Content uploaded by Mitchell Dean
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Mitchell Dean on Sep 14, 2015
Content may be subject to copyright.
Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society
... (MSAR Government, 2005, p. 9) This coupling of patriotism and development is aligned with China's national circumstances, where political loyalty is combined with the need for development of the country to create a distinct form of governmentality (Palmer & Winiger, 2019). Thus, emphasising the importance of patriotism to development becomes a means of connecting the sovereign will and individual behaviour in the context of China (Dean, 2010). ...
This paper explores the governmentality in Macao's higher education (HE) by exemplifying how neoliberalism and Chinese nationalism simultaneously inform the governmental rationalities and technologies in the city. Like many other systems, neoliberalism has substantially shaped Macao's HE. However, owing to post-colonial identity, Chinese nationalism has become a significant driving force in the development of Macao's HE after the handover. On the basis of governmentality and a qualitative single case approach, this paper demonstrates how the neoliberal logic and nationalist discourses frame the governmentality in post-colonial Macao's HE. The paper further argues that the recent development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area signifies an intensification of national integration that is deliberately associated with a wave of marketisation in HE. These developments represent the economic and political imperatives of Macao's HE policy and provide insights into Chineseness in HE within the contemporary political context.
... Defined as the "conduct of conduct" (Foucault, 2000), government implies any attempt to shape aspects of people's behaviour through calculated means (Li, 2007). Rationality in this context connotes an attempt to bring any form of new thinking to the calculation about how to govern (Dean, 2009). The governmentality concept implies strategies that offer solutions to specific problems and have the capacity to prioritize and leverage specific types of individuals in a population for intervention (McKinlay & Pezet, 2018). ...
... This coupling of patriotism and development is aligned with China's national circumstances, where political loyalty is combined with the need for development of the country to create a distinct form of governmentality (Palmer & Winiger, 2019). Thus, emphasising the importance of patriotism to development becomes a means of connecting the sovereign will and individual behaviour in the context of China (Dean, 2010). ...
This paper explores the governmentality in Macao’s higher education (HE) by exemplifying how neoliberalism and Chinese nationalism simultaneously inform the governmental rationalities and technologies in the city. Like many other systems, neoliberalism has substantially shaped Macao’s HE. However, owing to post-colonial identity, Chinese nationalism has become a significant driving force in the development of Macao’s HE after the handover. On the basis of governmentality and a qualitative single case approach, this paper demonstrates how the neoliberal logic and nationalist discourses frame the governmentality in post-colonial Macao’s HE. The paper further argues that the recent development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area signifies an intensification of national integration that is deliberately associated with a wave of marketisation in HE. These developments represent the economic and political imperatives of Macao’s HE policy and provide insights into Chineseness in HE within the contemporary political context.
Using the frameworks of biopower and uses and gratifications theory, this article examines the treatment of pets in China during the Covid-19 outbreak and the role of social media in fulfilling users' social needs by facilitating discussions on associated animal welfare issues and mobilizing animal advocates to take action. The analysis focuses on how social media comments on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, have influenced public discourse surrounding the biopolitical governance of animals emphasized by the zero-Covid-19 political strategy, which has helped maintain a strong sense of national consciousness in post-socialist China. The study centers on one isolated case of the Covid-19 corgi killing by a health worker in Shanghai and how it was perceived on social media. The findings suggest that much of the animosity demonstrated on Weibo towards the corgi killing is centered around biopower, or the biopolitical governance of humans and animals that has more broadly prioritized human life over animal welfare in China's approach to Covid-19. In this way, social media has played a crucial role in mobilizing animal advocates to take a more prominent role in the emergency management of pets. The study concludes that China should consider adopting a standard operating procedure (SOP) for pet care and rescue that includes pets in its humans-first disaster response and relief measures to develop a better and healthier national consciousness, fulfill the social needs of its citizens who value animal welfare, and strengthen its sense of national consciousness.
