This thesis examines the discursive construction of lifelong learning in Swedish, Australian and American policy. Lifelong learning has an aura of apparent self-evidence which this study wishes to challenge by deconstructing the normalised truths in contemporary lifelong learning policies. The thesis rests on a collection of four articles, written by the author within the framework of the PhD programme. Using foucauldian concepts of power/knowledge and governmentality, this study identifies a number of discursive stories about the present in terms of how the ideal society and its ideal citizens are envisioned. It shows that there are national differences in the usage of lifelong learning in terms of the meanings given to life, long and learning. Yet three stories also extend across the nations examined. First, learning is construed as work-related rather than a life-related. Secondly, the positive rhetoric of lifelong learning – the creation of ideal citizens – is accompanied by a parallel story of deviance, incompetence and failure. This leads to a third pervasive story of ‘medicalization’ where the deviant is pathologised as an undesirable other in need of treatment and correction by professionals who operate as the doctors and nurses of lifelong learning. Overall, the analysis suggests that as discourse, lifelong learning links the government of others and the government of the self.

In 1990, Chile made a successful transition from the authoritarian dictatorship that had ruled the country since 1973 to a democratically elected government. The authoritarian regime was characterized by massive and systemic practices of human rights abuses, and it left an official toll of 5,000 deaths, about 2000 of which constitute “detained and disappeared people”, and an additional 27,000 people who have been officially recognized as victims of torture. These figures do not take into account the unknown numbers of Chilean exiles, or those who were internally displaced or who lost their jobs due to their suspected political affiliations. The human cost of the military regime has continued to be one of the most enduring issues confronting the post-authoritarian Chilean nation. This thesis builds on the work of critical researchers who locate the Chilean authoritarian regime in the transnational politics of the Cold War and their effect in implementing neo-liberalism in Chile. This literature demonstrates that terror was a constitutive, rather than an incidental, element of neo-liberal governmentality: governmentality that inscribed itself on Chilean bodies through terror practices and that remains unscathed through the transition to democracy. With that premise in mind I explore, through a historical analysis of major conjunctures in the history of human rights debates in Chile, how the post-authoritarian nation accounts for the human rights legacies of authoritarianism while obscuring the continuity of authoritarian governmentality. I propose that human rights constitute a biopolitical governmental regime that in a manner comparable to the authoritarian terror captures human life within the realm of state power. As a regime, human rights submit experiences of terror to specific power-knowledge technologies that render terror intelligible, manageable and governable. Rather than promoting essential values of truth and justice, the human rights regime produces specific discourses of truth and justice as well as specific discourses of subjectivity and nation. In concrete terms, this thesis explores how the post-authoritarian nation and it subjects use the human rights regime to discursively construct a national truth in order to promote and protect specific governmental arrangements.

This research tracks the emergence of ‘soft’ workfare in Toronto. This refers to a set of attitudes and practices apparent in the delivery of welfare-to-work programs through the Ontario Works framework, which use compulsion to push people towards employment while simultaneously encouraging limited and specific practices of individual choice. Research findings are derived from eight interviews and relevant policy reports, focusing on the experiences of three non-profit agencies and the City of Toronto, who provide employment assistance and financial assistance through Ontario Works, respectively. These findings indicate that grassroots organizations pioneered employment services for social assistance recipients, and, alongside the municipal government, had been calling for active employment programs. They made use of the distance between policy rules and their own programs to alleviate the most punitive features of OW, but judge compulsion as a means to meet a necessary end. This demonstrates how disciplinary tendencies reside within liberal governmentalities.

This research tracks the emergence of ‘soft’ workfare in Toronto. This refers to a set of attitudes and practices apparent in the delivery of welfare-to-work programs through the Ontario Works framework, which use compulsion to push people towards employment while simultaneously encouraging limited and specific practices of individual choice. Research findings are derived from eight interviews and relevant policy reports, focusing on the experiences of three non-profit agencies and the City of Toronto, who provide employment assistance and financial assistance through Ontario Works, respectively. These findings indicate that grassroots organizations pioneered employment services for social assistance recipients, and, alongside the municipal government, had been calling for active employment programs. They made use of the distance between policy rules and their own programs to alleviate the most punitive features of OW, but judge compulsion as a means to meet a necessary end. This demonstrates how disciplinary tendencies reside within liberal governmentalities.

