'What's the problem represented to be?' : a new thinking paradigm / Carol Bacchi.
| Author/creator | Bacchi, Carol Lee author. |
| Format | Book |
| Publication | Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2026. |
| Copyright Date | ©2026 |
| Description | xiii, 294 pages ; 25 cm |
| Subjects |
| Contents | Introduction: a new thinking paradigm--beyond problem-solving -- Initiating a WPR analysis: key premises -- Widening the scope of application -- Troubling 'problems': challenges for researchers -- What is a 'subject'? Who is a 'subject'? -- The turn to 'practice': What are 'practices'? -- Moving from 'being reflexive' to practising 'self'-problematisation -- Governmentality and WPR: exploring governing practices -- Cultivating a genealogical sensibility -- The politics of change: 'resistance', 'counter-conducts' and 'subjugated knowledges' -- Strategic interventions: feminisms, problem representations and gendering practices -- Analysing differencing practices: racialising, colonising, disabling, heteronorming, classing, caste-ing -- Problematising (in) a material world: empiricism, description, affectivity and social flesh -- Critical questions: from 'ideology critique' to 'postcritique' -- Questioning performativity: what's at stake? -- Problematising (with) paradigms: 'reality', 'problems' and 'mixed methods' -- Analysing discourse/s as knowledge practices -- How to deal with 'data' -- The use of ethnography -- 'Governing through experimenting': a political rationality -- Researching a pandemic -- Applying WPR to concepts: questioning 'risk', 'crisis' and 'uncertainty' -- Making mortality 'social': how death certificates undermine the social determinants of health -- Conclusion: why we need a new thinking paradigm. |
| Abstract | Originally developed as a mode of critical policy analysis, 'What's the Problem Represented to Be?': A New Thinking Paradigm extends the thinking behind the innovative 'What's the problem represented to be?' (WPR) approach to new areas of investigation. It poses a challenge to problem-solving as the dominant way of thinking about human existence and human endeavours and offers a fresh alternative that turns attention to the contours of designated 'problems'. By focusing on proposed 'solutions' to conditions labelled 'problems', the WPR approach produces a dynamic form of analysis and critique targeting how 'problems' are represented. This critical analytic posture is extended from 'problems' to a wide range of putative conditions, including 'indeterminate situations', 'issues', 'controversies' and 'matters of concern'. In this new thinking paradigm, items, such as buildings and maps, are analysed as proposals for change and hence as problematisations, with important political implications. The book brings together the theoretical resources underpinning the WPR approach and considers important methodological ramifications. A table of WPR questions incorporates changes to the approach signalled in the book. This book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students, early career researchers and academics in a wide range of fields, including public policy, education, law, international relations and disability, Indigenous and feminists' studies. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN | 9781032678368 |
| ISBN | 9781032678375 hardcover |
| ISBN | 1032678372 hardcover |
| ISBN | 1032678364 paperback |
| ISBN | electronic book |
| ISBN | electronic book |