Jacopo Martire
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474411929
- eISBN:
- 9781474435215
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474411929.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Philosophy of Law
Although Foucault is certainly one of most influential scholars of our age, law is for Foucauldian scholarship akin to an “undigestable meal”. This is due to a seemingly unresolvable dilemma: how is ...
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Although Foucault is certainly one of most influential scholars of our age, law is for Foucauldian scholarship akin to an “undigestable meal”. This is due to a seemingly unresolvable dilemma: how is it possible to analyse law through Foucauldian lenses if Foucault himself claimed (albeit cursorily) that law, in modernity, has been colonised by other disciplines and ousted from the locus of power? Building on Foucault’s ideas about power, freedom, and subjectivity, the present book tackles this problem through a critical genealogy of the philosophico-political ideas at the basis of modern law, delineating the historical emergence of the implicit regulative conditions of our legal present. The book proposes that modern law and modern forms of power – which Foucault termed biopolitical because they sort, train, and tame persons and populations with the aim of normalizing society – developed symbiotically and that, to the extent that modern law establishes the existence of a universal legal subject, law’s functioning is made possible by the homogenization of society through normalising practices. We are however fast moving towards the absolute limit of this normalizing complex. As normalising strategies are progressively unable to homogenise a social body which is increasingly composed by “fluid” subjects, modern law faces two interconnected challenges – a normative one (how can normalizing laws properly reflect the wills of a mass of differentiated fluid individuals?) and a functional one (how can normalizing laws effectively regulate such new protean social body?) – which put into question the very foundations of our legal discourse.Less
Although Foucault is certainly one of most influential scholars of our age, law is for Foucauldian scholarship akin to an “undigestable meal”. This is due to a seemingly unresolvable dilemma: how is it possible to analyse law through Foucauldian lenses if Foucault himself claimed (albeit cursorily) that law, in modernity, has been colonised by other disciplines and ousted from the locus of power? Building on Foucault’s ideas about power, freedom, and subjectivity, the present book tackles this problem through a critical genealogy of the philosophico-political ideas at the basis of modern law, delineating the historical emergence of the implicit regulative conditions of our legal present. The book proposes that modern law and modern forms of power – which Foucault termed biopolitical because they sort, train, and tame persons and populations with the aim of normalizing society – developed symbiotically and that, to the extent that modern law establishes the existence of a universal legal subject, law’s functioning is made possible by the homogenization of society through normalising practices. We are however fast moving towards the absolute limit of this normalizing complex. As normalising strategies are progressively unable to homogenise a social body which is increasingly composed by “fluid” subjects, modern law faces two interconnected challenges – a normative one (how can normalizing laws properly reflect the wills of a mass of differentiated fluid individuals?) and a functional one (how can normalizing laws effectively regulate such new protean social body?) – which put into question the very foundations of our legal discourse.
Saida Hodzic
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780520291980
- eISBN:
- 9780520965577
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520291980.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, African Cultural Anthropology
Departing from common treatment of female genital cutting as an African problem to be debated within Western moral and critical publics, this book examines how Ghanaians problematize and materialize ...
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Departing from common treatment of female genital cutting as an African problem to be debated within Western moral and critical publics, this book examines how Ghanaians problematize and materialize cutting as an African concern in which Western reason and governmentality have been implicated since colonialism. It examines the genealogies of activist and governmental efforts to end cutting (including feminist, public health, and legal interventions and cultural reforms) and the forms of rule, subjectivity, and positioning they produce. It attends to the social concerns and ethical dilemmas of women and men who have been most engaged in and affected by them. Ghanaian opposition to NGOs does not take the shape in the continuation of the practice, as they accommodate NGO platforms, but critique what they leave unaddressed. They question extractive governance that takes without giving and disidentify with the legal rationality of sovereign violence that punishes without caring. They desire governance based on ethics of relationality and mutual responsibility.
This ethnography challenges and reinvigorates anthropological and feminist theories about neoliberal punitive rationality and feminist love of law, efficacy and unintended consequences of NGO interventions, minimalist biopolitics of saving lives, and postcolonial abandonment in the postcolonial world. It also charts a path for working against the analytical and political common sense by cultivating sensibilities on the basis of disidentification and immanent critique.Less
Departing from common treatment of female genital cutting as an African problem to be debated within Western moral and critical publics, this book examines how Ghanaians problematize and materialize cutting as an African concern in which Western reason and governmentality have been implicated since colonialism. It examines the genealogies of activist and governmental efforts to end cutting (including feminist, public health, and legal interventions and cultural reforms) and the forms of rule, subjectivity, and positioning they produce. It attends to the social concerns and ethical dilemmas of women and men who have been most engaged in and affected by them. Ghanaian opposition to NGOs does not take the shape in the continuation of the practice, as they accommodate NGO platforms, but critique what they leave unaddressed. They question extractive governance that takes without giving and disidentify with the legal rationality of sovereign violence that punishes without caring. They desire governance based on ethics of relationality and mutual responsibility.
