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In the words of Foucault, every society has “its regimes of truth, its general politics of
truth; the types of discourses which it accepts and makes function as true” (1976:
110). Foucault’s critique of theories of knowledge and the status of those charged
with “saying what counts as true” is central to post-positivism (1980: 131). Contrary
to a classical understanding of the relationship between knowledge and power being
one-dimensional - the idea that ‘knowledge is power’ underpinning Comtian
approaches to science - in the post-positivist thought of Foucault, the relationship
between knowledge and power is understood to be much more complex. The two
entities are conceived to be in constant interaction; knowledge and power are a
dichotomy, to construct knowledge is to reinforce power and – reciprocally – when
one exercises power you produce a type of knowledge. Analysing the complex nexus
of knowledge and power is central to post-positivist research.
For the post-positivist, the idea that only knowledge verified by scientific method is
legitimate is not due to the cause and effect of natural law, rather it is the result of a
“disciplining discourse” which enables the regulation of society by those with power
to articulate “what counts as true” (Foucault 1980: 131). For post-positivists
‘discipline’ has a specific meaning: as a means of exercising power over individuals,
particularly the exercise of regulatory power. Discipline is taken to be evident in what
Foucault (1980: 105) terms a “disciplinary society” referring to the control of
populations via societal institutions such as prisons, hospitals, asylums and schools.
Moreover, power, in post-positivism is considered an ever-present quality in social
relations; one cannot possess power as a single entity, power is always both relative
and productive. In the words of Foucault (1980: 98), “[p]ower must be analyzed as
something which circulates… Power is employed and exercised through a netlike
organization… Individuals are vehicles of power, not its points of application.”
Elsewhere he states that “power produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of
objects and rituals of truth” (Foucault 1977: 194).
Employing the work of Foucault (1980: 98; 1977: 194), power has two key features:
it is a system, a network which encompasses all of society and secondly, individuals
are the locus where power and the resistance to power are exerted, not just its objects.