WPR Network: ‘Symposium on Critical Policy Studies – Exploring the Premises and Politics of Bacchi’s WPR Approach’

SEQUAL participated in the WPR Network-organized ‘Symposium on Critical Policy Studies – Exploring the Premises and Politics of Bacchi’s WPR Approach’ held at the Karlstad University in Sweden (and online), 17-18 Aug 2022.

Developed by Carol Bacchi,  the “What’s the Problem Represented to be?” (or WPR) is an approach to policy analysis. This analytic strategy highlights how policies represent the “problems” they purport to address and how governing takes place through these problematizations. The main objective of the Symposium was to open channels of communication among researchers engaged with the WPR approach, bring to light the types of analyses being produced and to encourage further collaboration among WPR scholars.

SEQUAL employs the WPR approach as a common methodology to examining how the “problem” of gender and gender inequality is represented in climate change, natural resources and forest policies across countries in the Global North (Sweden, Spain, Norway) and South (Burkina Faso, Vietnam).  Dr. Maria Brockhaus led and presented a comparative paper, co-authored by the entire project team, at this Symposium: “Exploring silences in policy and problematisations at the intersection of gender, land use and climate change” (submitted to Critical Policy Studies).

Published and ongoing WPR papers by the SEQUAL team include:

Karambiri, M., Ville, A., Wong, G., Jimenez, A.A., Downing, A., Brockhaus, M. (2024). If Local Culture is the Problem, What is the Solution? A WPR Approach to investigate the Representations of the Problem of Gender Inequality in Development in Burkina Faso. Forum for Development Studies, https://doi.org/10.1080/08039410.2024.2303004.

Ville, A., Wong, G., Jimenez, A.A., Downing, A., Karambiri, M., Brockhaus, M. (2022). What is the problem of gender inequality represented to be in the Swedish forest sector? Environmental Science & Policy, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2022.11.013.

Helga Eggebø, Aase Kristine Lundberg, Mari Teigen. 2022. Gaps and Silences: Gender and Climate Policies in the Global North, Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxac032

Borràs, M., Ravera, F., & Rivera-Ferre, MG. (2022). Is Climate Change the Problem? A Feminist Analysis of Climate Change Discourses in Spain and Catalonia. [unpublished manuscript] Geography Department, Universitat de Girona.

Wong G.Y., Karambiri M., Ville A., Pham T.T., Hoang L., Chi T.D.H., Downing A., Jimenez A.A., Brockhaus M. (2022). The “problem” of deforestation and forest degradation: Environmental justice in the intersections of policy, people and forest governance in Burkina Faso and Vietnam. [unpublished manuscript].