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
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