ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD), established in German sociology in the late 1990s and widely used across disciplines, including in education, history, Japanese or Chinese studies, media and communication, political science and sociology. SKAD’s core focus is a reorientation of discourse research towards Foucauldian interests in analyzing power/knowledge regimes. The chapter introduces readers to core issues of a knowledge-oriented approach to discourse studies. It discusses some examples from empirical research. SKAD uses the conception of discourse on a meso level of analysis, addressing concrete and material empirical phenomena, produced by and through social actors engaged in and committed to their very different worldly affairs. SKAD examines discourses as a seriality of regulated performative practices which deal with problems of knowing and acting, and produce power effects in a conflict-ridden network of social actors, institutional dispositifs and knowledge systems.