This ethnography challenges and reinvigorates anthropological and feminist theories about neoliberal punitive rationality and feminist love of law, efficacy and unintended consequences of NGO interventions, minimalist biopolitics of saving lives, and postcolonial abandonment in the postcolonial world. It also charts a path for working against the analytical and political common sense by cultivating sensibilities on the basis of disidentification and immanent critique.
Nicola Ansell, Flora Hajdu, Elsbeth Robson, Lorraine Van Blerk, and Elodie Marandet
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9781847428462
- eISBN:
- 9781447307259
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781847428462.003.0003
- Subject:
- Social Work, Children and Families
Over the past few decades governments worldwide have developed youth policies, encompassing diverse measures to address the problems and potentials of their younger populations. These policies have ...
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Over the past few decades governments worldwide have developed youth policies, encompassing diverse measures to address the problems and potentials of their younger populations. These policies have not emerged independently in diverse countries; intergovernmental organisations and international discourses are involved. In this chapter we use Foucault's concepts of governmentality and biopower to analyse a UNESCO (2004) publication designed to guide youth policy development, and the recently formulated youth policies of Malawi and Lesotho. We examine how youth policies perform as technologies of power, enabling states to exercise control over individuals and populations; and how such technologies produce individual subjects that are valuable to neoliberal economies. More significantly, we investigate whether youth policies represent a form of transnational governmentality through which the agendas of global capital contribute to the production of neoliberal subjects for a globalising market. We show that while this is, to an extent, true, the transnational exercise of power is far from all-encompassing, and we conclude by emphasising the unevenness and incompleteness of the exercise of neoliberalising power through youth policies in these two countries.Less
Over the past few decades governments worldwide have developed youth policies, encompassing diverse measures to address the problems and potentials of their younger populations. These policies have not emerged independently in diverse countries; intergovernmental organisations and international discourses are involved. In this chapter we use Foucault's concepts of governmentality and biopower to analyse a UNESCO (2004) publication designed to guide youth policy development, and the recently formulated youth policies of Malawi and Lesotho. We examine how youth policies perform as technologies of power, enabling states to exercise control over individuals and populations; and how such technologies produce individual subjects that are valuable to neoliberal economies. More significantly, we investigate whether youth policies represent a form of transnational governmentality through which the agendas of global capital contribute to the production of neoliberal subjects for a globalising market. We show that while this is, to an extent, true, the transnational exercise of power is far from all-encompassing, and we conclude by emphasising the unevenness and incompleteness of the exercise of neoliberalising power through youth policies in these two countries.
Gay Hawkins, Emily Potter, and Kane Race
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780262029414
- eISBN:
- 9780262329521
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262029414.003.0008
- Subject:
- Environmental Science, Environmental Studies
This chapter examines the ways in which bottled water manufacturers work to redeem and positively reposition bottled water in the face of public attack and market contestation. It discusses ...
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This chapter examines the ways in which bottled water manufacturers work to redeem and positively reposition bottled water in the face of public attack and market contestation. It discusses techniques of ‘ethicalisation’, particularly ethical branding and cause-related marketing. These techniques are employed to re-qualify bottled water as a force for good particularly amongst various communities of ‘need’. The ethicalisation activities of one Australian bottled water brand, Mount Franklin, are analysed in detail. These activities range from cause-related marketing such as associating bottled water with breast cancer research and environmental advocacy, to more complex interventions into remote Indigenous Australian communities where uneven access to cool safe water and consumption of sugary drinks were causing major health problems. In these communities the company ran a ‘Choose Water’ campaign to encourage bottled water consumption as a healthy alternative. This was both a PR strategy and an act of governmentality.Less
This chapter examines the ways in which bottled water manufacturers work to redeem and positively reposition bottled water in the face of public attack and market contestation. It discusses techniques of ‘ethicalisation’, particularly ethical branding and cause-related marketing. These techniques are employed to re-qualify bottled water as a force for good particularly amongst various communities of ‘need’. The ethicalisation activities of one Australian bottled water brand, Mount Franklin, are analysed in detail. These activities range from cause-related marketing such as associating bottled water with breast cancer research and environmental advocacy, to more complex interventions into remote Indigenous Australian communities where uneven access to cool safe water and consumption of sugary drinks were causing major health problems. In these communities the company ran a ‘Choose Water’ campaign to encourage bottled water consumption as a healthy alternative. This was both a PR strategy and an act of governmentality.
Ewan Ferlie, Louise Fitzgerald, Gerry McGivern, Sue Dopson, and Chris Bennett
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199603015
- eISBN:
- 9780191752995
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199603015.001.0001
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Public Management
This book characterizes the nature of key reforms—namely managed networks—introduced in the UK National Health Service during the New Labour period (1997–2010). It combines rich empirical case ...
