Governmentality

Governmentality and Youth Volunteering Policy

by Jon Dean

Presented at the Voluntary Action History Society 2010.

Young people are increasingly encouraged to volunteer, perhaps as a panacea to combat personal and social problems... more Young people are increasingly encouraged to volunteer, perhaps as a panacea to combat personal and social problems (Sheard, 1995). This paper will explore why volunteering policy has developed this instrumental tendency in recent history. It will analyse Michel Foucault’s theories of governmentality, and use these as a frame to consider the advances made in youth policy over the last half century, but with particular regard to volunteering policy in the last 15 years. Using governmentality as a tool of analysis, it will argue that volunteering policy has become a device to responsibilize younger generations; a method to improve the authority of the young over their own lives and their local areas, whilst moulding behaviour which brings about individual and collective wellbeing. It is also argued that this follows a natural progression of youth policies to tackle the ‘problem of youth’.

From Rags to Riches, the Policing of Fashion and Identity: Governmentality and What Not To Wear

by Jessica Taylor

Co-authored with Sheri Gibbings. Published in vis-à-vis: Explorations in Anthropology. Vol 10, No 1, 2010.

Even the most casual perusal of television over the past ten years should reveal an increasing number of... more Even the most casual perusal of television over the past ten years should reveal an increasing number of self-improvement reality shows. This paper explores the Learning Channel (TLC) television show What Not to Wear (WNTW), which provides fashion advice to deviant dressers. We use Foucault's concept of governmentality to understand how WNTW engages women in their own projects of self-improvement in ways that are simultaneously disciplining and pleasing. Women who participate in the show are taught by the hosts, Stacy and Clinton, how to view themselves through the gaze of an imagined middle-class public. We suggest that WNTW tells us that outward appearances are the privileged site from which identities and self can be read. Even though the goal of the show is not to change identities, many of the women claim to experience a radical transformation. These transformations are often in the direction of a new professional and feminine identity, one maintained within the structure of the show by the continuing possibility and internalization of surveillance.

L'Hyperpolitique Du «Plus Jamais ça!»: Demandeurs D'Asile Soudanais, Turbulence Gouvernementale Et Politiques De Contrôle Des Réfugiés En Israël

by Sarah Willen

Willen, Sarah S. 2008. “L’hyperpolitique du 'Plus jamais ça!': demandeurs d'asile soudanais, turbulence gouvernementale et politiques de contrôle des réfugiés en Israël.” Cultures et Conflits: Sociologie Politique de l'International 71(3): 93-112.

'Empresarios de nosotros mismos' Biopolítica, mercado y soberanía en la gubernamentalidad neoliberal

by Francisco Vazquez Garcia

El espacio público como ideología

by Daniel Malet Calvo

Co-autored with Manuel Delgado

Jornadas “Marx en el siglo XXI. Pensar la realidad, activar la teoría” Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad de La Rioja Jornadas “Marx en el siglo XXI. Pensar la realidad, activar la teoría” Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad de La Rioja

Call for papers: FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY AND CUTBACK MANAGEMENT: GLOBAL ISSUES FOR PUBLIC ORGANISATIONS

by Denita Cepiku

Papers are encouraged on long term financial sustainability and cutback management as emerging critical issues faced... more Papers are encouraged on long term financial sustainability and cutback management as emerging critical issues faced by Public Sector Organisations. Serious questions surround the ongoing viability of States, Universities and Local Governments both in terms of financial sustainability, financial as well non-financial performance.
Papers will be selected for publication in one Special Issue of Public Money & Management. The goal of the conference and special issues is to advance the knowledge on a world-wide phenomenon to all public organisations’ stakeholders (academic researchers, practitioners, state and local government organizations, international organisations - such as EC, IMF, WB and OECD - and rating agencies, media and the public, among others) due to its significant implications on the political, social, and economics state of affairs.

Deadline for submission of papers for the Euram Mini-Conference: October 1, 2012

An Empire of Good Intentions? Liberalism and the Justification of Britain's Empire in India, c.1820-1905

by Michael Chiarello

Final Paper for Seminar in European History: European Colonial Cultures

"L'incertitude comme menace"

by Claude-Olivier Doron

Draft to be published in Deprins, D. (ed.), Parier sur l'incertitude, Bruxelles, Bruylant, 2012

Through an analysis focusing on penal policies and how they deal with "uncertainty", this article wants to... more Through an analysis focusing on penal policies and how they deal with "uncertainty", this article wants to distinguish between different ways of perceiving and governing uncertainty, what we call different "rationalities" dealing with uncertainty.

