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Having a baby is a sensitive matter and the child's body occupies a relevant space within the imaginary and the concerns of the intentional, biomedicalized contemporary reproducers. Besides, the myth of ‘the perfect child’ claims specific moral injunctions about making bodies since the body conveys social recognition codes both through flesh or genetic matrix and embodied practices. So, having a child with an unexpected ‘defective’ body becomes a stressful challenge for the reproductive experience of the intentional parent(s). In any case, both parent(s) and biomedical professionals enact a hierarchization among the ‘damaged’ materials of the child's body based on the perceived and/or the classified degree of physical or mental abnormality, on its behavioural embodiments and on the possibility to re-order, fix and control the (biosocial) disorder of an abnormal unable and/or undisciplined body.

Based on recent investigations on reproduction and disability in two regions of Italy, this essay comparatively investigates the experiences of two associations of parents with asthmatic and ADHD children.

Specifically, I tried to explore how parents of children with misleading bodies emotionally, practically and morally face their unexpected reproduction, and if and how they are being entrapped in or resist the pressure of neuro-biomedical governance, schooling disciplining techniques and social blame. I tried to articulate some suggesting concepts, such as ‘delegate biopolitics’ and ‘discursive surveillance’ (Memmi, 2008), and ‘self-constraint behaviours’ (Elias, 1998), in order to analyze ethnographic material.

The purpose of this paper is to offer critical analysis of how public relations (PR) were used to justify the use of drones by the UK Government, through the promotion of a distinct strategic culture. The paper locates governmental PR discourse on drones in the UK since 2013 within the strategic culture associated with the global war on terror.

The project was based upon critical discourse analysis of the UK governmental PR on drones since 2013, examining press releases, opinion articles by ministers, media relations content, parliamentary statements, news content and other related materials.

The analysis led to five discursive themes of persuasive intent in relation to drones being identified, most of which were notably similar to the US governmental discourse on drone policy and deployment.

The project contributes a novel interdisciplinary synthesis of the communicative aspects of international relations as theorised in the field of strategic culture with the cultural aspects of the state-level PR in order to explain how PR was used to promote and diffuse a strategic culture in which drones are assumed to be the counter-terrorism measure of choice. The conclusion is that governmental PR discourse combines aspects of colonialism with focus on superior technology, remote control and precision of weapons, generating a military and communicative logic that overwhelms the voices of victims and impedes meaningful discussion on the reality of suffering caused by drone deployments.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to recent work that interrogates the affective conditions in standardizing processes taking place in schools by asking: what are the relations between affect and biopower, when standardizing processes take place in schools, and how can we better understand the constitution of affective spaces and atmospheres that enable some transformative potentials while preventing others?

The main argument is that professional standards for teachers and school leaders create ambivalent (i.e. both positive and negative) affective spaces and atmospheres in schools that require one to look for the ways in which biopower works affectively through specific technologies. This ambivalence produces not only governable and self-managed teachers and school leaders who simply implement professional standards, but also affective spaces and atmospheres that might subvert the normalizing effects (and affects) of standards.

While attention has been directed to the involvement of affectivity in standardizing processes, what has been theorized less in the field of professional capital is the entanglement of affect and biopower in the spread of professional standards. Engaging with recent work surrounding the affective turn in the social sciences and humanities, the encounter between affect and biopower opens methodological, ethical and political possibilities to examine the affective impact of standards on the professional capital of teachers and school leaders. The analysis displaces emotions from their dominant positionality in discourses about professional standards, reinvigorating theoretical explorations of the affective spaces and atmospheres that co-constitute subjectivities, organizations, governance and social practices in standardizing processes.

The spatiotemporal and organizational arrangements of schools while undergoing standardizing processes constitute crucial constellations for ethical and political reproduction of affective relations. Thus, the destabilizing and inventive potentials of affects, spaces and atmospheres – to name a few conceptual resources – are extremely important in exposing the normalizing as well as resisting aspects of standardizing processes.

The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the development process and outcomes from a six-year collaboration between Halifax Bank (part of the Lloyds Banking Group) and Middlesex University between 2010 and 2016 in the UK. The collaboration involved the construction of work-integrated higher education programmes that were, from the outset, predicated on clear return on investment criteria for the Bank. One unexpected outcome from the collaboration was the emergence of critical reflection as a valued business benefit that, it is argued, has the potential for significant cultural change within the organisation.

This case study discuses how “productive reflection” can lead to an integrated approach to organisational learning. The study is located in the context of Halifax’s specific organisational objectives established following the banking crash of 2008. Quantitative and qualitative evidence is considered to illustrate the extent to which the “return on investment” criteria established by Halifax have been achieved.

The case study indicates that the challenging business context of the financial crash of 2008 provided the impetus for a sustained collaborative development that allowed the potential pitfalls of restricted learning opportunities to be addressed resulting in an integrated approach to organisational learning. In addition to the organisation’s return on investment criteria being met, there is evidence that the work-integrated approach has raised the prospect of productive reflection becoming part of an emerging learning culture.

