O użyteczności kategorii dyspozytywu w badaniach społecznych
On the Usefulness of the Category of Dispositive in Social Research

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is a critical reflection on Michel Foucault’s concept of dispositive and its application in social research. Dispositive means a heterogenic composition of discursive and non-discursive elements of social reality linked together with the dynamic relations of power. Since two decades in the frames of post-Foucauldian discourse analysis the attempts at operationalizing the category of dispositive have been made. As an analytical category dispositive refers to the mechanisms of socially dispersed power, which can be studied empirically on the basis of discursive and non-discursive data. A research perspective of dispositive analysis has emerged as a result of an interest in dispositive. This paper presents the main guidelines of this perspective, as well as a typology of applications of the Foucauldian category of dispositive in empirical research, illustrated with chosen examples of German and Polish scholars’ works. This presentation is accompanied by a consideration of inconsistencies and deficiencies of such methodological approach.

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