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Hi Ali, > Foucault is especially not very popular in more emprically dominated wing > of US Sociology, and I am coming from that wing. It’s perhaps more about > epistemology than anything else. That strand in the US sociology is > typically critical realist (in bhaskar’s sense) and/or neo/post positivist > (or whatever you call it). Mainstream US sociology is also unbrazenly > sciency (i could not find a better word) so you can imagine why Foucault is > not very popular (but of course US sociology is not a monolithic thing an it is huge, so there are many many scholars that use and like his notions). Thank you for your post and my tardy response. Yes, I can see that Habermas and Giddens might critique Foucault’s notions, but there is a large body of work that draws on his theory of power as productive, such as the literature I previously mentioned. I see such critiques as being epistemological in nature, however. And yes, I agree that US sociologists might consider his work as suspicious – I see such critiques as political, which is what you also suggest. That’s why I find Dorothy Smith’s work so helpful, and her institutional ethnography work in particular, which has sparked quite a number of studies in organsational dynamics, although this tends to be methodological rather than studies in the operation of power. All the best, teena ----------------------------------------------------------------- PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design -----------------------------------------------------------------