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Since the 1980s there has been a strong desire on behalf of the state to identify and intervene in the group described as over-indebted. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s thinking this thesis employs the theoretical framework of governmentality with the methodological approach of genealogy. The thesis examines how individuals and entrepreneurs were constructed into different subject positions in the Swedish debate of debt relief between 1985-2016. The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to an enhanced understanding of the reproduction of discursive practices. This thesis has two key findings: firstly, it illustrates the transformation from debate into legislation, since what was articulated in the debate also became part of the law. Secondly, it shows the enhancement over time of over-indebted entrepreneurs in relation to over-indebted individuals. While entrepreneurs were constructed as rational agents promoting the public good, over-indebted individuals underwent a shift of subject positions which evolved over time. In the years leading up to the first consumer insolvency law in 1994, they were portrayed as irresponsible credit consumers. Subsequently, they transitioned into a marginalized group of perpetual debtors. This thesis argues that homo economicus, for over-indebted individuals, can be seen as the teleological outcome of the debt relief system.

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När förskolebarn föreställer sig att de är vilda mustanger som hoppar runt stolar och bord, brukar läraren ingripa i dessa lekar. Styrningen av barns lek är så djupt förankrad i förskolans dagliga rutin att den tenderar att ses som normal och legitimerad, vilket föranleder behovet av att studera denna förgivet tagna praktik. Syftet med denna uppsats är tvåfaldigt. Först så ämnar uppsatsen studera barns karnevaliska lek inom ramen för förskolan. Vidare så syftar den problematisera den vardagliga styrningen av sådan lek genom ett alternativt perspektiv, nämligen governmentalitet – synonymt med styrnings-rationalitet. För att uppnå dessa mål har barns lek studerats genom observationer, tytts som karnevalisk, och därefter analyserats. Regleringen av lek styrs genom styrningsstekniker såsom disciplinering, tid, övervakning, dokumentation, vallning, samt syndabekännelse. De syftar till att forma ett barn som följer rutiner och bekänner sina synder. Trots att karnevalisk lek utsätts för dessa diskreta styrningstekniker, gör den att förskolans ordning omkullvälts via sina element av transgression, absurditet och spontanitet.

The aim of the study is to analyze how the concept of responsibility is used within Swedish and Finnish educational discourse. The basic claim is that the concept of responsibility has many different meanings, which makes it problematic to use as a guideline for teaching practices, as well as understanding what values actually are foundational. Using the discourse theory and method of Ernesto Laclau combined with theoretical insights of Bauman, Habermas, Foucault, Rose, Piaget and Säljö, eight different curricula published between 1994-2015 are analyzed. The main conclusions of the study is that the concept of responsibility in some aspects has remained the same and changed in others. The trend of responsibility as something that is primarily linked to the individual rather than the group, has been persistent throughout. In Swedish curricula, however, responsibility has become more synonymous with what Rose and Foucault calls governmentality, and in Finnish curricula, the concept of responsibility has become more diversified and has obtained a distinct link to collective and democratic values and practices. In my concluding remarks I ask whether it would be better to limit the language use of responsibility as to decrease the confusion. I also state that Laclau’s discourse theory is useful for analyzing curricula, however, it contains deficiencies in terms of grasping the relationship between economy and educational discourse.

AbstractHeléne Slivka (2013). Kvalitetsarbete ur ett specialpedagogiskt perspektiv– en fallstudie.(Quality assurance process in the elementary school from a special education perspective – a case study.)The researchThis essay investigates the language in the school´s quality assurance documents. An important aspect of this is the way in which language structures and informs how we think about, and work with, students with special needs.AimThe aim of this essay is to problematize how students with special needs are represented in the quality assurance documents of the school. The writer intends to point out how the ways in which the language used to describe students informs governing processes. The research questions are: How are the governing techniques being described in relation to students with special needs? What kind of knowledge and rationalities underpin these techniques? How do these approaches influence how students are perceived?Theoretical frameThis study puts the written texts of quality assurance documents in a social context. In order to do so, the writer is inspired by Fairclough´s critical discourse analysis where text is analyzed in a wider social context. Like Andreasson (2007) and Lutz (2009), the writer combines discourse analysis with Foucault´s governmentality concept which focuses on ways of governing. By considering these theories the writer hopes to learn more about what informs and directs the way we write and talk about students with special needs.MethodThis enquiry is carried out as a case study where the quality assurance documents from one school during the years 2003-2013 constitute the empirical evidence. The writer carried out an analysis of the text on three levels: the text itself, the discursive practice and the social practice. In order to investigate governing patterns concerning students with special needs in the documents, an analytical matrix was constructed. The matrix was inspired by Lutz (2009) and is based on Foucault´s governmentality concept.ResultThe result shows the quality assurance documents place an emphasis on the student´s reading ability. Substantial parts of the texts concern different kinds of screening materials which contribute to the categorizing of the students. There is also a prescriptive tendency in the documents, where students are measured and compared against certain standard. The result also shows that the expectancy of the student´s capacity to self-governing is based on a general societal norm.Conclusion and implementationAndreasson (2007) examines Individual Educational Plans and shows how words can affect how children`s identities are constructed. This study also deals with documentation but instead of individual plans it is focused on the quality assurance documents of the school. The study illuminates the power that principals and teachers have in describing students in these documents. The study intends to raise awareness to the potency of the written word in this context.Key words: discourse analysis, elementary school, governmentality, quality assurance documents, special education, special needs.

