Mennicken, Andrea and Miller, Peter
(2014)
Michel Foucault and the administering of lives.
In: Adler, Paul S., du Gay, Paul, Morgan, Glen and Reed, Michael, (eds.)
The Oxford Handbook of Sociology, Social Theory, and Organization Studies: Contemporary Currents.
Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, pp. 11-38.
ISBN 9780199671083
Abstract
This chapter suggests that Michel Foucault is a nuisance for scholars of organizations, albeit a productive one.
Foucault disavowed the study of organizations, yet his work was fundamentally concerned with the administering
of lives, a central concern of scholars of organizations. The chapter explores this tension by examining four
displacements that Foucault sought to effect: first, a move from asking ‘why’ type questions to ‘how’ type
questions; second, a concern with subjectivity that discards the ethical polarization of subject and object in favour of an analysis of the historically varying ways in which the capacities and attributes of subjects are constituted; third, a focus on practices rather than organizations, and a concern to analyse sets or assemblages of practices in terms of how they emerge and how they are stabilized over time; fourth, a focus on rationalities in the plural. It then examines the ‘Foucault effect’ in organization studies.
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