« La régulation comme technique de gouvernement des conduites. Principes et paradoxes. »

by Claude-Olivier Doron

From  the workshop  « La régulation entre sciences de la vie et sciences du gouvernement », REHSEIS, Paris, 25 janvier 2008, dir. Emmanuel D’Hombres/ Claude-Olivier Doron, mai 2008, in Araben, revue en ligne

Analítica de lo moderno: Una introducción

by Jonathan Xavier Inda

Spanish language translation of the introduction to Anthropologies of Modernity: Foucault, Governmentality, and Life Politics (Wiley-Blackwell, 2005).

From Population to Citizen: The Subjects of the 1939 Aboriginal New Deal in Australia’s Northern Territory

by Ben Silverstein

Kontur, 2011, no 21, pp 17–33

In 1939, the Commonwealth of Australia formulated a new policy for ‘native administration’ which mapped a transition... more In 1939, the Commonwealth of Australia formulated a new policy for ‘native administration’ which mapped a transition from ‘native tribes’ to ‘citizens’, staging a modernising Australia. In this article, I discuss the various processes of subjectivation at each point on the ‘long march’ of colonial ‘progress’ or settler colonial elimination. Writing a history of these linked colonial governmentalities casts light on practices of recognition, difference, and the self in the modern world.

La ciudad etiquetada. Los casos de La Laguna y Santa Cruz de Tenerife

by Nestor Garcia Lazaro

Néstor García Lázaro: "La ciudad etiquetada. Los casos de La Laguna y Santa Cruz de Tenerife", en Actas de las IV Jornadas Prebendado Pacheco de Investigación Histórica, Tegueste (Tenerife), 2011, pp. 281–308.

Governing through the family: Struggles over US Noncitizen Family Detention Policy

by Lauren Martin

This paper offers a conceptual framework in which ‘the family’ is situated as an object of governmental intervention,... more This paper offers a conceptual framework in which ‘the family’ is situated as an object of governmental intervention, on the one hand, and a site of discursive proliferation, on the other hand. Reading across the works of Michel Foucault and Jacques Donzelot, I argue that the family served an important, but often overlooked, role in Foucauldian conceptualizations of sovereign, disciplinary, and biopolitical modalities of power. In particular, the elaboration of disciplinary institutions and biopolitical governance converged in the family household; as a central point in these governmental strategies, the family’s relationship to sexuality, child-rearing, and kinship provoked anxieties over race, nation building, sexuality, and gender. After reviewing how these concerns overlapped in US immigration policies, I analyze the debates concerning noncitizen family detention policy in the United States. I show how a series of proposals for family detention and release congealed around competing discourses of childhood innocence and criminality, prison and home, and parental authority and security. On the basis of this analysis, I argue that state and nonstate actors produce multiple normative family subjects through strategic spatializations of state and familial power.

Sustainable Development and Governmentality: Marginalization, Voiclessness and Dependency

by David Fischer

Published on the website of the Aberystwyth University Environmental Politics Research Group

This paper treats sustainable development as a discourse and provides a critique of it using Foucault’s notions of... more This paper treats sustainable development as a discourse and provides a critique of it using Foucault’s notions of 'governmentality’ and ‘conduct of conduct’. It argues that the discourse of sustainable development creates an advanced liberal governmentality that empowers affluent nation-states, international organisations, corporations and Western scientists as new authoritative actors in the discourse. On the other hand, developing countries, the global poor and NGOs are being subjectified and co-opted in order to create governable subjects,
whose freedom of environmental and economic action can be restricted to fundamentally neoliberal policies, resulting in a new voicelessness and dependency especially for developing countries and the global poor.

Special Issue: Civil society and intervention in Africa (Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding)

by Carl Death

Published in Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 2012, 6(1)

Clive Gabay and Carl Death, 'Building states and civil societies in Africa: Liberal interventions and global... more Clive Gabay and Carl Death, 'Building states and civil societies in Africa: Liberal interventions and global governmentality'

David Williams and Tom Young, ‘Civil Society and the Liberal Project in Ghana and Sierra Leone’

Branwen Gruffydd Jones, ‘Civilising African cities: International housing and urban policy from colonial to neoliberal times’

Jan Bachmann, ‘Governmentality and Counterterrorism: Appropriating international security projects in Kenya’

Jana Honke, ‘Multinationals and security governance in the community: Participation, discipline and indirect rule'

Marta Iniguez de Heredia, ‘Escaping statebuilding: Resistance and civil society in the Democratic Republic of the Congo'

Morten Bøås, ‘Autochthony and citizenship: "Civil society" as vernacular architecture?'