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This book characterizes the nature of key reforms—namely managed networks—introduced in the UK National Health Service during the New Labour period (1997–2010). It combines rich empirical case material of eight such networks drawn from different health policy arenas with a theoretically informed analysis. It makes three main contributions. First, it argues that New Labour’s reforms included an important network element consistent with underlying network governance ideas, complementing the interpretation of other authors who have stressed either choice and markets or the continuation of NPM. It contributes to the wider NPM/post NPM debate by suggesting conditions of sedimentation. It specifies conditions of ‘success’ for these managed networks and explores how much progress was empirically evident. Second, the concept of ‘wicked problems’ is used to conceptualize many of the complex health policy arenas studied. It argues that networks are the least bad governance mode to tackle such wicked problems. Wicked problems conditions may become even more important in the future. It offers a qualified defence of network forms and caution against a whole-scale tilt to marketization in ‘wicked problem’ arenas. Third, it brings in a governmentality perspective to retheorize some of the novel organizational processes which do not fit either professional dominance or NPM models. A number of long-run policy developments under New Labour (such as clinical governance, EBM guidelines, energized clinical and managerial hybrids, patient safety regimes) appear consistent with this governmentality perspective.Less
This book characterizes the nature of key reforms—namely managed networks—introduced in the UK National Health Service during the New Labour period (1997–2010). It combines rich empirical case material of eight such networks drawn from different health policy arenas with a theoretically informed analysis. It makes three main contributions. First, it argues that New Labour’s reforms included an important network element consistent with underlying network governance ideas, complementing the interpretation of other authors who have stressed either choice and markets or the continuation of NPM. It contributes to the wider NPM/post NPM debate by suggesting conditions of sedimentation. It specifies conditions of ‘success’ for these managed networks and explores how much progress was empirically evident. Second, the concept of ‘wicked problems’ is used to conceptualize many of the complex health policy arenas studied. It argues that networks are the least bad governance mode to tackle such wicked problems. Wicked problems conditions may become even more important in the future. It offers a qualified defence of network forms and caution against a whole-scale tilt to marketization in ‘wicked problem’ arenas. Third, it brings in a governmentality perspective to retheorize some of the novel organizational processes which do not fit either professional dominance or NPM models. A number of long-run policy developments under New Labour (such as clinical governance, EBM guidelines, energized clinical and managerial hybrids, patient safety regimes) appear consistent with this governmentality perspective.
J. Paul Narkunas
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823280308
- eISBN:
- 9780823281534
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823280308.003.0005
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This chapter diagnoses how humanitarian non-governmental organizations are filling a vacuum created ironically by governments outsourcing their governing functions that marks a transformation of the ...
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This chapter diagnoses how humanitarian non-governmental organizations are filling a vacuum created ironically by governments outsourcing their governing functions that marks a transformation of the Westphalian order of states by neoliberalism. The proliferation of non-state actors facilitates the politicization of human rights around how to recognize who or what is a human being endowed with natural rights, and who is a terrorist, outlaw, or posthuman. By tracing the connections between human rights and governmentality, human rights advocates must acknowledge their cozy relationship with powerful militaries, which has resulted in humanitarian interventions using the language of rights to justify neocolonial projects that often intensify human suffering. Humanitarianism may function as a deterritorialized form of governmentality that offers a theatrical illusion of protection and security, while undermining their possibilities structurally. Powerful states not only use human rights and humanitarian legitimations for their particularist geopolitical and economic ends, but also direct humanitarian NGOs strategically by proxy for their own interests. In the process the very idea of securing humans becomes instrumentalized as a form of outsourced governance that can be a model eventually for “expendable people” within nation-states.Less
This chapter diagnoses how humanitarian non-governmental organizations are filling a vacuum created ironically by governments outsourcing their governing functions that marks a transformation of the Westphalian order of states by neoliberalism. The proliferation of non-state actors facilitates the politicization of human rights around how to recognize who or what is a human being endowed with natural rights, and who is a terrorist, outlaw, or posthuman. By tracing the connections between human rights and governmentality, human rights advocates must acknowledge their cozy relationship with powerful militaries, which has resulted in humanitarian interventions using the language of rights to justify neocolonial projects that often intensify human suffering. Humanitarianism may function as a deterritorialized form of governmentality that offers a theatrical illusion of protection and security, while undermining their possibilities structurally. Powerful states not only use human rights and humanitarian legitimations for their particularist geopolitical and economic ends, but also direct humanitarian NGOs strategically by proxy for their own interests. In the process the very idea of securing humans becomes instrumentalized as a form of outsourced governance that can be a model eventually for “expendable people” within nation-states.
Bernhard Siegert
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823263752
- eISBN:
- 9780823268962
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823263752.003.0006
- Subject:
- Information Science, Communications
This chapter describes the cultural techniques of interrogation, registration, and licensing on the boundary between land and sea, that produced in sixteenth century Spain the legal passenger to “The ...
