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Loneliness’ impact on health and wellbeing has emerged as a public health issue in several countries. Young people are increasingly understood as a ‘risk group’ and intervention target for loneliness-reduction. This research paper aims to present a discourse analysis of policies and political speech about young people and loneliness.

Using discourse analysis inspired by Carol Bacchi’s “What is the Problem Represented to Be” (WPR) approach, this cross-cultural analysis studies loneliness policy in the United Kingdom (UK) and Norway. In doing so, the authors ask: What is the problem of loneliness among young people represented to be in UK and Norwegian welfare policy?

The findings indicate paradoxical problematizations of the role technology plays among lonely young people, who, in this context, are divided in two categories: able normative and disabled youth. We reveal fundamental differences in beliefs about the impact of technology on these groups, and corresponding differences in the proposed solutions. The problem of young peoples’ loneliness is represented as uncertainty about potential harms of digital connectedness and reduced face-to-face interactions. In contrast, the problem of loneliness among disabled youth is represented as impeded access to social realms, with technology serving a benign role as equalizer.

Little research has examined this new policy field. The article contributes to filling this gap and encourages policymakers to consider how political discourses on loneliness may lead them to overlook digital interventions young people could find beneficial.

The present study aims to contribute to the understanding of digital participation in heritage collections as a democratizing practice by identifying and challenging silent assumptions concerning how the insufficient influence of participants is conceived of as a problem.

Three carefully selected scholarly texts incorporating problematizations of insufficient participatory agency were analyzed in detail using a method inspired by Carol Bacchi's approach “what's the problem represented to be?” (WPR), with special emphasis on analysis of ontological elements of the problematizations.

Participation is problematized based on the assumption that participatory agency risks jeopardizing the protection of heritage and leads to parts of the public memory being forgotten. To challenge the idea that participatory agency is destructive, the present article argues for elaborating an understanding of what forgetting entails for heritage. Framing forgetting as a potentially both harmful and generative concept enables a separation of destructive forgetting (e.g. destruction of historical evidence) and constructive forgetting (re-contextualization).

The study is based on a limited number of texts, and problematizations are investigated in relation to a specific perspective on participatory agency.

By understanding forgetting as a potentially beneficial activity for representation and heritage construction, the article provides a conceptual rationale for facilitating re-contextualization in the design of multi-layered information structures for heritage collections.

There is little earlier research on the silent assumptions that affect how participation is understood and implemented.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the language of “weeding” (library deselection) within public library collection development policies in order to examine whether such policies and practices can be usefully connected to library and information science (LIS) theory, specifically to “Deweyan pragmatic adaptation” as suggested by Buschman (2017) in the pages of this journal.

This is a policy analysis of collection deselection policies from the 50 public libraries serving US state capitals, using Bacchi’s policy problem representation technique.

“Weeding” as described by these public library collection deselection policies is clearly pragmatic and oriented to increasing circulation to patrons, but the “Deweyan pragmatic adaptation” as reflected by many of those reviewed might better be defined as the pragmatism of Melvil Dewey rather than that of John Dewey.

Although this work reviewed policies from a very small sample of US public libraries, collection, selection and deselection language as shown in the policies studied appear to be consistent with neoliberal priorities and values in terms of prioritizing “circulation” and “customers,” which may have additional implications for the current transition from print to electronic materials in public libraries

John Dewey’s political philosophy and Carol Bacchi’s policy problem representation technique have not been widely used in policy analysis by LIS researchers, and this paper offers a number of suggestions for similar public library policy investigations.

Over the last 20 years, food banks in Australia have expanded nationwide and are a well-organised “industry” operating as a third tier of the emergency food relief system. The purpose of this paper is to overview the expansion and operation of food banks as an additional self-perpetuating “tier” in the response to hunger.

This paper draws on secondary data sourced from the internet; as well as information provided by Foodbank Australia and Food Bank South Australia (known as Food Bank SA) to outline the history, development and operation of food banks. Food banking is then critically analysed by examining the nature and framing of the social problems and policies that food banking seeks to address. This critique challenges the dominant intellectual paradigm that focuses on solving problems; rather it questions how problem representation may imply certain understandings.

