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Power and Socioscientific Issues: The

Pedagogy of Mire's Critique of Skin
Whitening Cosmeceuticals
a
David Blades
a
Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Victoria,
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

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Critique of Skin Whitening Cosmeceuticals, Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology
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 CANADIAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, MATHEMATICS
AND TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION, 12(3), 292–301, 2012
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ISSN: 1492-6156 print / 1942-4051 online
DOI: 10.1080/14926156.2012.709580

VIEWPOINT/POINTS DE VUE

Power and Socioscientific Issues: The Pedagogy of Mire’s

Critique of Skin Whitening Cosmeceuticals
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David Blades
Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Victoria, Victoria,
British Columbia, Canada

INTRODUCTION

Our reflection in a mirror is always more; informing the assessment of the image gazing back are
the social discourses we inherit and reproduce through our interactions with others, especially chil-
dren. Consider, for example, wrinkles. Aside from poet Leonard Cohen’s song about looking for a
woman with “lines in her face” (“Lady Midnight”; Cohen, 1969, track 5), wrinkles for most Cana-
dians seem to be generally undesirable, an inevitability to be delayed as long as possible. How did
we come to accept this public belief? One influence could be cosmetics commercials that advertise
creams promising to remove or greatly diminish wrinkles, as if wrinkles were something to avoid.
Behind such advertising is a social discourse that advances definitions of beauty intimately
linked with evidence of youthfulness, such as a wrinkle-free skin. This discourse assumes a
pathological approach to wrinkles: wrinkles are something to be fixed. The very awareness
of wrinkles itself indicates prior investment in the discourses of what constitutes appearances
of beauty; that is, beauty is youthfulness. The tacit belief that youthfulness is an important
element of personal presentation in social interactions fosters desire; in this case, a desire for
fewer wrinkles, which is both reinforced and seemingly met by the promise of cosmetics that
offer a delay, if not a reversal, of wrinkles.
In her article, “The Scientification of Skin Whitening and the Entrepreneurial University-
Linked Corporate Scientific Officer,” published in this issue of the journal, Amina Mire (2012)
deconstructs the tacit investments implicit in such discourses of beauty, in particular those
linked to cosmetic products that purport to fight the “war on aging” through the production
and marketing of new cosmetics that claim to whiten skin color. Her article critiques the
neoliberal agenda behind this technological development, implicating university-based scientists

Address correspondence to David Blades, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Victoria, P.O.
Box 3010 STN CSC, Victoria, BC V8W 3N4, Canada. E-mail: dblades@uvic.ca
 VIEWPOINT/POINTS DE VUE 293

and corporate scientific officers as skin whitening cosmetics attempt legitimation through the
strategic application of scientific terminology in marketing schemes. In this sense, her article
represents a strong indictment of modern science and scientists’ involvement in the discovery,
production, and promotion of capitalist ventures, an especially disturbing development when
these ventures are products that may pose health risks to the public. To understand this
development, Mire turns to Foucault’s work on truth and knowledge as reciprocal sides of what
he calls power. This framework of analysis explains, partially, how the cosmetics industry can
and would draw on science for legitimacy, but such a turn raises complex questions about science
itself and the role of school science that could be explored more fully in her article.