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This chapter describes the cultural techniques of interrogation, registration, and licensing on the boundary between land and sea, that produced in sixteenth century Spain the legal passenger to “The Indies” in contrast to the illegal passenger, the vagabond, the parasite. The invention of a bureaucratical apparatus and notational techniques of state control over the migration of individuals across the border between Europa and America, land and sea, made those who otherwise would have disappeared without a trace into historical darkness speak of themselves. The chapter analyzes the discourse of the interrogations of witnesses, the petitions of the passengers, and the passenger registers in the Archive General de Indias in Seville, and demonstrates how the bureaucratic procedures that produce the legal passenger prdicue at the same time the problematic difference between fact and fiction, truth and fake. It demonstrates, too, how closely the problem of distinguishing between fact and fiction in the registers and the problem of producing fictitious identities by what Foucault called governmentality is connected to the early modern problem of distinguishing between true and false poor and the emergence of a discourse on a parasitic ecomomy of false beggars and vagabonds.Less
This chapter describes the cultural techniques of interrogation, registration, and licensing on the boundary between land and sea, that produced in sixteenth century Spain the legal passenger to “The Indies” in contrast to the illegal passenger, the vagabond, the parasite. The invention of a bureaucratical apparatus and notational techniques of state control over the migration of individuals across the border between Europa and America, land and sea, made those who otherwise would have disappeared without a trace into historical darkness speak of themselves. The chapter analyzes the discourse of the interrogations of witnesses, the petitions of the passengers, and the passenger registers in the Archive General de Indias in Seville, and demonstrates how the bureaucratic procedures that produce the legal passenger prdicue at the same time the problematic difference between fact and fiction, truth and fake. It demonstrates, too, how closely the problem of distinguishing between fact and fiction in the registers and the problem of producing fictitious identities by what Foucault called governmentality is connected to the early modern problem of distinguishing between true and false poor and the emergence of a discourse on a parasitic ecomomy of false beggars and vagabonds.
Bülent Diken
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780748682973
- eISBN:
- 9781474406475
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748682973.003.0007
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
The article discusses post-politics in relation to the contemporary ‘return’ of religion. I start with considering some of the paradoxes that are visible in the horizon of post-political society. The ...
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The article discusses post-politics in relation to the contemporary ‘return’ of religion. I start with considering some of the paradoxes that are visible in the horizon of post-political society. The pivot around which this discussion is organized is the sovereignty-governmentality-visibility nexus. In this context I am especially interested in the relationship between sovereignty and governmentality, which takes the form of a disjunctive synthesis. Then, to articulate the religious motives that are constitutive of this paradoxical relationship, I turn to political and economic theology. To end with, I discuss capitalism as religion, linking this back to the concept of post-politics.Less
The article discusses post-politics in relation to the contemporary ‘return’ of religion. I start with considering some of the paradoxes that are visible in the horizon of post-political society. The pivot around which this discussion is organized is the sovereignty-governmentality-visibility nexus. In this context I am especially interested in the relationship between sovereignty and governmentality, which takes the form of a disjunctive synthesis. Then, to articulate the religious motives that are constitutive of this paradoxical relationship, I turn to political and economic theology. To end with, I discuss capitalism as religion, linking this back to the concept of post-politics.
Jacopo Martire
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474411929
- eISBN:
- 9781474435215
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474411929.003.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Philosophy of Law
In the first chapter, the author provides a picture of the current state of contemporary Foucauldian interpretations of law. The author claims that Foucauldian scholars – notwithstanding recent ...
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In the first chapter, the author provides a picture of the current state of contemporary Foucauldian interpretations of law. The author claims that Foucauldian scholars – notwithstanding recent important contributions – have not been able to properly debunk the thesis that Foucault “expelled” law from the locus of power. The author proposes to overcome this impasse by considering law as a proper sui generis apparatus of subjectivation and by undertaking a geneaology of the modern discourse of law in order to discover its generative syntax. The author’s goal is to demonstrate that in developing towards its modern form, law moved from being an order based upon the paradigm of sovereign commands to one based on the paradigm of socially constructed norms (understood in a Foucauldian way). The author identifies the formal features of generality, abstraction, and the substantive features of equality and freedom as key for this purpose.Less
In the first chapter, the author provides a picture of the current state of contemporary Foucauldian interpretations of law. The author claims that Foucauldian scholars – notwithstanding recent important contributions – have not been able to properly debunk the thesis that Foucault “expelled” law from the locus of power. The author proposes to overcome this impasse by considering law as a proper sui generis apparatus of subjectivation and by undertaking a geneaology of the modern discourse of law in order to discover its generative syntax. The author’s goal is to demonstrate that in developing towards its modern form, law moved from being an order based upon the paradigm of sovereign commands to one based on the paradigm of socially constructed norms (understood in a Foucauldian way). The author identifies the formal features of generality, abstraction, and the substantive features of equality and freedom as key for this purpose.