Welfare and Foreign Aid Practices in the Contemporary United States: a Governmental Study

by Philippe Fournier

Published in 'Foucault Studies', 2011.

This article aims to expose the main governmental shifts in recent American history (1961-2000) by examining two... more This article aims to expose the main governmental shifts in recent American history (1961-2000) by examining two programs: the Assistance to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and the Agency for International development (US-AID). Through the exploration of primary and secondary sources, we analyse the production, organisation and circulation of governmental practices in the realms of both domestic and foreign policy. In the American context, practices of government typically revolve around freedom, efficiency models and individual responsibility. Throughout the analysis, we find that the general critiques which have guided reforms and experiments in both areas converge around the same elements. This testifies to the fact that the reflexions and technical models directed at the optimal management of populations are more far-reaching than they first appear. Moreover, the historical transformations in welfare and foreign aid practices bear out the increasingly disciplinary nature of the administration and objectification of the poor, both within the United States and internationally.

Governmentality, Bio-Power and the Emergence of the Malayan-Tamil Subject on the Plantations of Colonial Malaya

by Richard Baxstrom

Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies. DeKalb:
Northern Illinois University. Vol. 14, No. 2. 2000.

With an eye to the importance of ethnicity in the development of modern day Malaysia, this article explores the... more With an eye to the importance of ethnicity in the development of modern day Malaysia, this article explores the historical phenomenon of Tamil labor recruitment and migration to British Malayan rubber plantations between the years 1890 and 1920. During this period, Tamil kangany labor recruiters helped transform South Indian peasants into disciplined plantation workers, serving as catalysts for a process through which Tamil immigrants were remade as human subjects in the new plantation sphere and within the British colonial empire generally. The analytic framework deployed here is Foucauldian, with specific attention paid to how Foucault's concepts of Governmentality and Bio-power can be utilized in colonial studies.

The problem of slums: shifting methods of neoliberal urban government in Morocco

by Koen Bogaert

published in Development and Change (2011), 42(3), 709-731.

This article puts forward two main arguments. First, it highlights the relation between different phases of... more This article puts forward two main arguments. First, it highlights the relation between different phases of neoliberalism in Morocco together with the specific methods and techniques of urban government that were deployed in efforts to govern the slums and their populations. A period of roll back neoliberalism during the 1980s generated reforms that tried to increase government control over the urban territory to compensate for the negative social outcomes of structural adjustment. The subsequent period of roll out neoliberalism coincided with the attempt to manage and regulate the slum population as such, through new modalities of state intervention. Secondly, while evolutions in neoliberal government reflected a gradual process, this transition in Morocco was accelerated by security concerns following two severe moments of urban violence: the 1981 riots and the 2003 suicide bombings in Casablanca. Therefore, Morocco’s recent political transformations cannot be understood in terms provided by the mainstream narrative linking economic liberalization to democratization. Rather, it reflects a profound shift towards intrinsically authoritarian modalities of neoliberal government which are clearly revealed at the urban scale.

Social Housing Renewal and the Private Sector: Tenant participation as an invited space

by Dallas Rogers

5th Australasian Housing Researchers’ Conference
17-­19th November 2010,
University of Auckland, New Zealand

This paper argues that place-based participation strategies, deployed by housing authorities as components of public... more This paper argues that place-based participation strategies, deployed by housing authorities as components of public housing estate redevelopment projects, are increasingly positioned within market-centric, technocratic and neo-communitarian (deFilippis, 2007) understandings of urban governance. This neoliberal understanding creates certain ‘conditions of possibility’ (Foucault,1969) that shape and constrain the participation and consultation strategies deployed by housing authorities. These place-based participation strategies render invisible the ideological effects of neoliberalism, the market and the workings of capital by seeking to build a ‘consensus seeking community’ based on a functionalist approach to community building. To better understand these participation strategies a spatio-temporal research tool is put forward drawing on Cornwall’s (2004) spatial metaphor of invited space. The research tool is deployed in this paper to investigate a public housing estate redevelopment project by public-private partnership in southwest Sydney. It calls into question participation strategies that consult public housing tenants within, and not about, place-based neoliberal redevelopment projects, suggesting this focus leaves aside broader questions of markets, capital and politics (deFilippis et al., 2006). The paper concludes by arguing if neoliberalism and market logic are going to continue to inform urban governance and policy, then public housing tenants should also have the opportunity to question and inform the ideological underpinnings of this urban logic (Shragge, 2003).

Language and Superdiversity (Blommaert & Rampton 2012)

by Jan Blommaert