COSMETICS INDUSTRY AS A SOCIOSCIENTIFIC ISSUE

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There is no question that the cosmetics industry is big business. From a marketing viewpoint, cos-
metics are part of the larger industry collectively called luxury goods (Global Industry Analysts,
2010). In 2010 this industry represented $307 billion in sales and is one of the fastest growing
industries in the world, especially in Africa, the Middle East, and China (Lennard, 2010). The
clear and growing demand for luxury goods, such as cosmetics, presents a business opportunity
for universities as partners with industry in the research and development of cosmetics. In her
article, Mire (2012, p. 272) calls this a, “scientific entrepreneurialism” that is part of the growing
response to fund-raising that is the new “academic capitalism” of publicly funded universities.
Her article offers an unequivocal critique of this production through a focused example of the
role of university scientists and the corporate scientific officers in the production and marketing
of a particular luxury good, skin whitening creams.
It is clear from the examples in her article that there is a growing demand by men and women
for this product, especially in Asia. Mire (2012, p. 274) argues for a causal link between this
demand and a decades-long aggressive marketing strategy around the world and especially
in Asia by the major companies producing skin whitening creams. It is this strategy that
particularly concerns Mire. She notes that skin creams are positioned by the cosmetics industry
as a kind of “ambiguous product” sometimes marketed internationally as a “food” product to
avoid the stricter regulations of pharmaceutical products. Where corporations cannot avoid a
pharmaceutical designation for skin whitening creams she found attempts to merge the notion
of “cosmetic” with drug-based pharmaceuticals into a new, hybrid category of “cosmeceutical”
that, she claims, helps avoid the regulatory constraints typically applied to either cosmetics or
pharmaceuticals, although it is not clear why this hybrid would not be subjected to regulations
from both regulatory bodies instead of neither.
Mire’s (2012) critique of the university–industry nexus producing skin whitening creams
serves as a useful introduction to the complex position of university-based science in a global
economic system dominated by capitalism. In her article she offers a strong critique of the
marketing strategies of the cosmetics industry, but this critique remains, for the most part, as a
guide to the interrelationships enabling the production and marketing of their products and only
superficially touches on the deeper issues presented in her descriptions. Her article thus serves as
an excellent introduction to a particular socioscientific issue (SSI), which in turn provokes and
invites an examination that reveals the curriculum of skin whitening creams and also opportunities
for a response in the pedagogy of science education.
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What does the development, production, and marketing of skin whitening creams teach us? One
response might be a reexamination of the particular prejudices we may bring to our examination
of these particular cosmetics. Mire (2012, p. 274) is clearly troubled by the promotion of what she
describes as “whiteness modernity” to citizens in regions of the world with phenotypically dark
skin, hinting that such marketing is unethical in direction and in attempts to avoid regulation.
Critics of her analysis might counter that such marketing approaches are hardly insidious
but instead evidence of good business practice in the use of effective strategies for bringing
products that consumers clearly demand. They might further argue that of course these products
are marketed to areas of the world where skin tends to be darker because this is the very population
who might desire such products. Corporations might argue further that Mire’s (2012) resistance to
the agenda and production of these cosmetics is a kind of “ethnocentric consolidation” (McCarthy
& Dimitriades, 2000, p. 193) that essentializes and then annihilates the choices of those others
who purchase, for their own reasons, products that promise to whiten their skin. Rather ironically,
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promoters of skin whitening creams could argue that they are anticolonial in their practice
precisely because they respect and acknowledge the sophistication of the consumers choosing to
use these cosmetics.
Mire (2012) cleverly avoids this murky entanglement by not actually condemning the use of
skin whitening creams per se, although animating her article is a concern that this practice is,
in fact, a continuation of Western colonialization. Her article is thus very useful in presenting
questions about who, in fact, has adopted a colonial approach to skin whitening creams and a
useful reminder of the importance of considering the cultural biases that influence our perceptions
of any SSI.
I believe that there are two important reasons to support Mire’s (2012, p. 282) resistance to
the development and production of skin whitening creams. First, as she points out, many of these
creams are not benign. She reports that some creams lighten skin color by suppressing the “the
natural biosynthesis and function of melanin, a protein vital to the skin’s ability to protect the
body against sun-induced photodamage.” She further questions the motivation and commitment
to safety by the industry itself, observing that some skin whitening products with highly toxic in-
gredients have been successfully rebranded as cosmeceuticals to avoid regulation. This motivation
is brought into question further with the example of products labeled by the industry as cosmetic
that use pharmaceutical-based delivery systems, such as nanotechnologies employed to deliver
subdermal penetrations of skin whitening agents. Given these examples, there seems to be justi-
fication for examining skin whitening technologies further through a hermeneutics of suspicion.
Mire’s (2012) critique of the apparatus of skin whitening creams presents the second reason
to support her resistance to these products. Drawing inspiration from Foucault’s examination
of systems of thought (Foucault, 1972), Mire brilliantly reveals how skin whitening creams are
heavily invested in a curriculum of desire for “whiteness.” Her critique is located in recent history;
a genealogy of this desire introduces a complication that Mire should acknowledge. It is clear
from archeology that lead oxide and lead sulfite, all white compounds, were commonly used as
a base for cosmetics among ancient civilizations in the regions of the Mediterranean, Asia, and
Northern Africa (Goering, 2005). This raises the possibility that a desire for whiteness may be
culturally indigenous even to populations with generally dark skin. We can only speculate as to
the reasons for this desire, but the evidence from archeology informs us that the desire for whiter
skin has an ancient history, which perhaps provides further insight into why the discourse of
whiteness carries such strong effects.
 VIEWPOINT/POINTS DE VUE 295

