Michel Foucault and Dorothy Smith in Case File Research: Strange Bedfellows or Complimentary Thinkers?

The aim of this article is to provide an exploration how the work of two theorists with notably different stances could be used effectively to enhance critical research methods in relation to the history of child welfare social work. The design and implementation of child welfare policies, practices and discourses could considerably benefit from a more historically well grounded scholarship that enables actors to connect their present concerns with the broader historical dynamics of social regulation. The article reports on how the work of Michel Foucault and Dorothy E. Smith might be considered in parallel as two different perspectives to the same scene in time and place. The differences and similarities in their approaches are explored with an emphasis on concepts most relevant to researching child welfare archives including discourse, text, the subject and power-knowledge. The article concludes with a commentary on further development to take forward this methodological analysis.

'Michel Blondi'

Highlights the significance of this dancer-choreographer to musicologists.

Ancestors of Governmentality: Accounting and Pastoral Power in the 15th Century

Foucault identified the roots of governmentality in religious beliefs and religious history with its genealogical core the equivalent of pastoral power, the art of governing people by relying on a dualistic logic; individualization and totalization. This technology of power arose and matured within the Roman Catholic Church and provided a model for many states in the achievement and exercise of power. Informed by the work of Foucault on pastoral power the present work examines the genealogical core of governmentality in the context of the Roman Catholic Church at a time of great crisis in the 15th century when the Roman Catholic Church was undergoing reform instituted by Pope Eugenius IV (1431-1447). The contributions of accounting to pastoral power are shown in this study to have been pivotal in restoring the Church’s standing and influence. Accounting was one of the technologies that allowed the bishops to control both the diocese as a whole and each priest, to subjugate the priests to the bishops’ authority and, thereby, to govern the diocese through a never-ending extraction of truth.

Review of Michel Cahen, Les bandits. Un historien au Mozambique.

Book review of Michel Cahen, Les bandits. Un historien au Mozambique, 1994, Paris : Centre Culturel Calouste Gulbenkian, 2002, 351p., cartes, ISBN : 972-8462-28-X

Création littéraire sous contexte médiatisé: l'œuvre de Michel Houellebecq, Amélie Nothomb et Jacques Chessex

Partindo da análise dos processos de legitimação e de consagração que regem, a partir da segunda metade do século XX, a mediatização do campo literário, propomo-nos estudar os peri-fenómenos consequentes, tal como a correlação possível entre essa circunstância e a própria criação. O objeto deste estudo focaliza-se na produção de três escritores paradigmáticos das letras de expressão francesa europeias contemporâneas, cuja mediatização acompanha a popularidade: o francês Michel Houellebecq, a belga Amélie Nothomb e o suíço romando Jacques Chessex. Interrogamo-nos sobre as relações possíveis entre os instrumentos dessa mediatização e os seus efeitos nas opções de escrita destes três escritores. Atenta à projeção transfronteiriça de autores e de obras, resultado de uma convergência de alguns fatores de mediatização, mas também às particularidades da memória cultural e literária onde se inscrevem as literaturas respectivas (num percurso de legitimação progressiva das literaturas de periferia face à centralidade franco-francesa), a nossa reflexão visa também contribuir para uma recontextualização do cânone da literatura francesa no contexto globalizado da sociedade mediática contemporânea na qual os autores visados estão comprometidos.

Coloquio Michel Foucault, reflexiones sobre el saber, el poder, la verdad y las prácticas de sí

En este libro se encuentran distintas posturas acerca de los dos grandes temas de Foucault: el saber y el poder. Temas que, por otra parte, marcan derroteros de búsqueda, de formulación, interrogantes que se vertieron en investigaciones que comprometen la escritura misma de las cosas. Todos los aquí presentes son estudiantes de posgrado de la carrera de filosofía, alumnos de dos seminarios que extendieron, como prácticas de formación y discusión sus trabajos en el “Coloquio Reflexiones sobre el saber, el poder, la verdad y las prácticas de sí”. Hoy, parte de estos trabajos, en los que los estudiantes arriesgaron sus propias tesis, sus pesquisas, la entrañable cualidad de quedar comprometidos con el discurso y haciendo “uso” de lo que el propio Foucault deseaba, cada uno hace de sí una parte de esa obra que es la estética de sí. En este libro queda el testimonio