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Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education

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The politics of historical discourse analysis: a qualitative research method?

Inglfur sgeir Jhannessona a Faculty of Education, University of Akureyri, Norursl, Akureyri, Iceland Online publication date: 26 April 2010

To cite this Article Jhannesson, Inglfur sgeir(2010) 'The politics of historical discourse analysis: a qualitative research

method?', Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 31: 2, 251 264 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/01596301003679768 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01596301003679768

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Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education Vol. 31, No. 2, May 2010, 251264

The politics of historical discourse analysis: a qualitative research method?

Ingolfur Asgeir Johannesson*
Faculty of Education, University of Akureyri, Solborg, Norurslo, IS 602 Akureyri, Iceland This article deals with the ways in which historical discourse analysis is at once different from and similar to research described as qualitative or quantitative. It discusses the consequences of applying the standards of such methods to historical discourse analysis. It is pointed out that although the merit of research using historical discourse analysis must not be judged by the standards of qualitative methods alone, it can be easier to admit the influence of the discourse on methodology. Therefore, the article considers whether and how the ideas of validity, reliability, sample, and transferability can be used to explain the merit of study using historical discourse analysis. The author also discusses the basic concepts and principles of historical discourse analysis, and he describes step-bystep a particular way of conducting historical discourse analysis. Keywords: historical discourse analysis; discourse analysis; qualitative methods; narrative

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Introduction In current discourse about research in education and other related disciplines there is an emphasis on methodology. This is not a new trend, as pointed out by the Swedish education scholar Daniel Kallos about 30 years ago (Kallos, 1981), but a persistent phenomenon. The emphasis on methodology sometimes comes close to be a fetish on the methods rather than on what is studied. Further, there is a noteworthy trend to create a taxonomy of research methods, classifying them into quantitative and qualitative categories with strict sets of standards. Most recently, the American Educational Research Association also created standards for what is called humanities-oriented research (AERA, 2009), which could add to the general taxonomy of methodologies. This article has multiple agendas. The first agenda is questioning the fruitfulness of seeing discourse analysis as a separate column in a taxonomy of methods, or a box in humanities-oriented research. If it was really seen that way, historical discourse analysis would be a box among other types of discourse analysis in the respective column. This relates to the second agenda, which is to discuss what makes historical discourse analysis an identifiable approach in research. The focus is on its basic concepts. Immediately, the reader must think that the author of the article is contradicting himself. And the reader is correct: this is a contradiction, even though I contend that historical discourse analysis is an approach to research, rather than a method in itself. The third agenda is to describe how the author conducts his studies,
*Email: ingo@unak.is
ISSN 0159-6306 print/ISSN 1469-3739 online # 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/01596301003679768 http://www.informaworld.com