Alex Loftus
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780748682973
- eISBN:
- 9781474406475
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748682973.003.0012
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This chapter interrogates Chantal Mouffe’s discussion of cosmopolitanism and multipolar order with reference to the global governance projects of the European Union (EU) and the BRICS (Brazil, ...
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This chapter interrogates Chantal Mouffe’s discussion of cosmopolitanism and multipolar order with reference to the global governance projects of the European Union (EU) and the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) group. Prima facie, the EU’s commitment to a post-sovereign world of multilateral cooperation contrasts with BRICS’ call for a multipolar world order, much like cosmopolitanism and multipolarity in Mouffe’s analysis. Taking an agonistic and pluralist perspective, Mouffe criticizes cosmopolitanism for depoliticizing global governance and advocates a multipolar world order giving due recognition to competing political aspirations and identities as an alternative. Drawing on Foucauldian governmentality analysis and Jacques Rancière’s political theory, this paper deconstructs Mouffe’s position and develops an alternative agonistic approach. In a first move, it challenges the ostensible opposition between the EU’s cosmopolitanism and BRICS’ multipolar approach by highlighting the EU’s cosmopolitan ‘ambiguities’ and BRICS’ ‘bricolage(s)’ of governmentalities beyond multipolarity. In a second move, it suggests that Rancière’s conception of a politics of equality that creates political subjects through ‘disagreement’ provides a more promising avenue than Mouffe’s multipolar approach to theorize the political in the BRICS-EU dyad.Less
This chapter interrogates Chantal Mouffe’s discussion of cosmopolitanism and multipolar order with reference to the global governance projects of the European Union (EU) and the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) group. Prima facie, the EU’s commitment to a post-sovereign world of multilateral cooperation contrasts with BRICS’ call for a multipolar world order, much like cosmopolitanism and multipolarity in Mouffe’s analysis. Taking an agonistic and pluralist perspective, Mouffe criticizes cosmopolitanism for depoliticizing global governance and advocates a multipolar world order giving due recognition to competing political aspirations and identities as an alternative. Drawing on Foucauldian governmentality analysis and Jacques Rancière’s political theory, this paper deconstructs Mouffe’s position and develops an alternative agonistic approach. In a first move, it challenges the ostensible opposition between the EU’s cosmopolitanism and BRICS’ multipolar approach by highlighting the EU’s cosmopolitan ‘ambiguities’ and BRICS’ ‘bricolage(s)’ of governmentalities beyond multipolarity. In a second move, it suggests that Rancière’s conception of a politics of equality that creates political subjects through ‘disagreement’ provides a more promising avenue than Mouffe’s multipolar approach to theorize the political in the BRICS-EU dyad.
Sergei Prozorov
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781474410526
- eISBN:
- 9781474418744
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474410526.003.0003
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
Chapter 2 provides a theoretical introduction to the study, addressing the puzzling status of Soviet socialism more generally in the canonical theories of biopolitics, where it has been largely ...
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Chapter 2 provides a theoretical introduction to the study, addressing the puzzling status of Soviet socialism more generally in the canonical theories of biopolitics, where it has been largely ignored at the expense of liberalism and Nazism. We address the scant dossier of the remarks on Soviet biopolitics by the three key authors in the field – Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben and Roberto Esposito. We begin with Foucault’s influential move of subsuming Soviet biopolitics under Western rationalities of government, rejecting the existence of anything like a properly socialist governmentality of life. We then proceed to Agamben’s theory of biopolitics, which was produced at the time of the collapse of the USSR and was understandably less interested in the socialist case. Agamben’s famous claim about the ‘inner solidarity’ of democracy and totalitarianism in biopolitical terms leads him to deny any specificity to the Soviet case. Finally, we address Esposito’s attempt to differentiate between totalitarianism and biopolitics as two paradigms for grasping the 20th century. In the conclusion we propose to approach the question of socialist biopolitics by addressing the problematization of life at work within the governmental rationality of Stalinism: how does life function in the mode of political reasoning that defines the Stalinist project?Less
Chapter 2 provides a theoretical introduction to the study, addressing the puzzling status of Soviet socialism more generally in the canonical theories of biopolitics, where it has been largely ignored at the expense of liberalism and Nazism. We address the scant dossier of the remarks on Soviet biopolitics by the three key authors in the field – Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben and Roberto Esposito. We begin with Foucault’s influential move of subsuming Soviet biopolitics under Western rationalities of government, rejecting the existence of anything like a properly socialist governmentality of life. We then proceed to Agamben’s theory of biopolitics, which was produced at the time of the collapse of the USSR and was understandably less interested in the socialist case. Agamben’s famous claim about the ‘inner solidarity’ of democracy and totalitarianism in biopolitical terms leads him to deny any specificity to the Soviet case. Finally, we address Esposito’s attempt to differentiate between totalitarianism and biopolitics as two paradigms for grasping the 20th century. In the conclusion we propose to approach the question of socialist biopolitics by addressing the problematization of life at work within the governmental rationality of Stalinism: how does life function in the mode of political reasoning that defines the Stalinist project?
