This paper examines the non-profit organization Friskis&Svettis in order to gain insight into whether governmentality is used and if it is being used in what way. Furthermore we analyzed the requirements and consequences that that may have developed out of this governance structure. To get answers to the questions asked in this paper, a qualitative approach has been taken by the use of interviews with officials at Friskis&Svettis Uppsala. The conclusions drawn from the survey is that there are factors that indicate that governmentality is used within the organization by way of the use of guidelines which can be seen as a technique to control individuals and point them in the desired direction, and the follow-ups that can verify that the guidelines are being followed by the officials. The guidelines and the follow-up have also been an organizational requirement. A subsequent impact that was found is that certain leadership styles may be rewarded and that certain criteria on the personal level in terms of which individuals fit within the organization can be created. / I denna uppsats undersöks den ideella organisationen Friskis&Svettis med syfte att få insikt i huruvida självstyrning finns, vilken är vår teoretiska utgångspunkt, samt hur den i sådana fall tar form.  Ett vidare intresse har varit att analysera vilka krav och konsekvenser som kan komma att utvecklas ur denna styrningsform. För att få svar på undersökningens frågeställningar har en kvalitativ ansats använts genom intervjuer med funktionärer vid Friskis&Svettis Uppsala. De slutsatser som dragits från undersökningen är att det finns faktorer som pekar på självstyrning inom organisationen, dels passens riktlinjer som kan ses som en teknik för att styra individerna i önskad riktning, och dels uppföljningar som kan kontrollera att riktlinjerna efterföljs av funktionärerna. Riktlinjerna och uppföljningarna har även funnits som organisatoriska krav. En efterföljande konsekvens som funnits gäller hur vissa ledarstilar kan komma att premieras samt hur kriterier på det personliga planet vad gäller vilka individer som platsar inom organisationen kan skapas.

My dissertation is a critical ethnography of grassroots feminist agencies and immigrant organizations involved in the governance of gender violence in Toronto, Ontario. Along with examining the agencies operating on the outskirts of the law, I also observe the organizations that contract directly with the provincial government to counsel abusers prosecuted through the city’s specialized domestic violence courts. Drawing on the methodological and theoretical insights of socio-legal studies, postcolonial feminism, and governmentality scholarship, my research explores the governance of domestic violence through the community. Specifically, I examine how the voluntary sector performs the state’s work of prosecuting domestic violence, punishing offenders and building citizens. My research reveals the significant influence that community organizations exert on the prosecution of gender violence and in defining the conditions of punishment for offenders. Through court observation of Toronto’s domestic violence plea court, I show how grassroots administrative workers transform into hybrids of the prosecutor and defense within governance networks. In addition, based on interviews with service providers delivering counseling to offenders, I document how non-profit organizational habits add distinctive flavors to the administration of punishment, materializing in governing regimes that emphasize care in some contexts and discipline in others. Finally, I also explore the dual constructions of immigrant counselors as both the experts and the “others” to the nation with regards to gender violence. In contrast to assumptions of ignorance amongst the immigrant “other” in the liberal imaginary, my findings indicate that the notion of women’s empowerment is nothing new or unfamiliar within Toronto’s diasporic communities; several of the immigrant anti-violence experts involved in this research credit their politicization and training “back home” as foundational to their involvement in feminist and the anti-violence movement. These findings challenge liberal assumptions of the East as a space devoid of the cultural material of women’s empowerment, which form the backbone of Western performances of modernity.

Working to untangle the multiple interests and “truths” that manifest in decision-making in youth shelters, I draw on the Foucauldian perspective of governmentality as an alternative means of problematizing “youth homelessness” in Canada. Tracing interdiscursivity between levels of authority, I use critical discourse analysis to deconstruct federal and Ontario government, and Toronto youth shelter discourses. Aiming to normalize the problematic, I uncover tensions between crime control and human resource development within each level of authority. Further, usurping attention to employment and housing, mental illness and youth criminality are taking over as dominant discourses. Moreover, the discursive production of “needy” and “helping” subjectivities is serving to depoliticize and individualize institutionally structured relationships, thereby limiting the depth of citizenship permitted poor, racialized and gendered young people. Concealing ongoing neo-liberal restructuring, therapeutic community-based governance is thus justified over action to address the roots of youth homelessness.