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step-by-step. This is done to enable a reflective discussion of the politics of historical discourse analysis in context with the actual procedural issues that arise. The fourth agenda is to reflect upon some of the differences and similarities between historical discourse analysis and other types of research. Separate sections, immediately following this introduction, serve the second, third, and fourth agendas. The first agenda is dealt with throughout the article and, in addition, in the last section. All these agendas have in common a focus on the relationship between method and the politics of research. The politics of discourse analysis is considered by some to be an underdeveloped issue in thinking about discourse analysis; for instance, Australian researcher Alison Lee has asserted that the field of discourse analysis has by and large not participated reflexively in discussion about these matters in relation to its own research and representational practices (2000, p. 189). As the examples presented in this article show, historical discourse analysis is a research approach suited to contextualize its own research stories and practices. The article is in part a story told by a researcher who, after 20 years of research, discovered that he had developed an approach to research ways of working, research procedures that had value beyond the findings of each particular study. So, I emphasize that although historical discourse analysis is not at all my invention, there is a personal and political edge to what is described here.1 Most importantly, I must acknowledge my resistance against seeing my ways of working as a method; I see my research, most of the time, as what can be called a Foucauldian-feminist quest to identify contradictions in the discourses surrounding us, hopefully to be able to exploit these contradictions to interrupt current discourse. This means that I wish to focus more on why research is conducted and under which circumstances, rather than on its methods. Thus, what sparked the researchers interest becomes an important part of the story, but what happened to the research findings is also important and will become part of the story. Nevertheless, as this article is descriptive of the approach I have used, I do hope that it is of some use to newcomers into research of discourse as well as being a contribution to methodological discussion.2 Concepts of historical discourse analysis Discussing historical discourse analysis requires a brief explanation of a set of concepts. Discourse, discursive themes, legitimating principles, historical conjuncture, and normalization are the most important of these concepts, but power, silence, and social strategies are also concepts that matter. Discourse, discursive themes, and legitimating principles are interwoven concepts. Words and ideas, behaviour and practices are observed and identified as themes in the discourse, that is, discursive themes (Johannesson, 1991, 1998). Discourse is a process but not a static phase (see also Tamboukou, 2001). We, the participants in the discourse professionals, researchers, and the public alike produce and reproduce it with our conscious and unconscious practices and utterances. The discursive themes create patterns in the discourse, patterns that are shaped and reshaped in the social and political atmosphere of the past and the present. These patterns are historical and political legitimating principles that constitute the available means for the participants for what is appropriate or safe to say at certain moments or in certain places but at the same time we often try to affect the boundaries of what can be said and what is silenced in the discourse.

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How is it that some ideas and practices gain more legitimacy than others in the discourse? What is the interplay between historical and political conditions and good arguments for ideas and practices? The concept of historical conjuncture is meant to capture what happens in those circumstances (Johannesson, 1991, 1998). I often use a highway intersection near a large city in the USA to explain this concept. In such an intersection, there are roads coming in from at least four directions. Everyone needs to be able to travel in any direction from any of the other directions. If the traveller does not find the desired route, s/he may need to go in a wrong direction for miles before s/he can return and find the correct route. In addition, there are sometimes local streets underneath. The difference between a historical conjuncture and the highway intersection, however, is that the intersection is designed in a way so that cars do not crash into each other if drivers follow the rules. But in a historical conjuncture it is not easy to predict which ideas and practices will be able to coexist because epistemological roots of ideas usually do not mean much when older and newer ideas and practices compete for legitimacy (Jo hannesson, 1992, 2006b). Let me push further the analogy of a highway intersection to see how normalization works. For instance, if the government authorities are travelling a main road and they do not turn off to another route, then it may be easier for other travellers to follow that route. But the same is the case if the government wants to turn in a different direction; some of those who were supposed to follow the course may even miss the chance or decide that they do not care much about where the authorities travel. They may, when they have a chance, choose to go off into a direction different from that of the government-sponsored reform. They may, then, also decide to select a third route in order to come closer to the government proposals, or continue resisting the government directions. Despite these possibilities that the analogy suggests, in modern societies we have been educated to follow rules so that we do not need to be punished. This applies even more to professionals than other people, as we have most of the time, through schooling, received more training in adjusting to the demands constituted in the discourse. In that process, we accept a variety of ideas and practices as professional truth, and we may even participate in silencing other ideas. In brief, the participants in discourses consciously and unconsciously employ the various ideas and practices as their social strategies (Bourdieu, 1988; Johannesson, 1998; see also Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) available to them in the historical conjuncture. This is how normalization works: indirectly through the visible and, no less effectively, the invisible relations of power. Although the definition of discourse I use is by no means unique, it is necessary to stress three points that differ from some other definitions of discourse. First, the Bourdieuean notion of social strategies where participants are active in employing discursive themes as their social strategies rather than being simply passive recipients is not commonly connected to the observation of discourse (see Johannesson, 1991, 1998). Second, I emphasize that discourse is a process. This is common to Foucauldian-feminist understandings as, for instance, is emphasized by the Greek feminist scholar Maria Tamboukou (2001). In the third place, I emphasize that the concept of discourse I use includes social practices and institutional structures (see also Wodak, 1996, 1997). Some researchers, for instance Tamboukou (2001), refer to those as non-discursive practices while nevertheless stressing their importance for the study of discourse.