Joe McGrath
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719090660
- eISBN:
- 9781781708378
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719090660.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Law, Crime and Deviance
This introduces the reader to the argument in this monograph. It outlines the need for this project by locating it within the existing literature on corporate and white-collar crime and regulatory ...
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This introduces the reader to the argument in this monograph. It outlines the need for this project by locating it within the existing literature on corporate and white-collar crime and regulatory jurisprudence. Finally, it briefly summarises the structure of the monograph.Less
This introduces the reader to the argument in this monograph. It outlines the need for this project by locating it within the existing literature on corporate and white-collar crime and regulatory jurisprudence. Finally, it briefly summarises the structure of the monograph.
Kevin Stenson
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781447300014
- eISBN:
- 9781447307587
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781447300014.003.0003
- Subject:
- Social Work, Crime and Justice
Kevin Stenson discusses Wacquant concept of neo-liberal governance and also the resistances it encounters. Resistance is a key theme which he elaborates from the perspective of a ‘realist ...
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Kevin Stenson discusses Wacquant concept of neo-liberal governance and also the resistances it encounters. Resistance is a key theme which he elaborates from the perspective of a ‘realist governmentality theory’ which yields a more general view of the neoliberal state (by comparison with that of Wacquant) comprising a variety of rationalities of liberal governance of which “governance from below” is a key ingredient. Stenson echoes the contributors who focus on resistance when he argues that the new urban precariat must be seen, not just as the victims of advanced marginality and penalisation but as actors, with racial and ethnic identities, globally mobile whose ‘governance from below is a challenge to contemporary “elite statecraft”.Less
Kevin Stenson discusses Wacquant concept of neo-liberal governance and also the resistances it encounters. Resistance is a key theme which he elaborates from the perspective of a ‘realist governmentality theory’ which yields a more general view of the neoliberal state (by comparison with that of Wacquant) comprising a variety of rationalities of liberal governance of which “governance from below” is a key ingredient. Stenson echoes the contributors who focus on resistance when he argues that the new urban precariat must be seen, not just as the victims of advanced marginality and penalisation but as actors, with racial and ethnic identities, globally mobile whose ‘governance from below is a challenge to contemporary “elite statecraft”.
Asima Jena
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- July 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780199482160
- eISBN:
- 9780199097746
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199482160.003.0013
- Subject:
- Sociology, Health, Illness, and Medicine, Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
This chapter delineates violence from sexual axis by treating regulation of sexuality as a form of violence albeit its legitimacy. The governance of sexuality takes place through the production of ...
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This chapter delineates violence from sexual axis by treating regulation of sexuality as a form of violence albeit its legitimacy. The governance of sexuality takes place through the production of discourse, which orders the subjective position and persuasive approach. In a Foucauldian sense, it conceives violence both at corporeal level as well as metaphoric level. It depicts how routine monitoring of the sexual activities of the Female Sex Workers (FSW) are met with resistance by them and reproduce social inequality, subjugation and stigma by unravelling the contradictory character of a community oriented Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) management programme which in-fact aimed to liberate FSWs from discrimination and inequality.Less
This chapter delineates violence from sexual axis by treating regulation of sexuality as a form of violence albeit its legitimacy. The governance of sexuality takes place through the production of discourse, which orders the subjective position and persuasive approach. In a Foucauldian sense, it conceives violence both at corporeal level as well as metaphoric level. It depicts how routine monitoring of the sexual activities of the Female Sex Workers (FSW) are met with resistance by them and reproduce social inequality, subjugation and stigma by unravelling the contradictory character of a community oriented Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) management programme which in-fact aimed to liberate FSWs from discrimination and inequality.
Mona Atia
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816689156
- eISBN:
- 9781452949215
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816689156.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Middle Eastern Cultural Anthropology
Building a House in Heaven uses Islamic charity as a lens through which to understand the relations between the economy, state and religion in Mubarak era Egypt. My approach links questions of ...