In 1990, Chile made a successful transition from the authoritarian dictatorship that had ruled the country since 1973 to a democratically elected government. The authoritarian regime was characterized by massive and systemic practices of human rights abuses, and it left an official toll of 5,000 deaths, about 2000 of which constitute “detained and disappeared people”, and an additional 27,000 people who have been officially recognized as victims of torture. These figures do not take into account the unknown numbers of Chilean exiles, or those who were internally displaced or who lost their jobs due to their suspected political affiliations. The human cost of the military regime has continued to be one of the most enduring issues confronting the post-authoritarian Chilean nation. This thesis builds on the work of critical researchers who locate the Chilean authoritarian regime in the transnational politics of the Cold War and their effect in implementing neo-liberalism in Chile. This literature demonstrates that terror was a constitutive, rather than an incidental, element of neo-liberal governmentality: governmentality that inscribed itself on Chilean bodies through terror practices and that remains unscathed through the transition to democracy. With that premise in mind I explore, through a historical analysis of major conjunctures in the history of human rights debates in Chile, how the post-authoritarian nation accounts for the human rights legacies of authoritarianism while obscuring the continuity of authoritarian governmentality. I propose that human rights constitute a biopolitical governmental regime that in a manner comparable to the authoritarian terror captures human life within the realm of state power. As a regime, human rights submit experiences of terror to specific power-knowledge technologies that render terror intelligible, manageable and governable. Rather than promoting essential values of truth and justice, the human rights regime produces specific discourses of truth and justice as well as specific discourses of subjectivity and nation. In concrete terms, this thesis explores how the post-authoritarian nation and it subjects use the human rights regime to discursively construct a national truth in order to promote and protect specific governmental arrangements.

This dissertation examines three contemporary German novels and their respective representations of the Red-Green era. It focuses on the discourses to which these novels refer in order to shed light on the consequences and implications of Red-Green politics for the subjectification of individuals during this time. When Gerhard Schröder replaced Helmut Kohl in 1998 as Chancellor of Germany, there was a noticeable shift towards neoliberal policies that has since received much attention in scholarly studies and public-political debates about its impact on Germany’s economy, social security system, political party system, and institutional structure. Taking a new approach to understanding the politics of the Red-Green coalition, I argue that its impact is noticeable not only in the political sphere, but that this impact also permeates all levels of society, in particular concepts of selfhood, and that it has found its way into contemporary literary works. As my particular interest lies in investigating how these literary works process the consequences and implications of Red-Green politics for the subjectification of individuals during this time, the novels I selected situate themselves explicitly within the Red-Green era mostly through references to some of its most well-known labour market measures, namely the Ich-AG, the Mittelstandsoffensive, and employability training programs. Analysing the neoliberal discourses to which these novels refer and (re-) constructing the particular sets of knowledge, truths, and norms that enable neoliberal governing practices allow me to shed light on the mechanisms of individuals’ subjectification through the politics of the Red-Green coalition. Of particular importance during the Red-Green era are the discourses surrounding entrepreneurialism as they construct the market as a structuring principle of society in which all individuals are called upon as entrepreneurs. For the examination of neoliberal governing discourses, I draw both on Michel Foucault’s theory of neoliberal governmentality and Ulrich Bröckling’s conceptualization of the entrepreneurial self, an idealized and hence unachievable self-image that addresses individuals as entrepreneurs of their own lives. Foucault’s theory allows going beyond an understanding of neoliberalism as a political theory of free market policies but views it as an act of governing that expands the notion of the government of others to include the government of the self according to the principles of entrepreneurialism and the market, hence taking into account the participatory role of the subject. Bröckling’s conceptualization draws on Foucault’s theory to examine the subjectification of individuals as entrepreneurial selves, that is, as individuals who are constantly stimulated to act as enterprising subjects. The literary analysis of the novels – Ralph Hammerthaler’s Alles bestens (2002), Reinhard Liebermann’s Das Ende des Kanzlers. Der finale Rettungsschuss (2004), and Joachim Zelter’s Schule der Arbeitslosen (2006) – shows they cast light on various ways in which specific forms of subjectivity are promoted and enabled through neoliberal governing practices. More specifically, I illustrate that the protagonists in each novel represent three different facets of the entrepreneurial self, namely the enthusiast, the melancholic, and the social lemming that Ulrich Bröckling identifies in his typology of the entrepreneurial self (2008). While the nameless protagonist in Alles bestens embraces the market as a universal structuring principle and a metaphor for his own life, the protagonist Hans Hansmann in Das Ende des Kanzlers embraces free market principles, yet fails to fully understand the demands of the market and his own position within it. By contrast, Karla Meier in Schule der Arbeitslosen refuses to accept yet nevertheless follows the demands implicit in the image of the entrepreneurial self.

