Space

The first facet of discourse, that I call Space, is the facet that individualized the subject and makes it available as a calculable object to study and guide its behaviour. For example, in the context of the story presented in Chapter One, the Space of the classroom and the Space of society makes me available for examination of my actions in relation to the promulgated pattern (that is interest is natural and beneficial vs. interest being Haram). Foucault (1977, p. 141) argues that “discipline proceeds from the distribution of the individual in space” that entails the techniques of enclosure, partitioning, functional sites,

and ranking. Through distribution the subject in its individualized space, the characteristics and actions of the individual can be identified and as such they become calculable and governable objects.

Space, in other words, works to isolate the individual from the crowd to observe and examine that individual. The identification of the individual through its distribution in Space make the individual available for observation and examination to be “manipulated, shaped, trained” argued Foucault (1977, p. 137) so that it can be transformed into something “which obeys, responds, become skilful and increases it forces”. In other words, the institution consists of a Space facet that works to individualize the subject and makes it possible for the institution to provide it with the guided pattern (Jepperson, 1991) that it disseminates.

Friedland and Alford (1991), as argued earlier in Chapter Two, see society to be consisting of multiple institutions that include the institutions of religion, political identity, family structure and economic ideology all of whom compete and collaborate to form the subject positions in the order of the society. For translating the theorization of Space presented above from an individual to institution thus requires an understanding of the system of institutions in the society and the way they have been enclosed, partitioned and ranked. As discussed earlier in Chapter Three, Foucault does not see power embodied in an individual,

structure or group but as embedded in relations extending to the whole of society. For analytical purposes it means that one should seek to understand the totality of relations that usually involves studying the continuous struggles within a society between discourses in terms of domination, marginalization, prohibition and resistances. These struggles shape our conduct and define the standard for conduct and create subject positions among institutions as well as the subject positions that the formed institution promulgates.

In other words, we need to study the society as a whole and the interrelationship of the institutions within it (Friedland & Alford, 1991) to understand how an institution is

individualized and provided a subject position in the order of the society. A study of the Space facet of an institution will thus require us to seek and review the discourse about understandings of societies’ political identity, religion and economic orientation that defines the individualization of the institution within the crowd and orders their respective subject positions. For example, in the case of academic finance the Space will not only consist of the geographical space but also the governance mechanisms in operation within the society. Through a study of the enclosure, partitioning, functional sites and rankings of the organization in the order of the society we will be able to analyse how certain institutions were individualized, transferred, marginalized and focalized, in other words, created or disrupted.

So to study the formation of Space of business schools, we need to look at how it relates to the university through its heterogeneity with other schools within the university as well as its distinct nature that identifies it as a business school. In the order of the Space of business schools each subject (Marketing, Finance, Industrial Relations, Human Resource, and Accounting etc.) is assigned a Space to which they belong and each having a Space of their own which belongs to them. The partitioning between the subjects taught within the Space of business schools, according to Foucault (1977), is a disciplinary requirement to 78

avoid the uncontrolled disappearance as well as imprecise distribution of the individuals. To ensure proper governance through avoiding the confusions and swarming mass the Space of business schools will have functional sites that filters and pins down the partitions for ensuring individuality. Thus the order of the Space of business schools also have a functional sites (that is the head of the school and academic coordinators as well as course coordinators) to ensure proper implementation of the operation of the Space and its parts. The

heterogeneity, distinctions, partitions and functional sites make it possible to create rankings

within the Space of business schools, which in turn identify the celebrated and condemned

practices within the Space that creates the continuous learning systems for the individuals. If we are to broaden our analysis from the university to society in relation to the Space of business schools, the same procedure will be adopted to understand the relations of government, regulators, philanthropies and scholarship providers etc. to understand how the

distribution of these work towards the formation of the Space. In other words, to understand the institutionalization of academic finance, we will need to look at the relation of dependence and contradiction between the government, philanthropic institutions, universities and regulatory bodies in the formation of the Space of business schools (which in turn provides the Space to academic finance) in terms of how they in the order of the society are enclosed, partitioned and ranked.