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The approach to doing historical discourse analysis that I have described here is enlightened by two French researchers, historian of systems of thought Michel Foucault (1971, 1978a, 1978b, 1979a, 1979b, 1981, 1998/1967, 1998/1972) and sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1988, 1991; see also Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992), but also as the work of Foucault has been taken up by many feminist researchers (see, for example, Ellsworth, 1989; Einarsdottir, 1999; Lather, 1991, 2006, 2007; Sawicki, 1991; Sndergaard, 2002; Tamboukou, 2000, 2001; Weedon, 1987). I am also indebted to the work of US American education researcher Thomas S. Popkewitz (e.g., 1991, 2008; see also Popkewitz & Brennan, 1998; Popkewitz, Franklin, & Pereyra, 2001). In one of his most recent books (Popkewitz, 2008), he uses what is called history of the present to study the historical practices and social epistemological changes that produce the governing principles of who children are to be, tracing ideas backwards and forwards to understand the previous and current historical conjunctures. However, I have chosen to use the term historical conjuncture rather than the history of the present, especially because historical conjuncture, as a term, can at once refer to contemporary or earlier conjunctures. Step-by-step: practical issues in conducting historical discourse analysis How do we approach doing historical discourse analysis? In this article, I consider the use of documents and other texts. I most often use such material especially official reports and newspaper articles because it offers insights into the reasoning behind social practices and institutional structures. Newspaper articles in particular often reveal the contradictions in the social and political struggles about the practices and policies at stake. Analyzing interview transcripts and observation protocols as discourse is also an important avenue to study practices and the reasoning about them. In this section I offer the reader an opportunity to follow a detailed description of how I have performed historical discourse analysis.3 By offering this account, I am able to discuss issues in research politics as well as the question in the articles title, concerning whether historical discourse analysis is a qualitative research method. I have selected a study of childrens special educational needs that was published in Discourse in 2006 (Johannesson, 2006a).4 Additional examples in this section are taken from a few other studies. The first step is to select an issue or an event. Most likely a researcher has already decided on the topic. In that case, it is advisable to carve out a particular aspect of the topic or find an event which lends itself to this kind of analysis, for instance because it has been controversial among professionals or widely discussed in the media. I studied the issue of special educational needs within the discourse of education and educational reform. I was completing work in a large international study, entitled Educational Governance and Social Integration/Exclusion (EGSIE) (see, for example, Lindblad, Johannesson, & Simola, 2002; Johannesson, Geirsdottir, & Finnbogason, 2002), when I discovered that special educational needs were treated as an issue of management rather than a pedagogical concern (as I felt these matters should be treated). I thought that this was a contradiction and decided to continue, at first out of a mere curiosity, but then I saw that this might be an opportunity to reveal that in this historical conjuncture practices, which no one in particular was likely to have aimed at, were legitimated.

