Violence and the Moral Order in Contemporary Schooling: A Discursive Analysis

Abstract

A major strength of qualitative research is its capacity to re-theorise a particular field through examining the discursive constructions that underpin a particular body of research. The empirical research literature construes student violence generally, but bullying in particular, as a psychosocial problem arising from individual and family pathologies. In this article, drawing on the work of Foucault and Butler, we engage in a discursive analysis of the bullying discourse as it appears in the literature and in teachers' and students' commentaries on incidents of bullying. A discursive analysis enables us to ask whether there is some limitation or inherent problem in the conceptual configuration of the field, and to ask how else the problem might be understood. We begin that discursive work in order to open up new ways of thinking about, and acting in relation to, school violence.

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