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Building a House in Heaven uses Islamic charity as a lens through which to understand the relations between the economy, state and religion in Mubarak era Egypt. My approach links questions of governance, authority, economy and polity with questions of identity, subjectivity and ways of knowing. The first geographical account of its kind, it considers how Islamic associations enact Islamic economic practices and how these practices changed relations between the state, voluntary and private sectors. I explore the practices of Islamic charities and their associated sites, neighborhoods, ideology, sources of funding, projects, and broad social networks. Throughout the book, I map the landscape of charity and development in Egypt, moving back and forth between ethnographic stories of specific organizations and reflections on patterns across the sector. I chart numerous factors that changed the nature of Egyptian charitable practices including: the state’s intervention in social care and religion, an Islamic revival, political economic trends that intensified economic pressures on the poor, and the emergence of the private sector as a key development actor.Less
Building a House in Heaven uses Islamic charity as a lens through which to understand the relations between the economy, state and religion in Mubarak era Egypt. My approach links questions of governance, authority, economy and polity with questions of identity, subjectivity and ways of knowing. The first geographical account of its kind, it considers how Islamic associations enact Islamic economic practices and how these practices changed relations between the state, voluntary and private sectors. I explore the practices of Islamic charities and their associated sites, neighborhoods, ideology, sources of funding, projects, and broad social networks. Throughout the book, I map the landscape of charity and development in Egypt, moving back and forth between ethnographic stories of specific organizations and reflections on patterns across the sector. I chart numerous factors that changed the nature of Egyptian charitable practices including: the state’s intervention in social care and religion, an Islamic revival, political economic trends that intensified economic pressures on the poor, and the emergence of the private sector as a key development actor.
Sandra Pogodda, Oliver P. Richmond, and Roger Mac Ginty
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719099557
- eISBN:
- 9781526120885
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719099557.003.0002
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics
Chapter 1 discusses the relationship between governance and conflict resolution in India and the EU. It finds a lot of similarities between the two entities especially in terms of their concern for ...
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Chapter 1 discusses the relationship between governance and conflict resolution in India and the EU. It finds a lot of similarities between the two entities especially in terms of their concern for democratic credentials and institutional design, increasingly based on neo-liberal principles. Both India and the EU give primacy to statebuilding in their conflict resolution strategies and emphasise the importance of development and bureaucracy in the process. The authors find that one of the main differences between the two entities is in the security measures they undertake. While the EU has a more relaxed approach to security policy, India puts emphasis on the use of hard security measures, seeing itself as a unitary sovereign actor rather than a quasi-federal entity (as with the EU). This is also one of the most common critiques of India’s efforts in producing conflict resolution, along with the inefficiency of its governance and the corruption that surrounds it. The EU can be partly criticised for its selective approach to conditionalities in accession/association process which in some cases even resembles the colonial past of some of the most prominent members of the EU. The authors conclude that the two entities achieve a certain level of governmentality while their success in producing conflict resolution in a purer form of reconciliation and social justice is relatively limited.Less
Chapter 1 discusses the relationship between governance and conflict resolution in India and the EU. It finds a lot of similarities between the two entities especially in terms of their concern for democratic credentials and institutional design, increasingly based on neo-liberal principles. Both India and the EU give primacy to statebuilding in their conflict resolution strategies and emphasise the importance of development and bureaucracy in the process. The authors find that one of the main differences between the two entities is in the security measures they undertake. While the EU has a more relaxed approach to security policy, India puts emphasis on the use of hard security measures, seeing itself as a unitary sovereign actor rather than a quasi-federal entity (as with the EU). This is also one of the most common critiques of India’s efforts in producing conflict resolution, along with the inefficiency of its governance and the corruption that surrounds it. The EU can be partly criticised for its selective approach to conditionalities in accession/association process which in some cases even resembles the colonial past of some of the most prominent members of the EU. The authors conclude that the two entities achieve a certain level of governmentality while their success in producing conflict resolution in a purer form of reconciliation and social justice is relatively limited.
Aidan Forth
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780520293960
- eISBN:
- 9780520967267
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520293960.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This chapter examines inmate life inside the Anglo-Boer War concentration camps. Native African refugees were segregated into a system of labor camps while British officials developed a form of ...
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This chapter examines inmate life inside the Anglo-Boer War concentration camps. Native African refugees were segregated into a system of labor camps while British officials developed a form of governmentality that sought to educate, anglicize and rehabilitate Boer refugees by inculcating British cultural ideals and industrial habits, thereby transforming them into imperial citizens and willing partners of a British South Africa. The medical techniques of quarantine and segregation were adapted to inmates suspected of political subversion, who were detained in undesirable camps. Ultimately, both African and Boer camps suffered from the spread of epidemic diseases like measles, which resulted in staggering mortality rates in the camps and created a damaging political scandal in Britain. The humanitarian reformer Emily Hobhouse noted that scenes of suffering and death in the concentration camps could only be matched by similar sights during plague and famine in India.Less
This chapter examines inmate life inside the Anglo-Boer War concentration camps. Native African refugees were segregated into a system of labor camps while British officials developed a form of governmentality that sought to educate, anglicize and rehabilitate Boer refugees by inculcating British cultural ideals and industrial habits, thereby transforming them into imperial citizens and willing partners of a British South Africa. The medical techniques of quarantine and segregation were adapted to inmates suspected of political subversion, who were detained in undesirable camps. Ultimately, both African and Boer camps suffered from the spread of epidemic diseases like measles, which resulted in staggering mortality rates in the camps and created a damaging political scandal in Britain. The humanitarian reformer Emily Hobhouse noted that scenes of suffering and death in the concentration camps could only be matched by similar sights during plague and famine in India.
