Producing figures of the ‘problematics’: An elaboration of techno-biopolitics in health promotion in school.
Author(s):
Karin Gunnarsson (presenting / submitting)
Conference:
ECER 2013
Format:
Paper

Session Information

23 SES 08 C, Physical Teachers' Education, Health and School Curriculum

Paper Session

Time:
2013-09-12
09:00-10:30
Room:
G-103
Chair:
Nafsika Alexiadou

Contribution

This paper takes its point of departure in two simultaneously tendencies being highlighted in education in the last twenty years, an increase of health problems among children and youth, especially girls and an intensified focus on school's assignment of health promotion. Today, health educations often emphasize individual aspects and based on different manual-based programs grounded in psychological perspectives. The aim is many times formulated as teaching students how to cope with stress, relations and self-image (Coleman, 2009). The effects of the different intervention programs being used within health education has been investigated during the last two decades. A number of studies evaluate the different programmes looking for evidence for effective prevention or treatment (e.g. Merry, et.al. 2011). Some thinkers have put a critical perspective on these practices and describe them as a therapeutic culture that has intruded into education affecting both educational content and methods (Furedi, 2004; Ecclestone & Hayes, 2008). In this paper a specific attention is paid to one intervention program called DISA (Depression in Swedish adolescent). DISA is a manual-based health promotion program built on cognitive behavioral therapy. It aims at preventing depression and stress, and is designed for girls in eighth grade. Because the aim is universal prevention it is directed to all girls whom are not having any specific problem. DISA is often held during regular school hours with obligatory participation for each girl in a school class. By combining the work of Foucault and Haraway the aim is to investigate the intra-action of discursive, material and technological processes within the practices of health promotion and the bodily figurations that this produces. Herein, I will apply the notion of problematization to examine how the problem with girls (ill)health produces specific practices of health promotion. Furthermore, how the enactment of the DISA program constitutes specific performativities of bodily figurations.

 

The theoretical framework that I found productive in the analysis is built on the philosophers Michel Foucault and Donna Haraway. With the Foucauldian notion of problematization (1991; 1992) this paper takes point of departure in the concern with girls’ (ill)health in educational policies and the prevention practice of DISA being implemented herein. In Foucault’s theoretical thinking the interconnection of the discursive and the non-discursive within power relations is a core issue especially by the concepts of discursive practices and bio-power. In the elaboration of power, Foucault (1980) stresses, how power is at play in a network of practices, institutions, and technologies. Here, power is a productive network with access to the bodies of individuals, to their behavior and attitudes. Haraway, as feminist corpomaterialists, emphasizes how becomings of bodies are entangled to the technical and the textual (Haraway, 1991; Lykke, 2010). Fore mostly, providing an approach where it can be possible to investigate the iterative intra-action of agential components and how this produces specific becomings of the bodies involved (Barad, 2007; Haraway, 2008).

Method

By using ethnographic data the empirical material consists of field notes from participant observations, interviews and educational and health policies. By using different types of empirical material my aim is to analyze the practice of health promotion by the multiple practices that constitute it. In other words, to engage in the apparatus of health promotion connected to but also condition by certain coordinates of knowledge and power (Foucault 1980:196). This could be considered as a ‘montage’ where different figures are molded together to show the complexities and the interconnectedness of the phenomena being investigated (Denzin and Lincoln, 2003). Folding the different texts into one another is done in an attempt to flatten the relations between researcher, participants, theory and data. The scientific practice then becomes a performative approach, rather productive then descriptive, and a “direct material engagement with the world” (Barad, 2007:49). Haraway (2000) emphasizes how knowledge production is about being in a practice and how knowledge is created because you're there; take part, transform and transforming. This means an obligation that cannot be indifferent to the truth that is produced but that this truth also is based on a conditional, changing and challenging engagement.

Expected Outcomes

The gender difference in mental illness is a crucial issue in the framework of Swedish educational and health policies (e.g. Westling Allodi, 2010). Different contributors to the high rate of girls’ self-reported mental problems are suggested but claimed to be uncertain. One highlighted risk factor is formulated as gender, and in this case to be a girl (Johnson, 2002). Swedish educational policies (cf. Bill 2007/08:110) enhance that schools are an important arena for health promotion and therefore need to act upon the problems of youths’ health. Especially important is to give support to girls in the early teenage years (Westling Allodi, 2010). In the problematization of girl’s health school impose the practice of DISA as a solution. A solution that I argue produces specific bodily figurations of the ‘problematic’ it is supposed to modify. Health and well-being becomes individual problems and can only be reached by considering aspects of the individual itself. I would say that this produces a female body of docility through the discursive practices taking place in health promotion. The material-semiotic practices, in which diverse bodies and meanings are constituted in relating, are materializing female bodies and enabled ill-health to become normalized.

References

Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Bill 2007/08:110. En förnyad hälsopolitik [A renewed health policy]. Fredrik Reinfeldt, Maria Larsson (m, kd). Coleman, J. (2009). ‘Well-being in schools: empirical measure, or politician’s dream?’ Oxford Review of Education, Vol. 35, Nr. 3, pp. 281-292. Denzin, N.K. and Lincoln, Y.S. (2003) The landscape of Qualitative Research. London: Sage. Ecclestone, K. & Hayes, D. (2008). The dangerous rise of therapeutic education. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: selected interviews and other writings 1972- 1977. Brighton: Harvester P. Foucault, M. (1991). ‘Polemics, Politics, and Problematizations’. In The Foucault Reader. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Foucault, M. (1992). The history of sexuality. Vol. 2, The use of pleasure. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Furedi, F. (2004). Therapy culture: cultivating vulnerability in a certain age. London: Routledge. Haraway, D.J. (1991). Simians, cyborgs, and women: the reinvention of nature. New York: Routledge. Haraway, D. (2000). How like a leaf: an interview with Thyrza Nichols Goodeve. New York: Routledge. Haraway, D.J. (2008). When species meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Lykke, N. (2010). Feminist studies: a guide to intersectional theory, methodology and writing. London: Routledge. Merry, S.N., Hetrick, S.E., Cox, G.R., Brudevold-Iversen, T., Bir, J.J., McDowell, H. (2011). Psychological and educational interventions for preventing depression in children and adolescents (Review). The chochrane collaboration, Published by John Wiley & Sons. Westling, Allodi, M. (2010). Pojkars och flickors psykiska hälsa i skolan: en kunskapsöversikt. [Boys 'and girls' mental health in school: a Research overview]. Report IX from the Delegation for Equality in school. Stockholm: Fritze.

Author Information

Karin Gunnarsson (presenting / submitting)
Stockholm University, Sweden

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