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Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society
... makt och styrning (Dean 2010:24-28). Det handlar om att synliggöra hur verkligheten görs styrbar och hur styrningen legitimeras och begripliggörs genom olika rationaliteter som ofta är nära sammankopplade med specifika tekniker för styrning (Dean 2010). Att identifiera rationaliteter syftar till att urskilja de underliggande logikerna bakom ofta förgivettagna sätt att förstå och adressera politiska problem. ...
... Att identifiera rationaliteter syftar till att urskilja de underliggande logikerna bakom ofta förgivettagna sätt att förstå och adressera politiska problem. Det handlar om att undersöka hur "sanningar" formas, upprätthålls och legitimeras i det konkreta "görandet" av politik (Li 2007;Miller & Rose 2008;Dean 2010). Det bör dock betonas att rationaliteter här inte syftar på intentioner. ...
... Governmentality har framförallt blivit ett etablerat sätt att analysera nyliberala former av styrning. Nyliberala styrningsmentaliteter kännetecknas av tekniker som strävar efter att styra genom att mäta, övervaka och utvärdera, samt av praktiker som syftar till att skapa självreglerande, entreprenöriella subjekt som styr sig själva på rätt sätt och görs ansvariga för sin egen välfärd (Larner 2000;Dean 2010;Calkin 2015). Sådana styrningsformer har under de senaste årtiondena varit dominerande i många länder samt inom global styrning. ...
... " [W]hile the concept of climate governance has had a tendency to assume order, agency and purpose" (Stripple and Bulkeley 2015, 56), governmentality studies focus on the everyday aspects of governing and their messiness. We use Dean's (2009) analytics of government as a heuristic to reconstruct from the reviewed papers the climate governmentality of the Paris era. According to Dean (2009, 33), each governmentality (i) creates certain visibilities, (ii) relies on and produces its own knowledge regime, (iii) operates through distinct technologies of government, and (iv) constitutes objects and offers subject positions. ...
... To narrow the scope of our review, we (4) did not include contributions that do not discuss climate governance as the primary object of interest, for example, articles that focus on agriculture, water management, or city planning. In a final sampling step (5), we examined whether each paper contributes to at least one category proposed by Dean (2009), that is, visibilities, ways of knowing, technologies of governing, or identities and subjectivities. Drawing upon the reference lists of relevant contributions and hints from colleagues in the field, we complemented our sample with additional papers from a similar theoretical perspective. ...
Foucauldian governmentality studies of climate politics have established themselves as a vibrant field of research, illuminating the power‐knowledge‐formations inherent in governing climate change. Synthesizing the contributions of climate governmentality studies since 2015, we provide a critical assessment of the technologies of government and the resulting visibilities and identities in the context of the Paris Agreement. Our reading of the current “cli‐mentality” reveals a much higher continuity from the Kyoto era to the Paris era than generally assumed by dominant IR approaches. The cli‐mentality of the Paris era radicalizes the neoliberal approach of the Kyoto era while extending its reach into more policy sectors. The responsibilisation of states, sub‐state actors and individuals obscures root causes of the climate crisis and reproduces key elements of the socio‐economic and political order. The dominant problematisation of climate change in both academia and policymaking narrows down the solution space for climate politics and forecloses transformative approaches. Climate mitigation mobilizes neoliberal self‐governance through nationally‐determined contributions while obscuring unequal historical responsibilities. Adaptation is organized in depoliticized processes of preparing for presumably inevitable climate futures. This is reinforced by climate finance which employs financialisation and de‐risking to mobilize additional private capital. Climate‐related loss and damage funding is rendered as charity, foreclosing liability and reparation claims. Future research should examine (1) how the dominant cli‐mentality is resisted and challenged by social movements and climate litigation, (2) if and how it is stabilized through the global economic order and its regulations, and (3) which globally varying effects the cli‐mentality has.
... 4 Cabe señalar que la propuesta analítica de Bacchi no es una creación ex nihilo. Existen antecedentes relevantes de esquemas analíticos de la gubernamentalidad, reconocidos por esta autora, entre los cuales se destaca la analítica de gobierno deDean (2009). ...
Desde la década de 1990 la UNESCO realiza un trabajo sostenido para posicionar el concepto de "educación inclusiva" como estructurante de la agenda global de reforma educativa, actualmente la agenda de Educación 2030. En este artículo presentamos resultados de una investigación sobre el proceso de construcción discursiva de esta agenda, en su instancia global y en su posterior regionalización en América Latina, desde un enfoque de problematización de políticas. El objetivo de la indagación, a partir de este enfoque, consiste en analizar críticamente las racionalidades que sustentan dicha agenda, su genealogía y sus (potenciales) efectos. Discutimos las problematizaciones en torno a la educación inclusiva en el discurso de la UNESCO a partir del análisis de documentos publicados por este organismo entre 2005 y 2022. En el plano global reconocemos los rasgos de la tradición humanista que caracteriza a la UNESCO y sus fundamentos en el concepto del derecho humano a la educación a la par que identificamos las racionalidades económica, social, educativa y moral, así como el dispositivo montado para la reforma escolar en el nivel institucional. En el plano regional atendemos a las convergencias y divergencias con la agenda global en tanto suponemos una apropiación selec-tiva vinculada con las características y tendencias de política propias de este espacio social. Palabras clave: Educación inclusiva, Agenda 2030, Política educativa, América Latina.
