Social Science Methodology of Foucault

The methodology Foucault uses to analyze social structure can be characterized as oppositional. In the term the philosophy of difference is enclosed the general approach to challenging the traditional understanding of social history and the realities of social structure that the notion of difference implies. Two related concepts that are associated with Foucault's approach to social structure are archeology and genealogy.

Foucault's understanding of archeology is an understanding of the overall structure of knowledge, which includes a shared "knowledge" about society, or the social structure itself. Yet Foucault is specifically not structuralist as the term is commonly understood in social science (Foucault, 1977). Rather, Foucault's archeology is specifically and programmatically a critique of prevailing structure, or a means of observing and describing the ways in which information or knowledge or aspects of structure may be processed, formalized, and perhaps eventuate in what may be described as a science. His long-range purpose appears to be to r

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function of social relationships includes more or less standard relationships of governmental or other authoritarian entities to ordinary folk, but it is also an analysis of the concept and enactment of normative social psychology as the primary indicator and legitimator of power, not merely over the deviant or criminal, but over the whole of ordinary behavior. It is on this basis that he rejects the label of oppression (repression) as such as inadequate to the task of defining the pervasiveness of the power relationship of mainstream society. Power thus delimited "would be a fragile thing if its only function were to repress. . . . If, on the contrary, power is strong this is because, as we are beginning to realize, it produces effects at the level of desire--and also at the level of knowledge" (Foucault, 1980, p. 59). Accordingly, Foucault sees power as enacted in society as a dynamic and not static notion and more, as the very enactment of society itself. On this view, genealogy is the enterprise of charting shifts in the forms that power has taken from earlier ages to the present day, in a way that shows how power relationships were transformed from marginal associations between ruler and ruled into acceptance of the powe
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Accordingly Foucault, , Indeed Foucault's, Marx Buffon, Discipline Punish, social structure, power relationships, References Foucault, House Foucault, Press Foucault, foucault 1980, foucault 1977, social body, philosophy difference, modern society, social relationships, Pantheon Books, DF Bouchard, prevailing structure means, social analysis, 1977 pp, foucault 1977 pp, foucault 1980 170,
Approximate Word count = 2927
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)

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