Scott, David Stephen; (2001) Changing values in contemporary society? A reconceptualisation of values using the analytics of Michel Foucault. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

The thesis presents a reconceptualisation of the psychology of values using the analytics of Michel Foucault. To address questions raised by postmodern analyses of contemporary society and by discursive psychology, the thesis presents a detailed exposition and examination of the thought of Foucault, focusing on its implications for the dominant theoretical tradition in the psychology of values. It then reports a programme of empirical research investigating a Foucault inspired conceptualisation of values. After reviewing the values literature and introducing the central research problem, the thesis provides an overview of the oeuvre of Foucault and an analysis of the nature and evolution of his work. It follows Foucault's own interpretation of his project as a reformulation of the Enlightenment tradition, and emphases three distinct axes of his thought. This perspective guides the subsequent interpretations. A reading of Foucault's Archaeology of Knowledge offers an alternative understanding of the notion of discourse to that popularised in psychology, emphasising the enabling as well as constraining properties of discursive, knowledge producing practices. Foucault's work on contemporary social change is then interpreted through his writings on ethics. It is argued that it is in the relationship one has with oneself through which one forms oneself as an ethical subject that one might find changes in contemporary society. The implication for the psychology of values is that the potential for change exists not only in the priority of values, as posited by values theorists, but in the ethical foundation of values, with consequences for the way people conceptualise values. Hence, the dominant conceptualisation of values as abstract and enduring guiding principles may represent only a single understanding of values, embedded in the theories and instruments of current research, but dependent on particular forms of ethics. The first two empirical studies replicate and provide support for existing approaches, finding changes in value priorities and evidence for a universal model of the content of values. Subsequent studies, however, using qualitative and Q methodology, show that independent of these results, one finds a diversity of forms of ethics, as suggested by the work of Foucault. Moreover systematic relationships are intimated between ethics and conceptions of values. An Ethical Self Formation Scale is then developed and used to show that people do hold a conception of values approximating to the conceptualisation of Rokeach, but only to the extent that their values are related to an ethics based on Spiritualism, Tradition, or Principle. The implications of the analysis of Foucault and reconceptualisation of values are discussed in terms of the psychology of values, postmodernity, and the use of Foucault in psychology.

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