WPR Chart: What’s the Problem Represented to be? (WPR ...



Carol BacchiAbridged version of a talk delivered at the University of Ume?, 21 October 2017. Declaring War on Problems: A call to rein in the conceptMy title for today is provocative. I need to start by clearing up a possible misunderstanding in the title. People might assume that I intend to declare my credentials as a crusader against a whole range of conditions that many of us find disturbing – drug abuse, excessive alcohol consumption, homelessness, discrimination, violence against women. I could go on.I need to explain that the title – declaring war on problems – implies no such crusade. Rather, my target is the concept “problem” or “problems”, indicated in the sub-title. As my field is political theory, my concerns are the political repercussions of particular uses of the term. So, what are my qualms about the concept “problem” or “problems”?First, references to “problems” abound both in daily conversation and in political analysis. In fact, the term is used so commonly, most of the time we don’t hear it. It doesn’t register. There are particular usages that dominate political discussion, such as “social problems” and “problem-solving”. I’ll say more about these uses in a moment. So, my first concern is that the concept is running wild; – hence, my call to rein it in!Second, in addition to its proliferation, at a basic level the term is ambiguous in meaning. It can refer to either a concern, a gap between the current situation and a more desired state (Hoppe 2011: 23), or simply a question (Meyer 1995). Third, as forecast, there is the common association with “social problems”. There has been a long history of thinking about “social problems”. A Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP), and a journal from Oxford University Press called Social Problems, have existed from the early 1950s. It is important to highlight the tone of moral condemnation – the negative valence – often associated with the naming of “social problems” and the way such naming creates certain people as “sick” or as “troublesome”. In times past prostitution, homosexuality and single motherhood have all been portrayed as “social problems”.. The political theorist Murray Edelman (1988: 13-14) points out that the demarcation of what constitutes a “social problem” is selective. For example, “[S]egregated restaurants, hotels, schools and toilets in the South [of the United States]” existed for many years without being called “social problems”. On the other side a wide range of named and targeted “social problems” – crime, poverty, unemployment and discrimination against disadvantaged groups – have existed for a very long time with little effective action to reduce them. On these grounds Edelman speculates that “A problem to some is a benefit to others”.While we might think that the language of “social problems” is passé, it continues to appear in specific contexts. I have been particularly interested in the operation of the term “alcohol problems” and relatedly “drug problems” (Bacchi 2015), both often described as “social problems” (WHO 2010: 8). In this usage “alcohol problems” are treated as taken-for-granted descriptions of conditions that ought to be rectified and/or eliminated. By contrast I suggest that such epidemiological categories need to be treated, not as self-evident collections of “social harms”, but as political categories, open to contestation and debate. In general then I am suggesting the need to step back from assumptions that “problems” are easy to spot, that they are self-evident. In my work I take this perspective into the policy domain – my fourth area of concern. The conventional view of public policy is that policies are reactions to “problems” that sit outside the policy process waiting to be “addressed” or “solved”. By way of contrast I have developed an approach to policy analysis called “What’s the Problem Represented to be?” (or the WPR approach). It consists of seven interrelated forms of questioning and analysis, and now appears in several books (Bacchi 1999; 2009; Bacchi and Goodwin 2016 – see Chart at end of this paper).In this approach governments do not react to existing problems; they are involved in the creation or production of “problems” as particular sorts of problems. I am not talking about manipulation here. Rather, I am talking about the way in which policies do their work.I argue that policy proposals or proposed solutions by their nature contain implicit representations of the “problem” or “problems” they purport to address. This proposition builds on the commonsense understanding that what we propose to do about something reveals what we think needs to change and hence what we think the ‘problem’ is. Let me offer a few examples to illustrate how this rethinking works. A common policy proposal to improve women’s representation in positions of influence and in better-paying jobs is to offer them training programs. Following the logic just introduced, if “training programs” is the proposal (“the solution”), then clearly women’s lack of training is produced as “the problem”. As another example consider the currently, much discussed “obesity problem”. If the proposal is for some sort of activity or exercise regime for children, the “problem” becomes children’s lack of activity. By contrast, if there is a proposal to ban advertising of fast foods during prime-time children’s television, the “problem” is represented to be aggressive, and perhaps unethical, advertising.Different policies, therefore, create the shape of the “problem” they purport to “address”. The WPR approach offers a way to study this process of “problem creation” and to scrutinize the kinds of “problems” produced – how the matters in question are problematized. The critical focus shifts from assumed problems to how these are conceptualized and characterized. So when we study any specific policy we need to inquire into the specific ways that the assumed problem is problematized within it and the thinking that underpins this problematization. Based on this argument, I suggest that we are governed, not through policies, but through the problematizations within them. I would like to suggest extending this logic to every use of the term “problem”. In this case, I would argue, there are no problems separate from the proposals purported to address them! Problems as such do not exist. They are always “shaped” through proposals. So anytime you here someone