Gøtzsche-Astrup Johan, Villadsen Kaspar
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.
Copenhagen Business School, Frederiksberg, Denmark.
Br J Sociol. 2025 Mar;76(2):442-456. doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.13174. Epub 2025 Jan 5.
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.
米歇尔·福柯的“装置”概念在社会学学术研究中愈发显著。我们识别并批评了该学术研究中的一种“匿名化”倾向，这种倾向常常将“装置”呈现为一个无需人类主体参与而自行运作的匿名网络。为纠正这一倾向，我们为社会学研究开发了一个包含主体的“装置”版本。通过回溯福柯20世纪70年代的著作，我们找回了关于社会群体如何通过发明策略和技巧来充当“装置”煽动者的描述。我们将这些描述发展成一种包含主体的“装置”分析方法，并提出了实证分析中可采取的五个步骤。我们通过一个抗议的历史案例来例证这些步骤。最后，我们展示了我们修正后的“装置”版本如何回应针对福柯无主体方法的批评，并讨论了其对于社会学研究与“装置”分析进一步整合的意义。
