A Critical Approach to Research and Analysis

What's the Problem Represented to Be?
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-4473-7379-7
Verlag: Bristol University Press

Buch, Englisch, 224 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm

This edited volume brings together leading international scholars to critically engage with and extend Carol Bacchi’s influential ‘What’s the Problem Represented to Be?’ approach, demonstrating its applicability beyond policy documents and across diverse social science disciplines.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Rönnblom, Malin

Edwards, Rosalind

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Methodenlehre
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein Empirische Sozialforschung, Statistik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction: Applying and Augmenting the ‘What’s the Problem Represented To Be?’ - Malin Rönnblom and Rosalind Edwards

Part 1: Applications and Implementations

2. What’s the ‘Problem’ of ‘Underlying Health Conditions’ Represented to Be? Applying WPR to Concepts – Carol Bacchi and Anne Wilson

3. Doing a WPR Analysis with Gender Equality Officials in Sweden: From Analysis to the Potential of Political Change – Malin Rönnblom

4. Reflecting on the Value of WPR Framework as a Teaching Tool in Public Policy Analysis – John Boswell

Part 2: Augmentations and Developments

5. Examining ‘Sensitising Concepts’ of Critical Discourse Analysis and the WPR Approach – Jian Wu

6. Applying and Augmenting WPR in Discursive Policy Studies of Care: Silencing and Needs – Hanne Marlene Dahl

7. The Ontopolitics of Method: Generating Qualitative Data in a Praxiographic Approach – Kari Lancaster and Tim Rhodes

8. Genealogy and WPR: The Importance of Bacchi’s Questions When Evoking a Genealogical Sensibility – Stephen Kelly

9. Problematisation and Epistemic Injustice: An Analytical Approach – Lina Rahm and Jörgen Behrendtz

Part 3: Augmentations and Reframings

10. Governing Families Through Technologies: Combining WPR and Boudieu’s ‘Construction of the Object’ – Rosalind Edwards (University of Southampton, UK) and Pamela Ugwudike

11. Where Is the Problem Represented to Be? – Tomas Mitander and Andreas Öjehag

12. Emotional Problems: Post-Structural Policy Analysis and Emotional Discourse – Stephanie Paterson and Lindsey Larios

13. Where (Critical) Hands Touch: Towards Decolonial Policy Analysis – Amelia Odida

14. Conclusion: Themes and Futures – Malin Rönnblom and Rosalind Edwards

Über Autor(innen)

Edwards, Rosalind
Rosalind Edwards is Professor of Sociology at the University of Southampton, where she is also Social Sciences Director of Research and a Co-Director of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods.

Malin Rönnblom is Professor of Political Science at Karlstad University.



Rosalind Edwards is Professor of Sociology at the University of Southampton.