The scale and sustained period of the university-business collaboration is unique and provides valuable insight into how an organisation’s learning culture can be affected by a work-integrated approach. In demonstrating the perceived business value of productive reflection, the case presented illustrates how learning can start to become considered as a normal aspect of working life.

This chapter provides an analysis of images produced and employed in protests against surveillance in Germany in 2008 and 2009. For this purpose, a method of visual analysis is developed that draws mainly on semiotics and art history. Following this method, the contribution examines a selection of images (pictures and graphic design) from the anti-surveillance protests in three steps: description of components, detection of conventional signs, and contextual analysis. Furthermore, the analysis compares the images of the two major currents of the protest (liberal and radical left) in order to elucidate the context in which images are created and used. The analysis shows that images do not merely illustrate existing political messages but contribute to movements’ systems of meaning creation and transportation. The two currents in the protests communicate their point of view through the images both strategically and expressively. The images play a crucial role in formulating groups’ different strategies as well as worldviews and identities. In addition, the analysis shows that the meaning of images is contested and contextual. Images are produced and received in specific national as well as issue contexts. Future research should address the issue of context and reception in greater depth in order to further explore the effects of visual language on mobilization. Overall, the contribution demonstrates that systematic visual analysis allows our understanding of social movements’ aims, strategy, and collective identity to be deepened. In addition, visual analysis may provide activists with a tool to critically assess their visual communication.

This essay outlines a critical theory of everyday resistance. This theory adopts a de-centered conception of law and power, and draws upon the theory of deliberative democracy to specify the conditions under which such power becomes illegitimate. This allows us to see everyday resistance as a symptom that discursive power has been generated under unjust conditions. Such an approach opens a new path of research in which we study everyday resistance as a response to the participatory deficits that exist in contemporary systems of power, and then identify the possibilities and obstacles for remedying those deficits.

To explore the discursive construction of disordered eating and athlete identity meanings within elite female athlete’s stories. Published athlete autobiographies were interrogated as cultural sites of analysis to accomplish this aim.

A critical social constructionist perspective on disordered eating is outlined along with narrative research findings on female athletes and disordered eating. A discursive psychological approach and critical discourse analysis (CDA) is then discussed to theorize and study meanings of disordered eating and athlete identities/subject positions. Next, the utility of studying two elite female athlete’s autobiographies is outlined followed by examples from a CDA of two athlete stories.

Two discourses and two identity/subject positions within each are outlined: discourse of performance and the “committed, controlled athlete” and a discourse of personal growth and the “empowered athlete in transition.” The features of each discourse and subject position are outlined and examples from each athlete’s story. The intention is to show the ways in which discursive resources construct the body, food and identities in sport and the implications.

The chapter is concluded with why studying “disordered eating and body talk” within discourses is useful to expand understanding of constraining and emancipative aspects of athlete identities, struggle and recovery.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the evolution of an employee opinion survey and to evaluate its impact on the graduate training programme and associated employment relationships.

The paper provides a detailed, longitudinal case study of one large‐scale UK organisation. The approach recognises that discursive resources have a material existence in the sense that they are embodied in the social practices of individuals and the institutions and organisations within which these social practices take place. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data, the paper demonstrates how the design, delivery and evaluation of the graduate programme formed a learning nexus between management, graduates and other stakeholders.

The case study highlights the contested nature of organisational life, particularly in relation to matters of control and autonomy. However, improved graduate opinion survey ratings over time suggest that the evolving surveillance offered by internal research has been successful in achieving changed management behaviours. The case study has shown how graduate training, development and career management are best understood as discursive practices. Shared understandings about the nature of work are constructed though a communications nexus of key stakeholders.

The main contribution of this paper is to highlight the pivotal role of the corporate training programme and associated communications in the development of shared understandings of the nature of the employment relationship.

This paper examines how certain care values permeate, legitimize and authorize hospitalized-older-adults’ care, technologies and practices. The purpose of this paper is to expose how values are not benign but operate discursively establishing “orders of worth” with significant effect on the ethics of the care-setting.

The paper draws from a discursive ethnography to see “up close” on a surgical unit how values influence nurse/older-adult-patient care occasions in the domain of older-adults and functional decline. Data are from participant observations, conversations, interviews, chart reviews and reviewed literature. Foucauldian discursive analytics rendered values recognizable and analyzable as discursive practices. Discourse is a social practice of knowledge production constituting and giving meaning to what it represents.

Analysis reveals how care values inhere discourses like measurement, efficiency, economics, risk and functional decline (loss of capacity for independent living) pervading care technologies and practices, subjugating older adults’ bodies to techniques, turning older persons into measurable objects of knowledge. These values determine social conditions of worth, objectifying, calculating, normalizing and homogenizing what it means to be old, ill and in hospital.

Seven older adult patients and attendant nurses were followed for their entire hospitalization. The ethnography renders visible how care values as discursive practices rationalize the social order and operations of everyday care. Analytic outcomes offer insights of how dominant care values enabled care technologies and practices to govern hospitalized-older-adults as a population to be ordered, managed and controlled, eliding possibilities of engaging humanistic patient-centered care.