Fastän psykologer och psykologins ställning i samhället ofta sägs ha förändrats så finns det väldigt lite forskning gjord på yrket. Särskilt saknas det studier som inriktar sig på att undersöka omdaningar i den svenska psykologprofessionen över tid. Syftet med uppsatsen är att granska, beskriva och analysera den svenska psykologprofessionen mellan åren 1990 och 2010. Studien empiriska material utgörs av de nummer av Psykologtidningen, vilket är Svenska Psykologförbundets officiella tidning, som utgivits under dessa år. Dessa har analyserats med hjälp av en diskursanalytisk ansats som utgår från de metoder och teorier som den franska historikern och filosofen Michel Foucault utarbetade. Som analysredskap har även Foucaults begrepp styrningsmentalitet (eng.governmentality) använts för att kunna positionera fynden i ett större historiskt perspektiv.   Resultatet visar på att diskursen om psykologprofessionen har genomgått ett antal förändringar sedan början av nittiotalet. Den dominanta ställning som psykoterapeutpositionen haft sedan 1980-talet har börjat luckras upp och i dess ställe har nya yrkesuppgifter såsom testning, handledning och chefskap vuxit fram med konsekvensen att yrket blivit mer heterogent. Det har även skett en förskjutning i fokus från vikten av att inrikta sig på att behandla psykisk ohälsa till att främja hälsa, vilket medfört att man börjat röra sig bort från de psykiatriska verksamheterna. Istället framhävs vikten av att arbeta inom förebyggande verksamheter såsom vårdcentraler, skolor och företagshälsor.  Utöver detta har yrket omformulerat sitt förhållande till det omgivande samhället. Sedan mitten på 1990-talet så har det börjat ses allt mindre självklart att psykologer skall arbeta inom den offentliga sektorn. Psykologkåren har även försökt anpassa yrkesrollen till att bli mer gångbar i media. Dessutom har man börjat uttrycka psykologins förtjänster i mer ekonomiska termer, i syfte att konkret kunna visa på ens nytta för samhället. Slutligen har synen på yrkets kunskapsgrund skiftat då psykoanalysen tappat i inflytande. Istället har en mängd andra teorier och modeller brett ut sig med implikationer för yrkets vetenskapsfilosofiska antaganden. Samtidigt har det skett en mer praktisk och politisk kodifiering av vilka former av kunskap som ses som trovärdiga, i och med etablerandet av en specialistordning samt den omskakande debatten om evidensbasering. Dessa händelser har påverkat vilken forskning som ses som tillförlitlig för psykologens arbetsutövning.   Förändringarna gällande diskursen kring psykologyrket kan förstås i ljuset av en förskjutning i den dominerande styrningsmentaliteten i det svenska samhället, från en välfärdbaserad till en neoliberal styrningsform. Detta har medfört att psykologprofessionen har haft nya samhälleliga krav och behov att förhålla sig till, mot vilka man har artikulerat sin samtida yrkesutövning.