Desde un enfoque de metainvestigación, el artículo presenta resultados de una indagación en torno a la producción académica sobre políticas de inclusión educativa para el nivel secundario en Argentina en el período 2003-2021. El corpus de estudio está compuesto por 39 artículos publicados en revistas científicas por autores basados en instituciones argentinas. El análisis se concentra en los enfoques teórico-metodológicos y en los ámbitos de producción de conocimiento. En segundo lugar, se realiza una aproximación al abordaje de la dimensión supranacional de la agenda política, entendiendo que el "problema" de la inclusión educativa forma parte de una agenda global de reforma educativa. Nuestro principal objetivo es contribuir a la comprensión del funcionamiento del campo de investigación en política educativa en la Argentina-en tanto campo científico con características propias-desde la reflexión epistemológica.
In Foucault’s narrative, neoliberalism is a rationale to delimit government power through certain actions called governmentalisation. This does not mean that individuals are exposed to a despotic state, but a government that warrants laissez-faire and controls through liberty. Central to this act of government is the market in which individuals can freely transact, provided that their conducts comply with the determined disciplines. Governmentality highlights that competition in the market preserves and protects individuals’ interests. However, governmentalisation in developing countries is encapsulated in the concept of good governance. In this case, these governments are encouraged to privatise state-owned enterprises to guarantee a free market while casting off ambitious welfare projects. Iran’s government implemented pseudo neoliberal policies to purportedly unlock the market, while the government is disinclined to lose its authority. This article considers Foucault’s view on governmentality to indicate how Iran’s government governmentalised the market and used competition law to maintain market power. It is argued that Iran’s act of government was a failed project in terms of providing individuals’ freedom while it strengthened well-connected firms.
Este artículo presenta una breve caracterización del enfoque de problematización de políticas y se concentra en su aplicación al campo de la política educativa. Dentro de este enfoque, se considera particularmente el procedimiento metodológico “What’s the problem represented to be?” (WPR), desarrollado por Carol Bacchi. El trabajo incluye la discusión de un conjunto de veinte publicaciones que dan cuenta de la aplicación del enfoque de problematización al estudio de políticas educativas. Finaliza con algunas consideraciones sobre los alcances y potencialidades de este enfoque para el campo de investigación en política educativa, con énfasis en la región latinoamericana.
This article explores the question of what constitutes the “social” in (social) sustainability. It applies a governmentality perspective and focuses especially on how social sustainability is understood in relation to the concepts of society and community. Furthermore, it investigates what social sustainability means, or could mean, in the specific context of water governance in South Africa – one of the most unequal countries in the world. This case study is based on original fieldwork in the country, conducted between 2017 and 2018. The theoretical exploration, together with the empirical study, demonstrate that there are two interrelated tensions between understandings of social sustainability, between approaches that place society/social cohesion in focus and those that emphasise community and between approaches that focus on basic needs and those that emphasise equal access. At stake here, between these different understandings, is the role of equity and to what extent social sustainability takes into account the situation of individuals and groups in relation to one another. Ultimately, the article raises the question of the (South African) elephant in the room: to what extent can large inequities between individuals and groups be accepted in a society considered to be (socially) sustainable?
This dissertation comprises a multilayered inquiry into the complex interplay between governance and teacher education. It adopts Goodlad’s (1990/1994) stance that teacher education best serves democratic society when it is self-governing and maintains decision-making authority with respect to the preparation of teachers. However, pervasive and prescriptive state and federal policies create a regulatory context that supplants the ability of teacher educators to exercise authority over fundamental aspects of their work, including the identification, recruitment, preparation, and assessment of future teachers.
Bacchi and Goodwin (2016) argue that prevailing educational policy critiques underexamine governmentalities—mindsets that render individuals and societies governable (Foucault, 2007). Governmentalities facilitate control by constructing “normal,” “logical,” “necessary,” and “inevitable” answers to questions about “how to govern oneself, how to be governed, by whom should [one] accept to be governed, how to be the best possible governor?” (Foucault, 2007, p. 88). From this perspective, policy critiques that fail to notice and resist governmentalities insufficiently defend professional autonomy; they instead tacitly (re)negotiate conditions under which a profession will accept subjugation.
This study traces deprofessionalizing policy discourses within state-issued, public documents related to 2015 amendments to New Jersey’s teacher licensure law (NJAC 6A:9). It is a poststructural policy critique that seeks to resist governance by disputing the inevitability, necessity, and logic of policy problematizations. Like previous “WPR” studies (Bacchi & Goodwin, 2016), this one unpacks What Problems are Represented to be within a focal policy and prioritizes elicitation of questioning by the reader over reporting of researcher findings. This dissertation, however, extends the methodology as proposed, attempting also to embody exploration of the structures that comprise how answers are represented within dissertations. Specifically, it employs “experimental” (Richardson, 1997), “ergodic” (Aarseth, 1997), and “deconstructed” (Derrida, 1980) approaches to text that call attention to the pervasive, yet typically unquestioned, structures of academic writing.