The issue of food banks is framed as one of food re-distribution and feeding hungry people; however, the paper argue that “the problem” underpinning the food bank industry is one of maintaining food system efficiency. Food banks continue as a neo-liberal mechanism to deflect query, debate and structural action on food poverty and hunger. Consequently their existence does little to ameliorate the problem of food poverty.

New approaches and partnerships with stakeholders remain key challenges for food banks to work more effectively to address food poverty.

While the food bank industry remains the dominant solution to food poverty in Australia, debate will be deflected from the underlying structural causes of hunger.

This paper contributes to the limited academic literature and minimal critique of the food bank industry in Australia. It proposes that the rapid expansion of food banks is a salient marker of government and policy failure to address food poverty.

Why did Sweden and Norway arrive at different conclusions with regards to the introduction of corporate gender quotas? The chapter points to two decisive and interwoven explanations.

First, there is a question of varieties of capitalism – even within the Scandinavian model: The strong and traditionally socially responsible Swedish business life enjoyed more autonomy than their Norwegian counterpart, making it harder for the Swedish state to interfere in business life. In Norway, on the other hand, the state was a dominant capitalist itself whereas private owners in general were small and dispersed. Consequently, the capacity of the state to interfere in business life was larger, compared to Sweden.

Second, there is a matter of different cultures concerning gender equality and the attitudes towards state intervention: In Norway, an established gender quota tradition and rather positive attitudes towards state intervention created a moderate discursive climate in gender equality matters. A discursive tradition accepting women as a group as different from men as a group gave politicians a larger scope of action concerning gender equality measures directed at women only. In Sweden, the discursive climate was more hostile towards state intervention, and there was a less strong tradition for legally imposing gender quotas. In addition, Swedish feminists were active and conflict-oriented, thereby creating a polarized gender equality discussion in a public life traditionally oriented towards consensus-based solutions to political discrepancies.

This paper utilizes the concept of innovation as a form of methodological starting-point in order to analyse the gendered meanings of marketization in Swedish universities. The purpose of the paper is to scrutinize how the concept of innovation is produced in Swedish universities, and how these versions of innovation are gendered and related to different understandings of gender equality.

The analysis departs from a critical perspective to studies of gender equality and is anchored in a critical policy analysis approach – the “what's the problem represented to be? Approach” developed by Bacchi. This approach is used in the analysis of interviews with top-level leaders at two Swedish universities and how they perceive innovation. The results are related to a governmentality framework in order to explain the gendered innovation discourse in academia.

One of the main results is that innovation is represented in a broad way when discussed at a more abstract level. However, when the discussion becomes more concrete and also related to a gendered understanding of the researchers actually turning their research results into innovations, this broad representation of innovation shrinks. The analysis also shows how a governmentality framework both explains the inevitability of innovation and the difficulties of working for political change for women in the academy.

In analysing innovation as produced instead of taken for granted, this article puts forward a critical understanding of innovation, both in relation to gender and to the inevitability of de-politicisation processes of the neo-liberal audit culture in academia.

In Sweden, gender mainstreaming policies have a long political history. As part of the national gender equality strategy of the Swedish forest industry, the ten largest forestry companies committed themselves to gender mainstream their policies. Limiting the impact of policies and the agency of change, the purpose of this paper is to focus on the varied and conflicting meanings and constitution of the concepts, the problem and, in extent, the organisational realities of gender mainstreaming.

In both, implementation and practice, gender mainstreaming posse challenges on various levels and by analysing these documents as practical texts from the WPR-approach. This paper explores constructions of gender and gender equality and their implications on the practice and the political of gender mainstreaming in a male-dominated primary industry.

