Governing bullying through the new public health model: a Foucaultian analysis of a school anti-bullying programme

Abstract

Framed as a public health problem, school bullying led public health agencies to design anti-bullying programmes. The public health approach is invested with hope by those who are looking for an alternative to the punitive logic. Using a Foucaultian approach and a discourse analysis method, this research focuses on the way an anti-bullying intervention programme designed by a public health agency governs school bullying. The findings reveal two major logics at play. Firstly, the programme espouses the new public health model and, accordingly, governs bullying as a systemic risk rather than an individual problem. Secondly, the programme is also anchored in the classical punitive rationality. Public health and punitive logics, far from being mutually exclusive, are rather intertwined. This dual logic contributes to the ‘dangerization’ of school bullying.

Keywords:

• school bullying
• anti-bullying programme
• public health
• governmentality
• Foucault

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Philippe Ross and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments on the initial versions of this article.

Notes

1. All the sheet and page numbers in parentheses refer to the Manual.

2. This definition is in line with popular definitions found in the scientific literature. The following conceptual definition is frequently adopted for school bullying: ‘a subset of aggressive behaviour characterised by repetition and an imbalance of power … a student is being bullied when he/she is exposed repeatedly and over time to negative action on the part of one or more other students with the intention to hurt’ (Olweus 1999, 10).