Abstract. Since the 1990s, UNESCO has been carrying out sustained work to position the concept of "educational inclusion" or "inclusive education" as a structuring element of the global educational reform agenda, currently the Education 2030 agenda. In this paper we present research findings on the process of the discursive construction of this agenda, in its global instance and in its subsequent regionalization in Latin America, from a policy problematization approach. Our goal, using this approach, is to critically analyze the rationalities and technologies that support this agenda, its' genealogy and (potential) effects). We discuss the problematizations around inclusive education in UNESCO's discourse by the analysis of documents published by this organization between 2005 and 2022. On a global level we recognize the features of the humanist tradition that characterizes UNESCO and its foundations in the concept of the human right to education, as well as we identify the economic, social, educational and moral rationalities and the device set up for school reform at the institutional level. At the regional level we attend to the convergences and divergences with the global agenda as we assume a selective appropriation linked to the characteristics and policy trends of this social space.
... Redaktörerna placerar boken i ett forskningsfält sprunget ur Foucault-inspirerad forskning med fokus på styrningsrationalitet -så kallade governmentality studies. Även om detta forskningsfält är relativt ungt, har det fått mycket uppmärksamhet under senare decennier, inte minst då forskare från den anglosaxiska världen gett ut en rad böcker som tar avstamp i just begreppet governmentality (exempelvis Burchell, Gordon & Miller 1991;Dean 1999;Rose 1999). Walters (2012) beskriver governmentality som en analytisk verktygslåda och ett begreppskluster snarare än en sammanhållen teori. ...
... Post-colonial scholars highlighted that governmentality, as the management of "conduct of conduct, " is associated with the notion of freedom. This is because government, in this sense, entails human beings who can act and choose to do something different from the initial objective of the regulation (Dean, 2010). Government rationalities were contested by active subjects (and subjecting) populations, who always "retained the capacity to act otherwise" (Li, 2007, p. 17). ...
Chinese quarters played a significant role in numerous Southeast Asian port cities, with Chinese trading communities thriving for hundreds of years. The proof of the importance of these communities is evident in the presence of Chinatowns and Chinese cemeteries, serving as places for both living and death, in several coastal cities in Southeast Asia. This study investigates Chinese cemeteries in Semarang’s spatial city structure during the colonial period and the gradual transformation of these cemeteries in post-colonial Indonesia amidst turbulent urban development and political conditions. In post-colonial Southeast Asia, city development serves as a platform for nationalistic aspirations. This article explores the roles of Chinese cemeteries as an act of subversion against colonial laws and their gradual disappearance due to city expansion in post-colonial Indonesia. The exploration through the colonial policies concerning land and the placement of the Chinese community, followed by post-colonial policies and urban governmentality on city development and real urban growth practices, provides an opportunity to discuss the roles of Chinese cemeteries for the Indonesian Chinese community in Semarang and their fate in post-colonial urban areas of Indonesia.
This article examines the biopolitical dimensions of Russia's response to HIV within the ideological framework of 'traditional values' promoted by the Putin administration since the early 2010s. Through a discourse analysis of state-affiliated expert rhetoric and policy documents, the study elucidates how HIV has come to be framed as a moral, political, and national security threat, rather than a public health crisis. It argues that the Kremlin's turn to conservative, exclusionary frames has facilitated the externalisation of HIV as a problem resulting from the imposition of "Western" values and the "risky behaviour" these values allegedly promote. The paper situates these discursive features within the broader contexts of authoritarian neoliberalism, securitisation, and necropolitics, highlighting the link between the discursive stigmatisation of marginalised groups and the systematic withdrawal of resources from HIV treatment and prevention. By so doing, the Russian government enacts a sovereign biopolitics through which access to evidence-based care is increasingly denied to people and groups whom the state constructs as a 'threat' to society.
Abstract
This article examines the dynamics through which an extraordinary event is conceptualized and governed, by focusing on the case of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy and the decision to implement lockdown at the national level. The emergency generated by the extraordinary nature of the pandemic led various actors to debate and confront in the search for a course of action for containing and mitigating its devastating social and economic effects. The process by which legislative and regulative initiatives were identified and undertaken can be understood and interpreted as a translation of the pandemic, whose outcome led to specific governing decisions, in our case, the adoption of lockdown at the national level. This translation occurred within a decision-making arena, which emerged out of the emergency, where various actors used different resources to discuss and take decisions. In particular, the accounts and calculative practices related to the pandemic played a pivotal role. Through the case study of the first phase of the emergency in Italy, this article offers theoretical interpretations of the dynamics underlying the adoption of specific governing and government decisions and the role of accounts; thus, contributing to the accounting studies relating to the governing of extraordinary events
Just as archival scholarship has increasingly engaged in conversations around care and holistic considerations of the agency of records subjects, the child welfare systems of the modern Western world have been moving towards conversations that aim to centre and celebrate the voice of the child in new and important ways. However, too often are these conversations held back by the enormity of the issue and the overhaul that would have to take place for philosophy to match with practice. In this paper, I suggest that part of the problem is that we have been trying to make these changes philosophy first, placing a new way of thinking on top of an old way of doing—an approach that will never generate change. Leaning in to using speculation to imagine what the new recordkeeping of a caring system might look like, I propose that the act of recordkeeping is the fulcrum that could make caring child welfare a reality and illustrate some of the avenues through which we might pursue instigating the systemic changes needed if we are to see the agency and perspectives of children prioritised in child welfare and protection practices.
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.
