The <i>dispositif</i> is alive! Recovering social agents in Foucauldian analysis
Abstract
Abstract Michel Foucault's concept of the dispositif is increasingly salient in sociological scholarship. We identify and criticise an ‘anonymous’ emphasis in this scholarship, which often presents the dispositif as an anonymous network that acts without human agents. To remedy this tendency we develop an agent‐inclusive version of the dispositif for sociological research. Turning to Foucault's work from the 1970s, we recover descriptions of how social groups act as instigators of dispositifs through their invention of tactics and techniques. We develop these into an agent‐inclusive version of dispositional analytics and suggest five steps to pursue in empirical analysis. We exemplify these steps through a historical case of protesting. Finally, we show how our revisionist version of the dispositif meets critiques of Foucault's agentless approach and discuss the implication for a further integration of sociological research with dispositional analytics.
Ingestion failed: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/srv/app/app/worker.py", line 85, in run_once process_job(db, job) File "/srv/app/app/worker.py", line 39, in process_job pdf_path, info = fetch_pdf_temp(candidate["url"]) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ File "/srv/app/app/downloader.py", line 131, in fetch_pdf_temp raise ValueError(f"Unexpected PDF Content-Type: {ctype or 'missing'}.") ValueError: Unexpected PDF Content-Type: text/html.
No local PDF is available.
GROBID Extracted text; discontinued.
This text is generated from TEI extraction for accessibility, search, and TTS. Formulas, tables, figures, page layout, and references may not perfectly match the original PDF.
No accessible text representation is available. The text extraction service has been discontinued for the time being. If you require this service, for accessibility or any other reason, please submit an issue/request on this page.
Metadata
Issues
No public issues have been filed for this DOI.
Submit an issue
Record history
| When | Event | Field | Old | New |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-06-18 19:37:53.011249+00:00 | identifier_assigned | DSEID | DSEID-001-0132250 |