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The second step for the researcher is to determine the material he or she considers relevant to throw light on the issue or the event he or she has decided. There is no right or wrong way to do so. If the researcher wants to analyze government policy about the issue, s/he either selects important texts or asks the relevant government agencies to tell him or her which are the key documents. If the researcher wishes to analyze ideas in society, or among professionals, about discipline and discipline problems, s/he could well start by finding an event that sparked such discussions and read the newspapers in the aftermath. Another suitable option would be to find a report about discipline problems to analyze the ways in which the problems are described and solutions legitimized. It is important at this stage to limit the amount that needs to be read; of course, the researcher must use good arguments for restricting the number of documents or identifying a particular time-period to be scrutinized. In the study about special educational needs, it was rather obvious from the beginning to look at the educational legislation and the curriculum guidelines. I also asked the Icelandic Ministry of Education, Science and Culture to identify other key documents. The Ministry identified several documents, including The Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education (UNESCO, 1994), as well as reports and proceedings from two conferences (see Jo hannesson, 2006a, 2006b). I also determined that two documents about the national curriculum for early childhood, compulsory, and upper secondary education, sent to all homes in 1998 and 1999 Enn betri skoli (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 1998) and Enn betri leikskoli (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 1999) would cast an important light on understanding the special educational needs policy. In this particular study I did not use newspaper materials in an organized manner, only if relevant articles appeared when I was working on the study. In a recent study of climate change discourse (Johannesson, 2005), I used newspaper articles rather extensively. The study was divided into two parts: first, I analyzed documents from the Icelandic Ministry for the Environment, The Soil Conservation Service in Iceland, and The Iceland Forest Service; second, I analyzed newspaper articles. I had been an observer, and indeed a participant, in debates about the use of nature and natural resources so I knew fairly well what was to be expected. But in order to ensure that there would not be many themes that I missed or underestimated, I decided to use a database of newspaper articles gathered by an information service company named Fjolmilavaktin (CreditInfo Iceland). I selected the period from late 1997, when the original version of the Kyoto Protocol was passed, until May 2002 when Iceland ratified the Kyoto Protocol. I could also have decided to use February 2005 when the Protocol took effect as the latter date, or I could have performed a quick follow-up study during that month to identify if there were different emphases in the debate at that point. It is rather easy to collect newspaper articles for research. If the researcher, who may also be a keen observer or a participant in debates, collects them simultaneously, he or she will have an easier time later identifying key periods for a thorough analysis. Journals of professional organizations can be useful materials for historical discourse analysis. Icelandic sociologist and feminist scholar orgerur Einarsdottir (1999) used the professional journal of Swedish medical doctors to analyze the status of the different specializations within medicine in relation to gender. Einarsdottir had also conducted a survey as well as taken interviews. The Australian education

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researcher Pat Thomson (2001) used a professional journal of Australian school principals when she studied the different discourses about what should be demanded of principals. Thomson also used a state system document for the analysis. Einarsdo ttir and Thomson selected a period of time or a certain number of issues they were able to determine that would give a clear picture of the discourse they wanted to study. The third step is the actual analysis of the documents. If the reasons for conducting the study are clear, I recommend that the reader should simply start and let the actual ways of working and thinking about the material evolve during that process. It is probable that the researcher already has conceptualized some of the discursive themes, and it is equally likely that s/he will find something that s/he did not necessarily expect or that the relationship between the themes differs from what was thought. Guiding questions are the best tool the researcher will have at this point. The following questions guided me in my search of the special educational needs documents: What are the policies of special educational needs? What is the view of the subject/subjectivity of the individual? How do the views in the documents relate to legitimating principles in the educational discourse? (Johannesson, 2006a). The first two questions guide to step three; the third question refers to step four. These questions evolved rather directly out of the EGSIE project, but in other instances my questions have changed more as I collected and read the documents. My findings the discursive themes at this point were, first, an emphasis on every child being able to attend its neighbourhood school, preferably in a home classroom without first considering whether there were any special educational needs. Second, the means to create inclusive schools seemed to rely more on clinical analysis of the educational needs rather than pedagogical approaches. From that observation, I argued, Icelandic school students had become diagnosable subjects. Third, I contended that the documents, especially those that had been sent to all homes, i.e., Enn betri skoli (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 1998) and Enn betri leikskoli (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 1999), with their emphasis on strong and independent individuals, had turned children and parents into consumers who must be able to rationally determine their educational needs in a market society. The fourth step is to analyze the struggles and tensions in the discourse, be they obvious or not so obvious, to analyze the patterns of arguments to see if we can identify legitimating principles. Among the main patterns in the special educational needs study were references to the needs of individuals, and another aspect was an adherence to clinical methods for identifying these needs. The Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action (UNESCO, 1994) comprises references to democracy, humanity, and diversity. Documents other than The Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action are silent about democracy and equality; in fact, most of the space in The Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action is devoted to a technical discussion of how to give all children the best of education in which clinical analysis is mentioned as an important component. This reveals a tension between individual needs, on one hand, and democracy and diversity, on the other; but if we dig deeper we see that individual needs and democracy are both parts of a Western discourse about individuals. Still this is an important tension in the discourse where the discursive themes of accountability, standardized testing, and management by results intensify the contradictory character of the tensions. Finally,