Even though the desire for whiteness may have a long history, I join Mire in suspecting that the
recent impetus for this desire is strongly developed through colonialization. Hall (2006) argued
that the, “post-colonial root of African problems is directly related to skin color. Under the cloak
of personal preference, light skin among African women has replaced dark skin as the native
ideal” (p. 1). One consequence of this change is a desire for skin whitening creams across Africa,
a phenomenon called the bleaching syndrome (Hall; Pierre, 2008).
Regardless of the recent or past origins of this desire, Mire (2012) unpacks the present
curriculum of skin whitening creams by demonstrating that whiter skin is part of a discourse that
defines a normal, healthy person as youthful with whiter skin. It is the relations that enable this
discourse or, better, curriculum discourse (Blades, 1997) that she deconstructs, identifying from
a Foucauldian perspective the dynamics of these relations as power.
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THE POWER OF A FOUCAULDIAN APPROACH TO SOCIOSCIENTIFIC

ISSUES IN SCIENCE EDUCATION

Mire’s (2012) critique of the curriculum discourse of skin whitening creams demonstrates a new
and potentially very useful analytical method for investigating socioscientific issues in science
education. Her approach examines SSIs from the perspective of Foucault’s explication of power.
A Foucauldian approach to SSIs demands, however, special attention to Foucault’s unique use
of the word power. His notion of power is frequently misinterpreted along more neo-Marxist
lines as a commodity imposed or removed from populations; one “has” power or is “powerless.”
Foucault does not mean power in this more familiar way; instead, Foucault (1977) reinvents and
redefines power as “how things work at the level of on-going subjugation, at the level of those
continuous and uninterrupted processes which subject our bodies, govern our gestures, dictate
our behaviours, etc.” (p. 97). Power, according to Foucault, “circulates” in the social order, always
linked in effects to what makes the society function as it does. Consider, for example, wrinkles.
From a Foucauldian perspective, there is not an apparatus of power imposing a discourse of
youthfulness on a population in order to sell a product. Instead, the producers of anti-wrinkle
creams and the consumer are together engaged in discourses they inherit, promote, and reproduce
that position wrinkle-free skin as somehow desirable. This reveals two key elements of Foucault’s
(1977) analyses: power produces through what he calls a “régime of truth” (p. 131) and this
régime cannot be separated from knowledge—truth and knowledge thus are the same in their
productive functioning of relations and it is this set of dynamic relations that he calls power.
Mire (2012, p. 278) generally adopts a Foucauldian approach to power when she identifies
the adoption of skin whitening creams as enabled by a “truth” that skin should be white, which
in turn produces a normalizing ideal of white skin. However, when she calls the effects of
this normalizing a “regulatory strategy” of power she places too much consciousness in power.
Foucault (1977) asks us to consider normalizing an effect that regulates, in this case public
conceptions of what constitutes the ideal skin color. But from a Foucauldian perspective power
does not have “objectives” per se as she claims but instead operates through effects such as that
which passes for truth or knowledge in a discourse.
Even though Mire (2012) does not advance this possibility in her article, the analysis of
these effects represents a method for examining SSIs with students. Enabling students to see
new possibilities from existing cultural practices emerges from Foucault’s (1977) key argument
 296 BLADES

that power is not merely a repressive force but that it “traverses and produces things, it induces
pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse. It needs to be considered as a productive network
which runs through the whole social body” (p. 119). This in turn presents a series of questions
that deconstruct current social practices: What is produced as knowledge and truth? What induces
pleasure? Why is this interpreted as pleasure? Why are certain forms of knowledge privileged
over others? Analytical questions such as these invite a deeper question: What alternatives are
possible?
In her exploration of the curriculum discourse of skin whitening creams, Mire (2012) addresses
many of the questions arising from a Foucauldian analysis. The key strength of her article, although
not articulated, is the demonstration of the effectiveness of a Foucauldian approach in teasing
out power relations enabling SSIs. This in turn reveals opportunities for informed social action. I
will outline three questions of this approach with examples from Mire’s article. These questions
invite an examination of a particular curriculum discourse that could be a starting point for an
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examination of a particular SSI by teachers.

What Is Produced as Pleasure?