use the term “problem”, reflect on its lack of content. How can it mean anything unless there is some indication of what is offered as a “solution”? Only then could we come to grips with how the “problem” is being conceptualized. And only then could we challenge conceptualizations or problematizations which we find limited or even destructive. My fifth and final concern about “problems” has close links with the policy domain, though it extends beyond that domain. This is the mantra of “problem solving”. I cannot emphasize enough the power and ubiquity of this phrase. I would imagine that most of us encounter it in one context or another daily. It has become a motherhood statement. How could you possibly say that you are against “problem-solving”? However, if, as I have suggested, “problems” are not exogenous to (outside of) policy interventions, if they have no meaning outside the proposals that shape them, what can it possibly mean to solve them? All it means, I would argue, is that the politics involved in the shaping of “problems” goes unnoticed – a serious situation for practicing democracies. A problem-solving paradigm informs the evidence-based policy movement, which currently dominates the intellectual and policy landscape. In evidence-based policy there is a grounding assumption that the “problems” being “addressed” are readily identifiable and uncontroversial. Researchers are called upon (simply) to test various interventions to find out “what works” in relation to those “problems”. Insufficient attention, I suggest, is directed to the source of the “problems” researchers are engaged to “solve”. Questions that need to be asked include: Who gets to set the “problems”? And how are the issues represented? Is there space to consider how assigned “problems” are conceptualized? In education the phrase “problem-solving” is linked to critical thinking. Most Australian universities rank “problem-solving” at the top of the list of desirable attributes to acquire through a university education. In other educational sites “problem-solving” skills are lauded as the key to cultivating creativity (Lewis 2006). Again, if I am correct that the term “problem” is vacuous, there must be serious concerns about these claims. As just argued in relation to evidence-based thinking, a problem-solving approach to learning produces citizens who are to “solve” the “problems” set by others, rather than challenging specific ways of thinking about the world and social relations. The kinds of citizens produced through this paradigm, therefore, are reactive citizens who think about government as the “proper” domain of “experts”, producing those citizens as (more easily) governable. I see displacing and challenging “social problems”, “policy problems” and “problem-solving” frameworks of meaning as important political interventions. However, it is worthwhile to remember that concepts have no fixed meaning. Rather, borrowing from Tanesini (1994: 207), they are “proposals about how we ought to proceed from here”. Clearly uses of the terms “problem” and “problems” (as with all concepts) have to be considered within the projects to which they are attached. For example, recently, the writer and public speaker Eckhart Tolle declared: “So one could say that the only problem is dysfunctional thinking, the rest are challenges not problems.” Tolle is best known as the author of The Power of Now?(2009) and A New Earth: Awakening to your Life’s Purpose (2005). His message can be linked to the positive psychology movement, which I tend to see as individualizing and depoliticizing. Here I found myself in the somewhat uncomfortable position of preferring the term problems to challenges! My final message therefore is not to abandon the term but to rein it in, to cease using it as “filler text” and an alternative to considered reflection on the politics involved in shaping “problems”. ReferencesBacchi, C. (2015) Problematizations in Alcohol Policy: WHO’s “Alcohol Problems”, Contemporary Drug Problems, 42(2): 130-147.Bacchi, C. (2009). Analysing Policy: What’s the problem represented to be? Frenchs Forest: Pearson Education.Bacchi, C. (1999). Women, Policy and Politics: The construction of policy problems. London: Sage. Bacchi, C. and Goodwin, S. (2016) Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Edelman, M. (1988) Constructing the Political Spectacle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Hoppe, R. (2011) The Governance of Problems: Puzzling, Power and Participation. Bristol: Policy Press.Lewis, T. (2006). Creativity: A Framework for the Design/Problem Solving Discourse in Technology Education. Journal of Technology Education, 17(1): 36-53.Meyer, M. (1995) Of Problematology: Philosophy, Science, and Language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Tanesini, A. (1994). Whose language? In K. Lennon & M. Whitford (eds) Knowing the difference: Feminist perspectives in epistemology. New York: Routledge.Tolle, E. (2009). The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment. Novato, CA: New World Library. Tolle, E. (2005). A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. New York: Dutton. ? World Health Organization. (2010). Global strategy on the harmful use of alcohol. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization.?WPR Chart: What’s the Problem Represented to be? (WPR approach to policy analysis)Question 1: What’s the problem (e.g. of “gender inequality”, “drug use/abuse”, “economic development”, “global warming”, “childhood obesity”, “irregular migration”, etc.) represented to be in a specific policy or policies?Question 2: What deep-seated presuppositions or assumptions (conceptual logics) underlie this representation of the “problem” (problem representation)?Question 3: How has this representation of the “problem” come about?Question 4: What is left unproblematic in this problem representation? Where are the silences? Can the “problem” be conceptualized differently? Question 5: What effects (discursive, subjectification, lived) are produced by this representation of the “problem”?Question 6: How and where has this representation of the “problem” been produced, disseminated and defended? How has it been and/or how can it be disrupted and replaced?Step 7: Apply this list of questions to your own problem representations.Adapted from: C. Bacchi and S. Goodwin (2016) Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 20. ................
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