My thesis explores the knowledge, subjectivities and work performances that activist social workers bring to their practice in Ontario, Canada during a period of workplace restructuring that includes cuts to services, work intensification, increased surveillance and the evolving discourses of neoliberalism. A key aspect of my dissertation is the exploration of tensions between the attachments, desires and aspirations of the activist social work self and what that self must do every day to get by. I am interested in how it is that social workers produce and maintain their sense of identities – their integrity, ethics and responsibilities as activists – while also managing to navigate the contradictions of restructured workplaces. My aim is to understand not how power in the form of restructuring policies is imposed on people, but rather, how power acts through subjects who find themselves both implicated in, and struggling to resist neoliberal restructuring. My research lens draws on Michel Foucault’s ideas about governmentality and on feminist poststructural, critical race, and postcolonial theories. I use these theories to see neoliberal strategies of rule as working in diffuse ways through social and health service workplaces, encouraging service providers to see themselves as individualized and active subjects responsible for particular performances that enact specific types of change. My research findings reveal that activist social workers respond to neoliberal strategies of rule in multiple ways while constituting themselves through a variety of competing discourses that exist in their lives. Social workers subjectivities appear to be produced through a range of discourses drawn from their family histories, unique biographies and the intersections of socially produced distinctions that are based on gender, race, class, sexuality, age and nationalism. My dissertation traces some of the many ways that social workers position themselves within and beyond the changing context of neoliberalism. In doing so, my research reveals tentative pathways for building critical resistance practices and suggests future social welfare measures that are based on social justice and equity.

Owing to the unfortunate accidents happened in Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan on 11th March 2011, renewable energy has again become one of the mostly referred issues in energy related discussions all around the world. Generally, the states are expected to give incentives to the renewable energy sources in order to help the development and spread of those clean energy technologies against the fossil based energy sources. However, the levels of state subsidy to renewable energy sources in Turkey which was announced in 2010 with an Amendment Law was not possible to understand by following the mentioned way of thinking. Unlike other studies in the field of renewable energy policies, the thesis problematizes the role of the states in the formation of renewable energy markets and prefers to use the critical theory while trying to understand how the renewable energy policies in Turkey are formed. The state policies are tried to be understood as a result of historical state and society relations rather than looking for linear reason and result relationships. State is seen not a unified actor but rather a battleground of competing projects each of which arise from a certain way of thinking or in other words, rationalities of government. Consequently, the traces of developmentalism, neoliberalism and neomercantilism are followed starting from the formation of the Turkish electricity market in the late 1990s and the preparation of Renewable Energy Law in 2005 until the aftermath of the recent Amendment to the Renewable Energy Law in 2010.

Working to untangle the multiple interests and “truths” that manifest in decision-making in youth shelters, I draw on the Foucauldian perspective of governmentality as an alternative means of problematizing “youth homelessness” in Canada. Tracing interdiscursivity between levels of authority, I use critical discourse analysis to deconstruct federal and Ontario government, and Toronto youth shelter discourses. Aiming to normalize the problematic, I uncover tensions between crime control and human resource development within each level of authority. Further, usurping attention to employment and housing, mental illness and youth criminality are taking over as dominant discourses. Moreover, the discursive production of “needy” and “helping” subjectivities is serving to depoliticize and individualize institutionally structured relationships, thereby limiting the depth of citizenship permitted poor, racialized and gendered young people. Concealing ongoing neo-liberal restructuring, therapeutic community-based governance is thus justified over action to address the roots of youth homelessness.

My thesis explores the knowledge, subjectivities and work performances that activist social workers bring to their practice in Ontario, Canada during a period of workplace restructuring that includes cuts to services, work intensification, increased surveillance and the evolving discourses of neoliberalism. A key aspect of my dissertation is the exploration of tensions between the attachments, desires and aspirations of the activist social work self and what that self must do every day to get by. I am interested in how it is that social workers produce and maintain their sense of identities – their integrity, ethics and responsibilities as activists – while also managing to navigate the contradictions of restructured workplaces. My aim is to understand not how power in the form of restructuring policies is imposed on people, but rather, how power acts through subjects who find themselves both implicated in, and struggling to resist neoliberal restructuring. My research lens draws on Michel Foucault’s ideas about governmentality and on feminist poststructural, critical race, and postcolonial theories. I use these theories to see neoliberal strategies of rule as working in diffuse ways through social and health service workplaces, encouraging service providers to see themselves as individualized and active subjects responsible for particular performances that enact specific types of change. My research findings reveal that activist social workers respond to neoliberal strategies of rule in multiple ways while constituting themselves through a variety of competing discourses that exist in their lives. Social workers subjectivities appear to be produced through a range of discourses drawn from their family histories, unique biographies and the intersections of socially produced distinctions that are based on gender, race, class, sexuality, age and nationalism. My dissertation traces some of the many ways that social workers position themselves within and beyond the changing context of neoliberalism. In doing so, my research reveals tentative pathways for building critical resistance practices and suggests future social welfare measures that are based on social justice and equity.

This study analyzes the three most recent pieces of Canadian immigration legislation: the Immigration Act of 1952, the Immigration Act of 1976, and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act of 2001 (herein referred to collectively as the documents). The intent is to contribute to the archaeology of immigration in Canadian Federal legislation, and more specifically, to the ways that the immigration applicant, immigrant, and the immigration process in Canada, have been constituted over time. This project uses a modified version of Jean Carabine’s (2001) method of Foucauldian discourse analysis to articulate the various meanings and potential effects that are produced in the documents. The work of Michel Foucault and the governmentality approach is then applied to make sense of these findings. Two main conclusions are generated. The first details how elements of state racism and bio-nationalism are apparent in all three acts, and must be regarded as complimentary to one another, as they co-exist and operate together on different planes. The second discusses a shift in the documents from a focus on welfare rationalities, to neo-liberal rationalities, using the example of the shifting portrayal of the immigrant (and immigration applicant) from someone with the potential to become a liability to the welfare state, to a neo-liberal subject.

