Genealogical Research Strategies

Abstract

Proceeding from the question of what power is or how it works to the question of how it is to be (or can be) investigated, it is clear that the latter issue cannot but be closely related to the former. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that in dealing with the Foucauldian theory of power we already encountered a whole number of proposals on how power might be studied. For instance, we saw Foucault attending to power mechanisms and exercises; employing models of war and physics; giving heed to mechanisms of ecological control by architectural measures; focussing on the training or disciplining of bodies; studying the ways power relations and mechanisms shape the personal identity of the coercer and the coerced; investigating power as a network of power relations; examining the interconnections between microlevel and macro-level power relations; analyzing coercive institutions as social laboratories for the development of power mechanisms; taking one’s starting point from individuals and groups rather than classes (“ascending analysis”); relying on invisible hand or counterfinality explanations; making use of concepts like “tactics” and “strategies”; considering the interrelations between social power and scientific knowledge; taking into account the involvement of interests; (re-)conceptualizing science as a social process of exclusion and regimentation (“orders of discourse”); and rehabilitating excluded, “subjugated” knowledge.