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.
The Introduction and Chapters 1 and 2 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
By:
Carol Bacchi
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 234mm,
Width: 156mm,
Weight: 570g
ISBN: 9781032678368
ISBN 10: 1032678364
Pages: 294
Publication Date: 22 October 2025
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Primary
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Introduction: A New Thinking Paradigm: Beyond Problem Solving; Part I: Introducing a WPR Approach 1. Initiating a WPR Analysis: Key Premises 2. Widening the Scope of Application 3. Troubling ‘Problems’: Challenges for Researchers; Part II: Theoretical Elaborations 4. What is a ‘Subject’? Who is a ‘Subject’? 5. The turn to ‘Practice’: What are ‘Practices’? 6. Moving from ‘iBeingi Reflexive’ to iPractisingi ‘Self’-problematisation 7. Governmentality and WPR: Exploring Governing Practices 8. Cultivating a Genealogical Sensibility 9. The Politics of Change: ‘Resistance’, ‘Counter-conducts’ and ‘Subjugated Knowledges’; Part III: Theoretical Engagements 10. Strategic Interventions: Feminisms, Problem Representations and Gendering Practices 11. Analysing Differencing Practices: Racialising, Colonising, Disabling, Heteronorming, Classing, Caste-ing 12. Problematising (in) a Material World: Empiricism, Description, Affectivity and Social Flesh 13. Critical questions: From ‘Ideology Critique’ to ‘Postcritique’ 14. Questioning Performativity: What’s at Stake?; Part IV: The Thorny Issue of ‘Mixed Methods’ 15. Problematising (with) Paradigms: ‘Reality’, ‘Problems’ and ‘Mixed Methods’ 16. Analysing Discourse/s as Knowledge Practices 17. How to Deal with ‘Data’ 18. The Use of Ethnography; Part V: WPR and Governing in the Time of COVID-19 19. ‘Governing through Experimenting’: A Political Rationality 20. Researching a Pandemic 21. Applying WPR to Concepts: Questioning ‘Risk’, ‘Crisis’ and ‘Uncertainty’ 22. Making Mortality ‘Social’: How Death Certificates Undermine the social Determinants of Health; Conclusion: Why we Need a New Thinking Paradigm
Carol Bacchi is Professor Emerita of Politics, Adelaide University, Australia. She researches and writes in the fields of politics, policy theory and feminists’ theories.