Over the past few decades, there has been a shift in crime control discourses, from an almost exclusive focus on traditional criminal justice objectives and practices, to attention to ‘community’ and a range of strategies that seek to prevent crime and increase safety. Overall, evaluations of the community mobilization approach to crime prevention and safety conclude that these initiatives have generally demonstrated limited long-term impacts on ‘crime’ and safety at the local level. Through the ‘what works’ lens, the limits of the approach have typically been attributed to implementation challenges related to outreach and mobilization, and inadequate resourcing. Through a more critical lens, using studies on governmentality as a starting point, this study examines the mechanisms through which crime prevention and community safety became thinkable as sites of governance in Canada, and more specifically within the Community Development Framework (CDF) in Ottawa (ON). To this end, I conducted an ethnography using a triangulation of data collection methods, including extensive fieldwork and direct participant observation within the CDF. The findings of this ethnography describe in detail how the CDF emerged and unfolded (from 2008 to 2010) from a variety of perspectives. These findings show that the CDF encountered a number of common challenges associated with program implementation and community-based evaluation. However, the lack of progress made towards adhering to CDF principles and reaching CDF goals cannot be reduced to these failures alone. The CDF highlights the importance of locating the community approach to crime prevention within its wider socio-political context, and of paying attention to its numerous ‘messy actualities’. These include the dynamics and repercussions of: governing at a distance and of the dispersal of social control; the neoliberal creation and responsibilization of choice-makers; relations of power, knowledge and the nature of expertise; the messiness of the notion of ‘community’; bureaucratic imperatives and professional interests; the words versus deeds of community policing; and processes relevant to resistance within current arrangements.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka Skolverkets diskurs kring lärare som mobbar elever. Detta görs genom en textanalys av myndighetens publikationer där utsagor om mobbande lärare jämförs med utsagor om mobbande elever. Det studerade materialet utgörs av Skolverkets mest omfattande publikationer om skolmobbning mellan år 2002 och 2011. Texterna analyseras med hjälp av Michel Foucaults diskursanalys och de teorier som används är Steven Lukes definition av maktens tredje dimension samt Foucaults maktteori. Studien visar att mobbande lärare sällan omnämns i materialet och att utsagorna koncentreras kring historia, juridik och statistik. När det gäller talet om elever som mobbare är utsagorna frekvent förekommande och deras individuella egenskaper behandlas ingående. Eleverna beskrivs i förhållande till forskning, åtgärdsprogram, historia, juridik, statistik och utredande texter. Undersökningen visar att statistik om lärare respektive elever ej behandlas på ett jämlikt sätt; det gäller både vid framtagning av underlag för statistiken och vid redovisning av resultat. Skolverket presenterar ämnet om mobbande lärare diskontinuerligt och fragmentariskt medan mobbande elever beskrivs ingående och ur en mängd olika synvinklar. Texterna ger ingen förklaring till varför mobbande elever respektive mobbande lärare behandlas på så olika sätt när skolmobbning ska beskrivas. Resultatet av denna uppsats kan sättas i relation till maktteorier där den statliga makten osynliggör sig själv, samtidigt som den synliggör medborgarna. Lärare som mobbar elever osynliggörs, eftersom deras uppgift är att utföra statens direktiv; elever som mobbar är fullt exponerade eftersom maktutövningen undersöker, iakttar och kontrollerar dem. / This study has the intention to investigate how the Swedish National Agency for Education describes teachers who bully students. The examination is done by a research of published texts from the agency (between 2002 and 2011), and embodies the most numerous publications about bullying in school in this period of time. The investigation is performed with Discourse Analysis from Michel Foucault and compares bullying teachers with bullying students. Theory of Three-Dimensional Power from Steven Lukes  and Power Theories from Foucault gives a further understanding of the results. The study shows that bullying teachers is mentioned sporadically and in sprinkling fields related to historical dictums, statistics and juridical subjects. When it comes to the description of students, there are many and frequent dictums from personality traits to research findings. Students are also discussed in relation to programs against bullying and in a historical, judicial and statistical context. Statistics are unequal when it comes to bullying teachers versus bullying students, both in how investigations are composed and how the results are presented. The question of bullying teachers are almost excluded in the texts and none of the publications explains why there’s such a big difference between the presentation of bullying teachers comparing to bullying students. The conclusion is that the Swedish National Agency for Education treats the problem with bullying teachers in a discontinuous and fragmentary way whilst bullying students are described comprehensively and in widespread subjects. The result can be related to power theory therefore it shows how governmental power is making itself invisible whilst it exposes the members of the society. Bullying teachers are invisible because their task  is to perform the governments directives, whilst bullying students are fully visible because exercise of power investigates, observes and controls them in full exposure.