This research offers a critical and comprehensive understanding of the current state of prison programming for federally sentenced women in Canada. Its purpose is to map how women prisoners are assessed and processed in terms of their mental health needs and risks and the correctional programs they are required to participate in as part of their correctional rehabilitation plan. By mobilizing a feminist governmentality theoretical lens, the research examines the gendered, neoliberal, and psy management of women prisoners as it occurs through correctional programming interventions and the discourses that underpin the programs in which the women are required to participate. Methodologically, this research draws on over 11,000 pages of documents from the Correctional Service of Canada, which were obtained through a federal Access to Information and Privacy request, as well as eight in-depth, semi-structured interviews with formerly incarcerated, federally sentenced women. I argue that women's experiences of marginalization and criminalization flow from structural factors that are variously impacted by their intersecting identities and which are subsumed beneath discourses of responsibilization and risk management within the programming documents and largely ignored as a result of the security-focused and risk-centred carceral logics that govern prison life and management. The analysis revealed that programming documents - including facilitator manuals, staff training guides, participant workbooks, policy guidelines, and administrative documents - discursively constitute women as emotionally out of control, motivated primarily by their relationships, and as cognitively flawed. Through discourses of empowerment and care, and by way of self-monitoring strategies and improved self-esteem, women prisoners are tasked with managing their own mental health needs and risks and choosing a path of prescribed rehabilitation. Placing the onus of change squarely on the individual prisoner effectively sets aside the structural factors and contexts that lie at the root of women's criminalization, which women cannot simply "choose" to change. Despite the Correctional Service of Canada's appearance of women-centredness and gender responsivity, women are subject to control, coercion, and intense responsibilization efforts in and through correctional programming initiatives.

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As immigration to Europe continuously increase, so does governments efforts to control and manage these moving populations, and their national borders. Today, returning migrants without a residence permit is often regarded as a natural measure within the immigration control apparatus, but the means to ensure return, the populations targeted and their legal rights have changed over time. This thesis aims to understand the developments of return policies in the case of Norway, from 1988-2010. By combining the analytical approach of governmentality with theorisations about deportations and migration policy development, I seek to understand how the return regime has been established and transformed. The analysis is based on policy documents as the main material, and the qualitative content analysis reveals that the return regime has developed from several measures initiated to achieve control over different challenging and unforeseen situations that arises throughout the period. Short term solutions create problems in the long run, and the solutions add on to create and establish the return regime.

This dissertation explores the discursive production of, and response to, environmental disaster. The project is contextualized through the case of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. By interrupting traditional perceptions of environmental disaster, this project frames socio-environmental disasters as a normal and increasingly experienced part of global hydrocarbon capitalism. The project purports that disaster is embedded within the current global economy and the high-]modernist ideologies that underlie it. As such, the strategies and techniques employed to respond to environmental disaster are intimately bound up within the same systemic processes that have created them in the first place. Moreover, because instrumentalist responses are quickly employed to mitigate disaster, the systemic factors productive of disaster remain concealed. Environmental disaster is thus a process of hydrocarbon capitalism rather than a product of it; as such it can, among other categories, be understood as manageable, profitable, and litigable. This research also highlights the normalization of chronic socio-environmental disaster though sensationalistic perspectives on acute disaster. This project explores the potential for resistance through artistic endeavors, highlighting how the discursive processes that construct traditional power/knowledge formations of environmental disaster might be subverted through non-traditional means. While the framework of eco-governmentality is especially useful in highlighting the problematic social relationships to nature, the project nonetheless acknowledges that counter-discourses for are likely to be appropriated by industry for the purpose of new enterprise and profit. / Ph. D.