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the cost of meeting some of the special educational needs is also a noteworthy theme in the discourse. At this stage, the researcher may want to read more documents, because if the researcher knew much about the issue, s/he might realize that something is missing. What is it that the researcher did not find of what he or she thought was important? Is there a silence about things s/he believed to be important? What does that silence tell us about how to understand the patterns of discursive themes that constitute the legitimating principles of the discourse? In this example we see patterns that relate to two legitimating principles observed in the EGSIE study, namely technological and democratic views (Johannesson et al., 2002). That leads to the fifth step: the historical conjuncture of discourses. It is not least this step that distinguishes historical discourse analysis from other types of discourse or text analysis. In this case, the EGSIE study about the educational policy (e.g., Johannesson et al., 2002; Lindblad et al., 2002) was the most important research context for the study I describe here but also my earlier studies of legitimating principles in the debates about educational reform in Iceland in the 1970s and 1980s (Johannesson, 1991, 1992). So while at step five in this study, I thought it was interesting to observe the social strategies of spokespeople for inclusive schools who argued for inclusion because of democratic and humanistic reasons. How do they approach their interests in the atmosphere of clinical and technical methodologies and market-oriented views of accountability and testing? I asked about the consequences of having to fight for the needs of particular children or small groups of children in an atmosphere where users of educational systems are seen as consumers. In his study, Icelandic education researcher Gretar L. Marinosson (2002) observed that teachers in the school where he did his ethnographic research thought it was necessary to put special educational needs into a taxonomic grid. They thought it was important, not because they were technically-minded, but because this practice was available to meet the immediate needs of individuals they care for. In contrast, Marinosson observed that the teachers had humanistic beliefs but normalized themselves to the available means that is, the clinical approach. My reason for conducting the study was an interest in revealing contradictions in the educational policy and practice about special educational needs of children. Three sets of contradictions were given priority in my conclusions: first, the trend to see children as consumers of expert clinical services; second, the trend to treat special educational needs as issues of management and financing; third, the relative silence about democracy and the trend to individualize all kinds of differences between children. The consequence of the last point is that diversity among people is increasingly discussed in light of clinical analysis of not only special educational needs, but maybe any human need. For instance as I observe the discourse talented and gifted children have now been reduced, if I may say so, to diagnosable subjects. The socio-economic and cultural issues that may explain the learning performance of many children are very much in the backseat in such debates. I was able to trace the discursive themes, found in the study, through earlier conjunctures and observe how ideas and practices sometimes transform their meaning in the connection with other types of discursive themes so they form new principles of legitimacy or strengthen earlier principles. From this we see that historical, in the phrase historical discourse analysis, refers to the study of