If power were only repressive, it could be identified easily and fought at points of application.
Foucault (1977) observed that power in most discourse practices is due, in part, to the production
of pleasure. This insight suggests that change is considerably more complex and difficult
because pleasure results in what Mire (2012, p. 277) calls “self-normalization” enabled through
“normalizing technologies,” such as cosmetics. Mire illustrates this well by offering for
examination the concept of “healthy” linked to pathologic views of aging to be fought using
every technology possible. The normalization of a discourse of anti-aging, Mire argues, is
legitimized by medicine that further entrenches a belief—a public truth—that aging is sickness
and not, for example, a normal part of living a life. In capitalist social practice, Mire suggests,
this normalization creates an anti-aging industry that becomes part of a nexus of interrelations,
a “biopower” determining our very thinking about aging.
What is produced in such a discourse is pleasure at looking young. Linking this to particular
cosmetics creates a strong incentive for capital expenditures. The person using a particular
cosmetic really believes that she or he is beautiful or embraces a promise of beauty that is “a
youthful appearance” when she purchases a particular cosmetic. This is evident in the advertising
of almost every skin cream.
The result, Mire claims, is “a global war on aging and the proliferation of skin whitening
biotechnologies which aim at transforming, intervening, and ameliorating visible signs of aging,”
such as wrinkles (p. 278). “In this way,” she continues, “skin whitening has both disciplinary and
regulatory effects” where these effects are part of a discourse that links beauty to youthfulness
(p. 278). It is unclear in her article how this discourse on health and beauty is necessarily related
to whiteness, however, except through an unproven implication that whiteness is also considered
more youthful. This seems doubtful with the popularity of tanning salons, so the mixing of
whiteness with public truth of beauty-as-youthfulness needs further exploration; I suspect that
other effects influence cultural preferences for whiter skin.
Mire could also point out that what passes as beauty is part of an induction to pleasure
arising from a desire to be younger looking. Thus, any cosmetics technology—from botox to skin
whitening creams—that delivers what the person believes to be a younger-looking skin induces
 VIEWPOINT/POINTS DE VUE 297

pleasure in the promise that now the person is somehow more beautiful, sexually attractive,
and healthy. This is possible because the very definition socially of sexy or healthy is linked to
appearance and this is defined a priori as youthfulness. The reality that the products themselves
may actually hasten the demise of the skin’s health or shorten the person’s life illustrates the
effectiveness of the discourse in defining practice: People will use even dangerous products to
change their appearance. It is this aggressive self-normalization through desire that Foucault calls
power.
Mire’s critique of the investment of the cosmetics industry in this discourse practice misses key
points in Foucault’s analysis of power. With the example of “delivery systems” Mire attempts to
illustrate how the cosmetics industry advances its position, as if somehow this industry imposes
a discourse of beauty and health on the public. But this discourse does not come from outside the
public, it is the public—it is part of who we are, it is our genuine desire; we want to be beautiful
and this means, for us, no gray hair, no loss of hair, and smooth skin. From a Foucauldian
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perspective, individuals are not “the vis-à-vis of power” (Foucault, 1977, p. 98) but the effects of
power; in the same way, industry is part of the effects of power, not the source.

What Counts as Knowledge and Truth?

Every discourse practice depends on knowledge to enable and legitimate practice. Mire (2012)
provides an excellent example of how science and medicine are used to support the production
of cosmetics and, in particular, skin whitening creams. She calls this linking of consumerism to
science “scientification” where science is positioned as some form of superior knowledge about
reality and then used in the production of knowledge; in this case, that skin whitening creams are
subjected to university-based research and scrutiny. The result is university science as assurance
that the claims of particular products are truly valid.
There is some justification for suspicion toward claims made by scientists in direct employment
of particular industries. Mire illustrates well in her article how industry increasingly deals with
this suspicion by using the work of scientists at universities as somehow less likely to be biased
in their scientific work. The assumption of knowledge is that there is something more “pure”
about university science research. It is easy to see how this strategy can be effective. Imagine
two scientists making claims about a skin whitening product, one by the company producing the
product and another by a university scientist: which claim has more validity?
I suspect that most of us would lean toward the university scientists, privileging those claims
as less likely to be influenced by industry and thus more authentic or valid. However, Mire
outlines very well that in a time of decreased funding the separation of universities and industry
is blurred as universities increasingly seek outside funding to finance research and even general
operations. In an address to the Canadian Association of University Teachers, Jennings (2011),
General Secretary of Irish Federation of University Teachers, observed that “Academics in cash-
starved Colleges are being encouraged more and more to embrace fields of study and areas for
research, not for their intrinsic value but rather on the basis of what will attract more private and
corporate funding sponsorship” (p. 4). The pressure of increased entrepreneurship is partially
due to globalization (Stromquist, 2002) forming part of the curriculum discourse legitimizing the
production of skin whitening creams. Though there may be no particular organized conspiracy
to coopt universities in this manner, neither does industry neglect the opportunity to embrace
a strategy that legitimizes their product in the face of global market competition. The fact that
 298 BLADES

