Tara Ney, University of Victoria
Associate Professor
Public Administration
Victoria, British Columbia
tney@uvic.ca
Office:
(250) 721-8199
Bio/Research
I am curious about ways of promoting more socially-just and inclusive democratic processes that will ensure those whose interests that are affected by public polices are important actors in the decisions that affect their lives. I want to challenge and improve upon the way we ‘do’ and ‘argue’ abo...
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Bio/Research
I am curious about ways of promoting more socially-just and inclusive democratic processes that will ensure those whose interests that are affected by public polices are important actors in the decisions that affect their lives. I want to challenge and improve upon the way we ‘do’ and ‘argue’ about our public policies, and critically engage innovative government mechanisms and deliberative technologies. I am especially interested in more sophisticated ways to examine the way we do our policy arguments by exposing power, self-serving rhetorics, and the way particular knowledge is used to advance those arguments.
My recent research moves beyond the limitations of the dominant technocratic, positivist models of policy analysis. For example, in a research project that examined Family Group Conferences (FGC) in the context of the child protection system in BC, we explored the tensions that emerge when two very different discourses— the ‘democratic’, participatory discourse of FGC and the legalistic, bureaucratized discourse of conventional child welfare practice — attempt to integrate. We showed how during a FGC participants’ voices were usurped by the more forceful child protection discourse, itself shaped by legal, bureaucratized, and neoliberal discourses.
More recently, I used a similar discursive analysis to show how a feminist discourse that tries to support and protect victims of crime, paradoxically governs and limits the kind of psychological intervention (a restorative process) victims may access, and in so doing obstructs some victims’ ability to heal from a crime. I am impressed with how these discursive methodologies are able to expose the way arguments come to shape particular deliberative processes.
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My recent research moves beyond the limitations of the dominant technocratic, positivist models of policy analysis. For example, in a research project that examined Family Group Conferences (FGC) in the context of the child protection system in BC, we explored the tensions that emerge when two very different discourses— the ‘democratic’, participatory discourse of FGC and the legalistic, bureaucratized discourse of conventional child welfare practice — attempt to integrate. We showed how during a FGC participants’ voices were usurped by the more forceful child protection discourse, itself shaped by legal, bureaucratized, and neoliberal discourses.
More recently, I used a similar discursive analysis to show how a feminist discourse that tries to support and protect victims of crime, paradoxically governs and limits the kind of psychological intervention (a restorative process) victims may access, and in so doing obstructs some victims’ ability to heal from a crime. I am impressed with how these discursive methodologies are able to expose the way arguments come to shape particular deliberative processes.
Click to Shrink <<