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contemporary discourses and current and earlier historical conjunctures. The earlier work I have referred to was based on an eclectic use of Foucaults toolbox, most importantly a genealogical approach (Johannesson, 1991, 1998).5 The sixth and last step is to write some kind of a report. Sharp and Richardson (2001), British researchers in environmental science and planning, call such a report a critical narrative. It is possibly enough to publish the results in conference lectures, journal articles, and books. A more detailed report may, however, be very useful for further references, and it may even be made accessible on a website. I did this, for instance, when I conducted a study of Nature as Capital (Johannesson, 2000) where the report was the main document and other publications were derived from it. This step would hardly be considered specific for historical discourse analysis, and in the study discussed here I did not prepare the original report to be made available. Reflections about historical discourse analysis: differences and similarities compared with other types of research Books and articles that present social science research most often include chapters or sections to show that the researcher knows how to conduct research. These sections describe methods and often refer to methodology. Among constructs that social sciences emphasize are validity, reliability, methods of sampling, and transferability. The researcher is also required to point out that his or her personal views or situations do not have an inappropriate impact on the results. Such methodological sections are most of the time more minute in quantitative research articles, but there is also a tendency to impose the same requirements upon qualitative research (Johannesson, 2006b). This may indeed lead to such a scenario that when distinct types of research are developed, those who conduct qualitative research neglect to explain how they adhered to the logic of the respective type of research they are conducting, but rather fall into the pit of explaining criteria developed for other purposes, in that case often arbitrary. US American feminist researcher Patti Lather (2006) labels this trend as methodological reductionism that has radically flattened the methods into a single model. For this reason, I believe it is important that researchers inspired by Foucaults research participated in producing standards for humanities-oriented research (AERA, 2009). One of the reasons for resisting extensive discussions about method and methodology is the fact that many social scientists do their research because they have political goals about improving their communities and society. We wish to use our competence in doing research to create knowledge that can contribute to such improvements. Moreover, professionals in education and health sciences are probably especially concerned with the usefulness of their research. But is it likely that conventional research tools alone will help if the research is aimed at demystifying or interrupting current discourses? Feminist research is perhaps the best example of where political interests guide the choices of issues (Ellsworth, 1989; Johannesson, 2004; Sawicki, 1991; Sndergaard, 2002; Traustadottir, 2003). But as pointed out by Kallos (1981), other political interests also guide the choices of what is researched. All this contributes to my protest towards calling historical discourse analysis a method; further, I refuse to accept that it belongs to the qualitative column of methods. I will continue explaining why historical discourse analysis is not a method and why it is not a qualitative method.

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Remembering that this article grew out of a book chapter for disability studies (Johannesson, 2006b), I must admit that the disability scientist may not be particularly interested in a certificate of origin for historical discourse analysis, but would rather focus on what insights the approach gives into the issue s/he wishes to study. For that reason, among others, I believe historical discourse analysis should not be exempted from considering some of the criteria applied to qualitative research methods. But we should also be aware that these criteria now function as legitimating principles operating within the discourse of social, educational, health, and disability science methodology. This discourse emphasizes the creation and collection of neutral, but useful, scientific knowledge; this discourse normalizes us as researchers when we seek to be heard in many of the social sciences. Because validity, reliability, methods of sampling, and transferability are among the major discursive themes, a refusal to address these issues may require the researcher to do more work, or the publication of the analysis will be delayed because the work is being doubted. However, I believe it is of vital importance, given the character of historical discourse analysis, that it will be accepted as a narrative composed by the researcher that the story s/he can tell, as a result of the analysis which was conducted, will be accepted as a contribution to research. What does that narrative need to include? I would like to see something about why the research is conducted as part of the narrative. In the above story, I could use the reason why I became interested in the topic as a way to relate my study to previous research. So instead of being a routine literature review, often seen in articles and often complained about by researchers, previous research is part of the story itself. In this case, previous research both initiated the analysis as well as being part of step five, that is, to understand the historical conjuncture. The researchers identity is related to the reason why the research is conducted. If special educational needs of children are studied, we need to know if the researcher is a teacher or a developmental therapist or has any other professional background relating to the topic. I am not as certain as to what to think if the researcher is (also) a person with learning difficulties or has children or other relatives with such special educational needs. The strongest argument for making that into an aspect of the research story is to let the reader know that the researcher had developed his or her interests in the topic over the years and has acquired important knowledge, experience, and insights. By seeing it so expressed, the researcher?s position relative to the research topic is not a methodological disclaimer, as is often maintained, but inherent in the story. The researcher should, therefore, not be expected to be neutral as required in quantitative research and often in qualitative research as well; it is the aim of the study to interpret the contradictions in the discourse. On the other hand, of course, the researcher must cite documents correctly, and he or she needs to explain how professional as well as personal insights were used to select documents which would be called data in quantitative research. If the results of historical discourse analysis are presented as a story, what might then be called transferability of the results? Most important, in my opinion, is that the story and the contradictions it may reveal can be understood for use in contemporary debates. This does not, however, prevent the possibility of contradictions found in one field of society being used in another field. The researcher may or may not want to speculate about such possibilities, but s/he should not do that to fulfil methodological requirements.