this is a strategy reveals that university-generated science knowledge seems to carry significantly
more weight than other forms of knowledge. Not only are we more likely to believe the claim
if made by someone in a lab coat but even more so if they work at a (preferably) famous
university. This influence is an example of what Foucault (1977) means by power. He invites us
to consider how and why certain forms of knowledge have more influence than other forms of
knowledge.
One “procedure of power” (Blades, 1997, p. 113) revealed by Mire is the effect of redefining
words. Mire provides wonderful examples in her article of how the cosmetic industry avoids
regulation by labeling their products as cosmetics when, given the pharmacology of the products,
they really are pharmaceutical agents. Such agents are more strictly supervised as “drugs” by
most nations, but cosmetics for the most part are not subject to such strict supervision. She cites
this as evidence of the “integration between the pharmaceutical, cosmetics, and biotechnology
industries,” but her example demonstrates well how what passes as “true” in a discourse is not
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necessarily true but functions as if it were true (p. 279).

Such manipulations of words abound, and these become excellent starting points for an
examination of a socioscientific issue. For example, how does changing the description of the “Tar
Sands” oil reserves in Northern Alberta to “Oil Sands” shift or change the discourse surrounding
the extraction of oil from this area of Canada? What led to classifying salmon raised in ocean
pens as “wild”? And, as Mire points out, how does calling a cosmetic that is really a drug a
“beauty food” affect discussions about the safety of this product?

What Is Produced That Continues the Discourse?

From a Foucauldian perspective, curriculum discourses are dynamic, shifting with each devel-
opment in ways that enable the discourse to continue. In her article, Mire (2012) alerts us to the
emergence of a “new class of academic researchers” who marry entrepreneurship with knowledge
production: scientific officers (p. 280). This is the logical development in a discourse of limited
resources for universities with industry seeking legitimation by university researchers. The result
is the production of many “spin-off” private companies associated with universities and often
dependent on them for researchers and facilities and, in the case of the cosmetics industry, a
useful association for validating knowledge about their products.
Mire’s indictment of this development seems overstated. She claims that these “academic
entrepreneurs” transform public support into private wealth but that most Canadian universities
typically hold the patents on all inventions of their employees with financial benefits shared
between corporate sponsors and the university. Her claim that somehow these entrepreneurs have
more ability to publish their research due to these associations and thus advance their careers
needs more substantiation but seems unlikely given the usual standards of academic review,
although she advances a key point that through sponsorship a researcher could have indirect
benefits due to inequality in access to equipment and support personnel.
Mire does not deny the value of scientific research and innovation with economic developments
or the potential benefits of association with industry. Indeed, universities have a long association
with private industry, particularly in sciences. Mire correctly locates her concern in partnerships
with little proven social benefit or, worse, the potential to harm. Her analysis thus raises a
question important in the analysis of SSIs: What is the social responsibility of those in places
where knowledge is privileged? This question suggests that scientists at university not only have
 VIEWPOINT/POINTS DE VUE 299

some responsibility vis-à-vis their location but that they can exercise this responsibility. But Mire
questions this freedom. In her article, she draws on Hacking’s work, noting that industry funding
of university research also means that industry has a say in what questions are pursued by re-
searchers, the ability of the researchers to share knowledge with the general public, and even who
is hired to conduct the research. This delimitation, should it manifest, is an example of how knowl-
edge is produced in a discourse practice and what counts as knowledge and what is ignored or
marginalized.