This dissertation aims to explore the practice of the care of the self in three Renaissance plays by means of Michel Foucault¡¦s theory of the technologies of the self derived from the Greco-Roman ethics of the care of the self. Foucault asserts that the Greek ethics of the care of the self offers a beneficial viewpoint to the modern investigation of freedom outside of sexual liberation. This study first constructs the guiding principles for the possible realization of the Greco-Roman ethics of the care of the self in other epochs, especially the early modern era. The technologies of the self are interconnected with the technologies of power, and their contact point resides in governmentality. The subject is shaped by the governing schema of the ruling authorities while concurrently being modified by the self through self-government. The subject must comprehend the governing tactics of the authorities in order not to be governed too much and can further govern other people for personal purposes. To be able to do so is to be equipped with a philosophical ethos of critique, which can be executed in three perspectives: thought ¡V an attitude of criticism, action ¡V the plebian quality, and words ¡V the practice of parrhesia. The study then applies the aforementioned guiding principles to discuss the three heroines in terms of the four aspects proposed by Foucault in the relationship to the self: the determination of the ethical substance, the mode of subjection, the means of ethical works, and the telso of the ethical subject. It investigates how the three heroines of different social statuses ¡V aristocrat, citizen, gentry ¡Vfulfill the practice of the care of the self through various strategies and unconventional life styles.

<p>Previously, studies in the intersection of power and development have predominantly concentrated on power as domination; how powerful actors can force recipient countries into embracing specific policies due to economical asymmetries. Yet, with the introduction of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) approach to development employed by the Bretton Woods Institutions (BWI), conditions on certain policies have decreased and it is said that the approach allows for country ownership as development strategies are written by the countries themselves. As a critical response, the conception of power is broadened here through the separate employment of governmentality theory and neo-Gramscian International Relations theory. They share among them a theoretical premise which allows for an understanding of power that extends beyond domination to the realm of discursive practices which, it is argued, allows for influence despite the notions of ownership and without power as domination.</p><p>The object of this thesis is to suggest how the discourses of the PRSP regime can influence subjects whom they addressed. The two theories have different assumptions here. More specifically, the neo-Gramscian theory argue that discursive practice may render ideological issues as common sense why they can come to be embraced by subjects, whereas the governmentality theory assume that discourses can, perhaps without conscious recognition, reshape the very identities of subjects. The theories differences are retained and bracketed when a discourse analysis of the PRSP regime is conducted which concludes that the BWIs require that suitable skills are embraced by subjects appropriate for a good governed market economy. These skills are located to basic capacities in calculating, accounting and social capital accumulation. Thereafter a practical example of discursive practice in a capacity building mission is reviewed to explicate how these skills are actualized through training modules enabling influence towards preferred standards of the BWIs without power as domination. The two theories are brought in for a discussion on how these discursive practices may be understood according to their respective premises, but also to discuss the usefulness of these theories for studies of this kind.</p><p>It is argued, among other conclusions, that the neo-Gramscian understanding of power as operating on the conscious level can fruitfully be coupled with the proposition of governmentality that powers also work on an unconscious level for understanding practises of capacity building. As concerning the weaknesses of the theories it is put forth that the neo- Gramscian theory suffers from an assumption of class identity presented as a “brute fact” before the realm of the political, whereas the governmentality theory suffers from an exclusive focus on discourse and leaves behind how different actor constellations may seek to appropriate discourses. To remedy these weaknesses, the thesis concludes with an argument that a combination of these theories can provide a lucrative foundation for further studies.</p>

Despite its imprecision, social capital is a powerful tool for examining how and why particular forms of social interaction lead to the health and well-being of communities, organisations, and even businesses. Community cohesion as a policy prescription emerged in the UK, following the social disturbances in certain northern cities and towns in the summer of 2001. The official reports into these disturbances identified lack of social interaction between different ethnic groups as a principal cause. Furthermore, social housing was seen as a key factor that could be used to prevent future disturbances. Accordingly, this research focuses on how the assets and forms of social capital act as good predictors of community cohesion, in the context of the New Labour government's aim to use social housing to build cohesive communities. Unless otherwise specified, references to 'the government' throughout this thesis apply to the New Labour administration that came to power in the UK on 2nd May 1997 and ended with the Coalition administration led by the Conservatives on 11th May 2010. This thesis makes use of the linearity between the goals of social capital and the policy aims of community cohesion to match forms of social capital to specific forms of social interaction, in six selected social housing schemes in Bradford. Bradford was one of the cities affected by the disturbances in 2001. Analysis of the forms of social interaction in the case study housing schemes shows that bridging and linking forms of social capital, which could lead to enduring cohesive communities, were mainly latent in the schemes. This suggests that the peaceful co-existence in the case study housing schemes today is, possibly, postponed social conflict in the long term.