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The selection of documents is vital to historical discourse analysis, even more so than identifying a sample in some other types of research. It is important to clearly describe how they were selected. It is particularly necessary to collect more documents if we do not find what we expected to find in the first round, especially if we are going to, on the basis of our findings, state that government authorities are silent about something. A good description of which documents were used and how they were read is important so the readers of the research story could also read the documents but they may not accept the interpretations of the researcher. On the surface, the validity of historical discourse analysis must be high but what if the analysis pulls the researcher far away from the original goals of the research? That must be a different validity or no validity at all but still the story can have much value as research. On the other hand, the first consideration is that the reliability of historical discourse analysis must be very low if it is built into the approach that the researcher interprets the documents his or her own way: But if the researcher has thoroughly explained how s/he worked with the documents, why even consider whether reliability is an issue to worry about? A method or not? Notes on research politics Having described in considerable detail an approach to research, but at the same time I have denied that my almost recipe-like step-by-step approach is a method. Furthermore, this approach I have described indeed requires much rigour in how to choose and use data. Then, can the argument that this is not a method be taken seriously? Historical discourse analysis as the approach I have described here can be located within the so-called poststructuralist tradition. I believe what Danish feminist researcher Dorte Marie Sndergaard (2002) describes as poststructuralist-inspired empirical analysis can say something about why I do not want historical discourse analysis to be called a method; she calls for analytic inspiration for a creative development of new understandings (p. 202) meant to problematize the taken-forgranted beliefs. Historical discourse analysis, as described here, has developed out of such endeavours. Historical discourse analysis, as well as other poststructuralist research approaches, is well suited to questioning common assumptions. One of these is that the beliefs and intentions of those who propose policy and practices matter. By using historical discourse analysis, it is pointed out that it does not matter whether policy makers wanted full inclusion of all children; what matters are the consequences of the policy, how it connects with other policies and practices, how it plays out in practice. Of course, this immediately raises questions: Could we have foreseen the consequences? Could we have foreseen whether the consequences would be desirable or not? Would an understanding of the historical conjuncture have guided the policy maker or practitioner to adopt some other strategies? This is much less a moral question than it is a practical one of being able to understand the legitimating principles in the historical conjuncture where reform is proposed. When doing historical discourse analysis, the researcher does not search for the authors of the ideas or practices. The researcher aims to identify the involvement of the individuals and groups at stake, how they have become normalized in the discourse, and how they take certain assumptions for granted. This does not mean