SOCIOSCIENTIFIC ISSUES, SCIENCE EDUCATION, AND THE

POSSIBILITY OF CHANGE
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Mire’s (2012) article provides an overview of the development of skin whitening products as an
example of the relentless corporatization of knowledge. She devotes little space in her article
to the implications of this example for science education except to suggest that the SSI of skin
whitening is an excellent example for students in upper levels of high school or university to
“reflect on the implications” of skin whitening technology and the changing values that guide the
production of scientific knowledge (p. 284).
Though not explicit in her article, Mire (2012) nevertheless demonstrates by example a new and
important approach to examining SSIs in science education through the use of a poststructural,
Foucauldian analysis. The three questions posed earlier provide a starting point for such an
analysis that could begin as early as middle years science education in the form of critical case
studies of SSIs. There are two key reasons to approach SSIs from the perspective of power:
First, as Mire points out strongly, the discourses we live in are not benign. The architecture of
these discourses employs concept strategies that often favor one group over another; for example,
positioning youth as an example of beauty instead of an equally possible example of the aged.
Second, the discourses informing our lives operate as “givens” that define how we think and live. A
large example is the organization of children in schools by age; a more day-to-day example might
be the very idea of lunch. This does not mean that givens are necessarily repressive—Foucault’s
(1977) point is that most givens in fact induce pleasure—but collectively these assumptions
guiding our everyday lives and interactions define who we are and what we will do. Challenging
the givens is thus fundamentally very difficult because it involves learning to examine that which,
for the most part, goes unexamined. Foucault (1984) calls this the real political task in a society
to

Criticize the working of institutions which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticize
them in such a manner that the political violence which has always been exercised itself obscurely
through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight them. (p. 6)

This is precisely what Mire accomplishes in her article, a demasking of the discourse practice
of skin whitening creams. The example illustrates the value in asking questions about why such
practices exist, what counts as true in this practice, and how the practice is able to continue. This
critical examination is the heart of critical thinking, and enabling the capacity to challenge the
givens we inherit and promote is essential if we are to realize possibilities for changing those
discourses that are particularly violent.
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School science is the ideal location to encourage the development of habits of critique by
deconstructing the discourses that enable the SSI. Once articulated, students can study ways to
shift the discourse from violence. A Foucauldian approach encourages students to examine the
role of science in the production and efficacy of curriculum discourses. This activity encourages
students to discern the difference between claims made by science and the scientification of
claims made by industry. Scientification depends on portrayals of science as the singular access
to truth about how the world “really is,” a positioning of the authority of science as somehow
privileged access to absolute truth that typified the view of science presented in schools (Blades,
2001). Scientification would not be possible without school-supported scientism. Exploring SSIs
in school science thus presents a valuable opportunity to help students develop a more authentic,
if more complex, view of science as contingent, evolving, and open to change. This in turn
introduces doubt and critical thinking in science education, which directly challenge the scientism
that enables scientification in a discourse.
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A key goal of SSIs is to consider such ethical and moral issues embedded in socioscientific
issues (Sadler & Zeidler, 2005). These issues are revealed well through a Foucauldian analysis,
but a science education that deconstructs SSIs is incomplete. Essential to SSIs, Hodson (2010)
argued, is a call to political action, a combination of science literacy with what he calls “political
literacy” (p. 202). This political literacy includes “knowledge of how to engage in collective
action with individuals who have different competencies, backgrounds and attitudes but share
a common interest in a particular SSI” (p. 202). His paper reminds us that the goal of science
education is first to enable students to be engaged, active citizens and that this goal is “increased
substantially by encouraging them to take action now (in school) and by providing opportunities
for them to do so and by giving examples of successful actions and interventions engaged in and
by others” (p. 202, italics in original).
The habit of civic engagement and the experience of shifting policies of universities, corpo-
rations, and other public sites could begin in secondary schools, if not much earlier. We live
with(in) the discourses we inherited and contribute to their continuation, but this does not mean
that we are trapped in power. Foucault (1988) believed in the value of critique that begins with
showing that “things are not as self-evident as one believed” (p. 155). Mire’s (2012) article is an
example of such critique. Her Foucauldian approach illustrates how SSIs can reveal the power
of the curriculum discourse of any technological innovation. But this critique is only the starting
point of a science education invested in action. Science education could also be the hopeful
realization of societal change for, as Foucault pointed out, “as soon as one can no longer think
things as one formerly thought them, transformation becomes both very urgent, very difficult and
quite possible” (p. 155).

NOTE

1. Michel Foucault (1926–1984) is an influential 20th century philosopher who held a chair
at the Collège de France in Paris before his sudden and untimely death. For an overview
of his unique view of power, see Foucault (1977, pp. 78–133). For the implications of
Foucault’s thoughts on curriculum change in science education, see Blades (1997).
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