The results show that the organisations themselves were not constituted as the subject of the policy but instead some of the individuals (women). The subject position of women represented in company policy was one of lacking skills and competences and in the need of help. Not only men and the masculine norms but organisational processes and structures were also generally invisible in the material. Power and conflict were mainly absent from the understanding of gender equality. Instead, consenting ideas of gender equality were the focus. Such conceptualisations of gender equality are beneficial for all risk concealing power structures and thereby limit the political space for change.

By highlighting the scale of policy and the significance of organisational contexts, the results indicate how gender and gender equality are constitutive through the governing technologies of neoliberal and market-oriented ideologies in policy – emphasising the further limiting of space for structural change and politicalization within the male-dominated organisations of Swedish forest industry.

This paper aims to explore how the Australian Government represented issues of sustainability in Australian international higher education (IHE) policies and how it framed efforts to foster enhanced strategies for sustainable development of IHE. This research calls for a change from one-dimensional economic sustainability to a more multi-dimensional conception of sustainability, including emphasizing the role of the political sphere in issues of sustainability.

This paper uses discourse analysis of policy documents, specifically Bacchi’s (2009) “what is the problem represented to be” approach, to explore the problematization behind selected government policies related to IHE in Australia.

This research identified existing challenges and factors that have affected the sustainability of Australian IHE and examined how the Australian Government constructed this issue. In light of this approach, a theoretical model is proposed from internal resource analysis and external industry and foreign market structure analysis to help foster more sustainable development of IHE.

This study is based on policy document analysis. Consequently, future empirical research is needed to examine the impact of these policies and further substantiate the findings of this study.

This paper proposes a theoretical model for strategy making that helps gain and maintain sustainable competitive advantage in IHE from a more integrated perspective; such an approach enables more systemic thinking on strategy proposals and offers a reference for future practice. This research will contribute to policy design for the sustainability of the Australian IHE industry and promote change from a one-dimensional economic sustainability to a more multi-dimensional sustainability approach, thereby offering a point of reference for other countries that face similar issues.

This study points out the need to broaden the business focus, expand the value created from shareholder value to the common good and change “inside-out” economic perspectives to “outside-in” integrated perspectives for business, including the IHE industry.

The sustainability of IHE has become an important concern in Australian policies but is an area for further inquiry in academic discussion and research. By closely examining government policies, particularly from a discursive approach (after Bacchi), this paper makes a contribution to policy design for the sustainability of the Australian IHE industry, helping to promote a more multi-dimensional approach to sustainability.

Departing from an online interactive Gender Café on the topic of Knowledge Management (KM), jointly hosted by a UN agency and the Society of Gender Professionals, this chapter seeks to provide gender practitioners and others with practical examples of how to “gender” KM in international development. Through analyzing the travel of feminist ideas into the field of KM with inspiration from Barbara Czarniawska’s and Bernard Joerge’s (1996) theory of the travel of ideas, the chapter explores the spaces, limits, and future possibilities for the inclusion of feminist perspectives. The ideas and practical examples of how to do so provided in this chapter originated during the café, by the participants and panellists. The online Gender Café temporarily created a space for feminist perspectives. The data demonstrate how feminist perspectives were translated into issues of inclusion, the body, listening methodologies, practicing reflection, and the importance to one’s work of scrutinizing underlying values. However, for the feminist perspective to be given continuous space and material sustainability developing into an acknowledged part of KM, further actions are needed. The chapter also reflects on future assemblies of gender practitioners, gender scholars and activists, recognizing the struggles often faced by them. The chapter discusses strategies of how a collective organizing of “outside–inside” gender practitioners might push the internal work of implementing feminist perspectives forward.

Studies and analyses changes to the promotion policies and practices at the University of Western Australia (UWA) and identifies outcomes by gender. Suggests that there are quite a few factors to be addressed before gender equity in academia at UWA is obtained. Discusses, in depth, how to try to deal with lack of networks, socialization, the dual‐role burden, masculine organizational culture and gendered power imbalance in the workplace. States that, although great inroads have been made at UWA, statistics show that there are still very fundamental barriers to be addressed to aid further improvement for women academics.