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the documents were not written by people, and it does not even mean that they were written by uncreative people. On the contrary, the discourse in question is not static; it develops because individuals consciously and unconsciously adopt discursive themes some of them are creative ideas as their social strategies. In historical discourse analysis, we search for the principles rules in the discourse, the themes that characterize the discourse. Reading documents and newspapers is among the means to find those principles. The metaphor of an authorless discourse in terms of the fact that no identified author wrote it is especially interesting for Icelanders because, with regard to some of the greatest work of literature written in Icelandic, the Old Norse sagas, we still do not know the author(s), for instance Njals Saga (Anonymous, 1960). Knowing who is the author is, however, by no means insignificant; at times it may be quite relevant and important to know who wrote particular government documents, because it may take less time to locate discursive relatives for the researcher to understand the interplay of discursive power and other forms of power (e.g., Johannesson, 2010). An important aspect of historical discourse analysis is that it allows researchers and professionals to investigate their own involvement in the discourse, how we normalize ourselves to take as self-evident certain beliefs and assumptions and adopt them as our social strategies. Such professional-political study of ones own involvement can indeed be the chief aim of historical discourse analysis, because we as professionals are important in how the discourse evolves. It is important, however, that this is not handled by the researcher as merely a personal responsibility, but as a collective search for unearthing the epistemological unconscious of his or her discipline (Wacquant, in Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 41). Of course, a researcher using the approach of historical discourse analysis, who works alone or writes with a small group of other researchers, will also look at his or her own involvement to understand how s/he is involved in the discourse or the event s/he is describing. This is, as I demonstrated above, built into the narrative. But I repeat: this is a practical part of the story, rather than a moral endeavour of being right or wrong. Having at least twice refused that morality should be considered as an aspect of the story, I must also say that historical discourse analysis research can be highly moral and political: What happened to the results presented in the story? What kind of contradictions did the research identify? Were contradictions exploited, discourse interrupted? In the same vein, Lee (2000) demands a look at the material effects of analysis: How is the research used? How is it taken up? Historical discourse analysis does not end with the publication of the research narrative; the story is never a matter of innocent results that the researcher can claim no responsibility for. The choice of research issues is also a moral and political endeavour. The research and its environment is not a neutral act, never purely scientific. We who conduct historical discourse analysis should do what Lather (2007) demands of feminist work: if feminist work is not to become routinized, static and predictable, it must interrogate the enabling limits of its own practices. In brief, the research story becomes part of the discourse, and we need to delve into its modes of existence (Foucault, 1979b). Finally, I wish to remind ourselves of what Kallos said 30 years ago: Problems in studying schooling are by no means primarily methodological, i.e., that we are not

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confronted with the task of a mere substitution of one package of methods for another (1981, pp. 3132). In my opinion, the focus on research methodology is one kind of fetish. Ironically, of course, this article by its very existence certainly does not work against the fetish of methodology. I also must admit that historical discourse analysis is a method to the extent that we, as researchers, work within a research community where we need to follow expectations, some of which are stated and others are embedded in the discourse about research. But as an approach, historical discourse analysis offers the possibility to include reflections about before and after the research. In that sense, historical discourse analysis is hardly an ordinary method. Acknowledgements
The article was drafted during a research sabbatical granted by the University of Akureyri. I would like to thank my colleagues as well as graduate students in three overseas universities, namely Gothenburg University, John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio, and the University of Wisconsin, Madison for their conversations and inspiration when we were discussing this topic.

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Notes
1. In an English translation of Foucaults lecture, What is an author?, the phrase is historical analysis of discourse (Foucault, 1979b). 2. After the publication of an article in Discourse (Johannesson, 2006a), I was asked to write a chapter in a book about ideas and concepts in disability studies in Icelandic (Johannesson, 2006b). The primary focus of the chapter was to be a guide about how to conduct discourse analysis. This article follows in part the logic and ideas presented there, but with a wider focus on the discussion. 3. I am indebted to Sharp and Richardson (2001) for identifying many of the steps and guiding questions at each step. Their steps and questions were helpful in my task of explaining my ways of working. 4. An important method to learn to perform historical discourse analysis is to read such work. This journal, Discourse, publishes many articles that use historical discourse analysis (see, for instance, Johannesson, 2006a; Thomas, 2003; Thomson, 2001). Of edited volumes, I recommend, for instance, Popkewitz, Franklin, and Pereyra (2001) and Baker and Heyning (2004). 5. Mentioning genealogy, one may ask how historical discourse analysis differs from it. I would begin by saying that the difference between historical discourse analysis and other Foucauldian, Bourdieuean, or feminist research approaches is not important per se. But if there is a difference between my use of historical discourse analysis and genealogy, it is the focus of historical discourse analysis on a particular historical conjuncture that makes the difference. Moreover, genealogy as a term for a research approach is probably less likely to be claimed by qualitative methods than historical discourse analysis; thus it needs less defence.

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