounter professionally, especially young children. This poststructural qualitative collective case study investigates five newly-qualified early childhood teachers’ negotiations of their personal professional identities. My research study is based in postmodern understandings of identities as multiple, complex and dynamic, and subjectivities as self-understandings formed within discourses. In contrast, institutionally-directed reflective writing in early childhood ITE can reflect modernist perspectives that assume essentialist, knowable identities. Tensions exist between my postmodern theoretical framework and my data collection strategy of facilitated self-study, an approach that is usually based on the modernist assumption that there is a self to investigate and know. My participants explored their subjectivities through focus group discussions, individual interviews, and reflective writing, including institutionally-directed reflective writing. Three dominant discourses of early childhood education emerged from data analysis that drew on Foucault’s theoretical ideas: the authority discourse, the relational professionalism discourse and the identity work discourse. Positioned in these discourses, all participants regarded themselves as qualified and knowledgeable, skilled at professional relationships and as reflective practitioners. They actively negotiated tensions between professional expectations and understandings of their multiple, complex and changing identities. I concluded that these participants negotiated understandings of their personal professional identities within three dominant discourses through discursive practices of discipline and governmentality, seeking pleasurable subject positions, and agentic negotiation of tensions and contradictions between available subjectivities.

Hälsoförordningar som presenteras i styrdokument är ett exempel på styrningsmentalitet och folkhälsoarbetets pedagogik, som avser förändra folkhälsan. Syftet med föreliggande studie var att synliggöra och analysera vilka diskurser om hälsoförordningar som framkommer i Region Hallands interna och externa styrdokument som behandlar mål, strategier, policyer och riktlinjer i det regionala folkhälsoarbetet för år 2014. Analysen av diskurser fokuserades kring individens identitetskonstruktion och subjektivation via maktstyrning från texternas innebörds- och interpersonella aspekter, i avseende att påvisa styrningsmentaliteter och hälsoförordningar som betydelsefulla bestämningsfaktorer för individers hälsa. Med kvalitativ diskursteori och Foucaldiansk textanalys har föreliggande studie analyserat 6st styrdokument, utgivna av Region Halland. Resultatet visar de fyra diskurser som kom till uttryck, genom dessa diskurser antyds det att regionala hälsoförordningar är mål- och vision -fokuserade om en god och jämlik hälsa för alla, där arbetet för att nå idyllen om det hälsosamma folket sker med proaktivt arbete och delaktighet mellan samhälleliga hälsopromotionsinsatser och individers egna levnadsval. Det anses att individens förändringar av levnadsvanor skapas i samklang med autonomi och hög kunskap, och arbetet förutsätter att hälsosamma alternativ finns tillgängliga och genomsyrar Hallands samhällsplanering, budget och samhällsvision. Uppsatsen präglas av en individfokuserad skildring i Regionens folkhälsoarbete, i uppsatsens avslutande diskussion lyfts däremot de textanalytiska diskurserna i ett högre skikt och problematiserar den möjliga samhälleliga konsekvens som diskurser kan ge och hur det kan tolkas ur ett nationellt perspektiv.

This thesis investigates the relation between exception and governmentality in the critique of sovereignty. It considers exception and governmentality as an expression of the problem of sovereignty and argues that this problem is expressed both within the accounts of sovereignty that exception and governmentality articulate, as well as between them. Taking Michel Foucault and Carl Schmitt as the paradigmatic theorists of governmentality and exception, respectively, I engage in close readings of the texts in which these concepts are most thoroughly elaborated: Security, Territory, Population and Political Theology. These readings demonstrate that, despite their apparent differences, exception and governmentality cannot be differentiated from one another. The instability evident in Schmitt and Foucault’s concepts show that the relation between them is best characterized as aporetic. / Graduate / 0615 / 0616 / reganburles@gmail.com

This thesis argues, through two immanent critiques, that Michel Foucault’s work is constrained by the use of a ‘flat’ ontology, which limits the effectiveness of his politics. This thesis also argues, through transcendental critique, that Foucault’s analysis of power relations appears to presuppose Roy Bhaskar’s ‘depth’ ontology, which entails that Foucault’s individual and subjective form of politics must be complemented with a social dimension.