Andrew Williams
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781847428349
- eISBN:
- 9781447307785
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781847428349.003.0008
- Subject:
- Sociology, Sociology of Religion
This chapter critically investigates the welfare-to-work ‘ethics’ in the UK in the context of the Big Society, using the example of the Pathways Ltd case study to show how FBOs work with government ...
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This chapter critically investigates the welfare-to-work ‘ethics’ in the UK in the context of the Big Society, using the example of the Pathways Ltd case study to show how FBOs work with government policy to suppress regimes tackling social justices in European cities.Less
This chapter critically investigates the welfare-to-work ‘ethics’ in the UK in the context of the Big Society, using the example of the Pathways Ltd case study to show how FBOs work with government policy to suppress regimes tackling social justices in European cities.
Carl Death
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780300215830
- eISBN:
- 9780300224894
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300215830.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, African History
This chapter responds to the call for green state theories which challenge the neo-Weberian assumptions of ecological modernisation. This entails revisiting the question of ‘what is the state?’ ...
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This chapter responds to the call for green state theories which challenge the neo-Weberian assumptions of ecological modernisation. This entails revisiting the question of ‘what is the state?’ Weberian, Marxist, and International Relations (IR) theories of the state are evaluated, particularly in terms of their adequacy in understanding and explaining states in Africa. Postcolonial theorists, such as Achille Mbembe and Jean-François Bayart, influenced by Michel Foucault, are introduced to provide a perspective on the state which starts from diverse practices and governmental rationalities (or governmentalities), rather than a core unity. This enables a framework of analysis which conceives of states as the effects of a variety of forms of governance and contestation, particular over land, populations, economies and international relations. This chapter accordingly provides the analytical structure and questions which drive the four subsequent more empirically-orientated chapters. It is an intervention into, and contribution to, contemporary debates over state theory in Africa.Less
This chapter responds to the call for green state theories which challenge the neo-Weberian assumptions of ecological modernisation. This entails revisiting the question of ‘what is the state?’ Weberian, Marxist, and International Relations (IR) theories of the state are evaluated, particularly in terms of their adequacy in understanding and explaining states in Africa. Postcolonial theorists, such as Achille Mbembe and Jean-François Bayart, influenced by Michel Foucault, are introduced to provide a perspective on the state which starts from diverse practices and governmental rationalities (or governmentalities), rather than a core unity. This enables a framework of analysis which conceives of states as the effects of a variety of forms of governance and contestation, particular over land, populations, economies and international relations. This chapter accordingly provides the analytical structure and questions which drive the four subsequent more empirically-orientated chapters. It is an intervention into, and contribution to, contemporary debates over state theory in Africa.
Linda Milbourne
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781847427236
- eISBN:
- 9781447310952
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781847427236.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Politics, Social Movements and Social Change
This chapter traces key changes and continuities in public policy and political ideology, mapping influences on voluntary sector change in the UK for over a century, while emphasising recent ...
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This chapter traces key changes and continuities in public policy and political ideology, mapping influences on voluntary sector change in the UK for over a century, while emphasising recent developments. There has been a tendency for research to examine British social welfare policy in terms of statutory services, treating the voluntary sector as an addendum. Yet historically, welfare provision has relied on a combination of public, private and voluntary sector agencies, alongside individual voluntary action, and the chapter considers the voluntary sector's long history of providing humanitarian welfare and its role in social action. The chapter also introduces theoretical frameworks through which changes discussed in this and subsequent chapters can be better understood. The rationale for the development of the voluntary sector at various times has been as a response to both state and market failures to adequately address social welfare and the chapter critically examines the sector's growth over the last 25 years in this light. It considers the paradoxical influence of government agencies in both recognising voluntary sector expertise and also constraining independent models through arrangements associated with the marketisation of welfare, increased regulation and monitoring, and dominant managerial cultures.Less
This chapter traces key changes and continuities in public policy and political ideology, mapping influences on voluntary sector change in the UK for over a century, while emphasising recent developments. There has been a tendency for research to examine British social welfare policy in terms of statutory services, treating the voluntary sector as an addendum. Yet historically, welfare provision has relied on a combination of public, private and voluntary sector agencies, alongside individual voluntary action, and the chapter considers the voluntary sector's long history of providing humanitarian welfare and its role in social action. The chapter also introduces theoretical frameworks through which changes discussed in this and subsequent chapters can be better understood. The rationale for the development of the voluntary sector at various times has been as a response to both state and market failures to adequately address social welfare and the chapter critically examines the sector's growth over the last 25 years in this light. It considers the paradoxical influence of government agencies in both recognising voluntary sector expertise and also constraining independent models through arrangements associated with the marketisation of welfare, increased regulation and monitoring, and dominant managerial cultures.
