What's the Problem Represented to Be?

A New Thinking Paradigm

Carol Bacchi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781040631645
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Originally developed as a mode of critical policy analysis, 'What's the Problem Represented to Be?': A New Thinking Paradigm extends the thinking behind the innovative 'What's the problem represented to be?' (WPR) approach to new areas of investigation. It poses a challenge to problem-solving as the dominant way of thinking about human existence and human endeavours and offers a fresh alternative that turns attention to the contours of designated 'problems'.

By focusing on proposed 'solutions' to conditions labelled 'problems', the WPR approach produces a dynamic form of analysis and critique targeting how 'problems' are represented. This critical analytic posture is extended from 'problems' to a wide range of putative conditions, including 'indeterminate situations', 'issues', 'controversies' and 'matters of concern'. In this new thinking paradigm, items, such as buildings and maps, are analysed as proposals for change and hence as problematisations, with important political implications. The book brings together the theoretical resources underpinning the WPR approach and considers important methodological ramifications. A table of WPR questions incorporates changes to the approach signalled in the book.

This book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students, early career researchers and academics in a wide range of fields, including public policy, education, law, international relations and disability, Indigenous and feminists' studies.

The Introduction and Chapters 1 and 2 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: A new thinking paradigm—beyond 
problem-solving
• PART I Introducing a WPR Approach
• PART II Theoretical Elaborations
• PART III Theoretical Engagements
• PART IV The Thorny Issue of ‘Mixed Methods’
• PART V WPR and Governing in the Time of COVID-19
• Conclusion: Why we need a new thinking paradigm
• Glossary of key terms
• Index