Together, the critical policy analysis and the atypical format in which it is presented seek to raise critical awareness of governmentalities that support externallyimposed structures that erode the autonomy of teacher education, as well as self-imposed structures teacher educators enact themselves, inadvertently participating in the of confining their understandings of what can and must be.
The events of 9/11 appeared to make good on Ulrich Beck's claim that we are now living in a (global) risk society. Examining what it means to ‘govern through risk’, this article departs from Beck's thesis of risk society and its appropriation in security studies. Arguing that the risk society thesis problematically views risk within a macro-sociological narrative of modernity, this article shows, based on a Foucauldian account of governmentality, that governing terrorism through risk involves a permanent adjustment of traditional forms of risk management in light of the double infinity of catastrophic consequences and the incalculability of the risk of terrorism. Deploying the Foucauldian notion of ‘dispositif’, this article explores precautionary risk and risk analysis as conceptual tools that can shed light on the heterogeneous practices that are defined as the ‘war on terror’.
The concept of an emergent global civil society (GCS), an identifiable public sphere of voluntary association distinct from the architecture of states and markets, has become voguish in some approaches to international relations and international political economy, and in the practices of global governance. This article seeks to reveal the limitations of the prevailing commonsense framing of GCS. Challenging the idea that we can isolate an unambiguous GCS sphere, we focus instead on the particular uses of GCS – on the practices that are shaped in its name. We make a number of interventions to emphasise the conceptual and political ambiguity of GCS. First, we shift the emphasis from GCS as a bounded ‘non-governmental’; space to GCS as precisely a means of making global politics governable in particular ways. Second, we question the assumption of GCS as ‘voluntary association’, asking what it means for GCS to embody or represent the interests of social groups. Finally, we raise questions of the image of empowerment through GCS, highlighting the power relations, tensions and contradictions at the heart of a transformative politics.
Recent legal movies - stemming from the Gillick decision and incorporated into the Children Act 1989 - appear to champion the right of the mature child to autonomy. This article argues that these have been contradictory manoeuvres, both at the level of statute and in practice. Although (some) children's wishes are being listened to, the shift toward giving children independence in decision making about their lives has not been straigtforward. However, these contradictions can be understood as consistent with a contemporary mode of governmentality that treats members of a family as individuals but also befriends ‘the family’ as a unit. Responding to the problems encountered by welfarism, ‘neo-liberalism’ offers increased distanciation between ‘the State’ and ‘the family’. At the same time, the family is problematized as a political site, and those subordinated by classical liberalism are offered routes by which to challenge the arbitrariness of familial power.
Many scholars, policy-makers and especially activists have begun to use the term 'global civil society', but despite the great significance that is now attributed to this concept by policy-makers and practitioners alike, it remains highly contested and under-researched. The Global Civil Society Yearbook is envisaged as a landmark publication, which will discuss and clarify the concept of a 'global civil society'. The Yearbook will contribute to the debate about what global civil society is, map and measure it, and examine each year how it is doing. The conceptual chapters, comprehensive case studies and comparative empirical data make this an essential volume for researchers in a number of disciplines, including economics, political science, anthropology and sociology, international law and international relations. Beyond its academic value and impact, however, the Yearbook aspires to make a contribution to global civil society itself. It can give a voice to civil society in the process of globalisation, helping to humanise and democratise this process. It can be a tool for participants in global civil society by shedding light on their strengths and weaknesses, and an aid in agenda-setting. Global Civil Society 2001 provides a genealogy of the concept of civil society, an overview of the growth of global civil society since 1989, and an analysis of current trends. It discusses global civil society activism around biotechnology, global finance and debt, and humanitarian intervention.Further chapters are devoted to the resourcing of global civil society, the relationship between global civil society and information and communications technology, and the phenomenon of parallel NGO forums to international summits. The closing section contains a data profile, a 'global civil society index', a discussion of the 'legal year', and a chronology of events.
