Mark Bevir and R. A. W. Rhodes
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199580750
- eISBN:
- 9780191723179
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199580750.003.0003
- Subject:
- Political Science, Comparative Politics, Political Theory
This chapter explores what many observers suggest are the leading present-day forms of interpretive social science: postmodern theories of discourse. First, we challenge the belief these approaches ...
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This chapter explores what many observers suggest are the leading present-day forms of interpretive social science: postmodern theories of discourse. First, we challenge the belief these approaches have a shared paradigm stemming from anti-foundational philosophy. Instead, we suggest that anti-foundationalism is compatible with all kinds of approaches to political science, and these approaches arose out of distinctive socialist or radical traditions, not mainstream political science. Second, we argue that much post-Marxist discourse theory still relies on structuralist and occasionally even determinist forms of explanation associated with modernist-empiricism. There is a clear tension between this lingering structuralism and historicist genealogies. Third, we suggest that discourse introduces several new topics to the theory of the state. These topics include governmentality, collective identities, ideologies, and resistance in governance.Less
This chapter explores what many observers suggest are the leading present-day forms of interpretive social science: postmodern theories of discourse. First, we challenge the belief these approaches have a shared paradigm stemming from anti-foundational philosophy. Instead, we suggest that anti-foundationalism is compatible with all kinds of approaches to political science, and these approaches arose out of distinctive socialist or radical traditions, not mainstream political science. Second, we argue that much post-Marxist discourse theory still relies on structuralist and occasionally even determinist forms of explanation associated with modernist-empiricism. There is a clear tension between this lingering structuralism and historicist genealogies. Third, we suggest that discourse introduces several new topics to the theory of the state. These topics include governmentality, collective identities, ideologies, and resistance in governance.
Nicholas Copeland
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781501736056
- eISBN:
- 9781501736070
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501736056.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Political History
What forces hinder decolonization efforts on the neoliberal terrain? In the aftermath of a genocidal scorched earth campaign, Mayas in the town of San Pedro Necta encountered a formidable ...
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What forces hinder decolonization efforts on the neoliberal terrain? In the aftermath of a genocidal scorched earth campaign, Mayas in the town of San Pedro Necta encountered a formidable democracy-development machine designed to displace radical class politics into private market advancement and local, indigenous-led electoral politics. Sampedranos regarded neoliberal democracy and development not as empty, depoliticized forms or colonial impositions, but as hard-won victories that met immediate needs and echoed revolutionary and local struggles. This historical ethnography examines how these governmentalized spaces fell short, simultaneously enabling and disfiguring an ethnic resurgence that fractured in a dispiriting atmosphere of pessimism, self-interest, deception, and mistrust. These dynamics fueled authoritarian populism but also radical reimaginings of democracy and development from below. These findings shed new light on rural politics in Guatemala and across neoliberal and post-conflict settings.Less
What forces hinder decolonization efforts on the neoliberal terrain? In the aftermath of a genocidal scorched earth campaign, Mayas in the town of San Pedro Necta encountered a formidable democracy-development machine designed to displace radical class politics into private market advancement and local, indigenous-led electoral politics. Sampedranos regarded neoliberal democracy and development not as empty, depoliticized forms or colonial impositions, but as hard-won victories that met immediate needs and echoed revolutionary and local struggles. This historical ethnography examines how these governmentalized spaces fell short, simultaneously enabling and disfiguring an ethnic resurgence that fractured in a dispiriting atmosphere of pessimism, self-interest, deception, and mistrust. These dynamics fueled authoritarian populism but also radical reimaginings of democracy and development from below. These findings shed new light on rural politics in Guatemala and across neoliberal and post-conflict settings.
Miguel de Beistegui
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226547374
- eISBN:
- 9780226547404
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226547404.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
The book is a contribution to the genealogy and critique of ourselves, and of our own present, advocated by Foucault. It does that by focusing on the problem of desire in our western culture. For ...
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The book is a contribution to the genealogy and critique of ourselves, and of our own present, advocated by Foucault. It does that by focusing on the problem of desire in our western culture. For centuries, it was thought that desire needed to be dominated in order for the good life to flourish. This began to change in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, when desire was no longer seen as something to be governed, or as an object of pastoral and spiritual care, but as an instrument of government. Liberalism, the book argues, coincides with this shift in attitude. Far from amounting to a straightforward liberation of desire, this onto-historical shift amounts to a specific process of subjectivation, one that continues to shape our present. It required the emergence of specific rationalities (political economy, the science of sexuality, the philosophy and psychology of recognition), each of which frames desire in a precise way, and the collaboration of various institutions – the court room, the market, the family, schools, the office, etc. Together, they amount to a formidable operation of normalization - that is, a new way of experiencing, understanding and governing the (desiring) self - and constitute the pillars of what, following Foucault, the book calls liberal governmentality. But a critique of ourselves also asks if and how we could govern ourselves differently, and the sort of subjects we could become. The book concludes by advocating a sovereign, anarchic form of desire as an alternative to liberal governmentality.Less
The book is a contribution to the genealogy and critique of ourselves, and of our own present, advocated by Foucault. It does that by focusing on the problem of desire in our western culture. For centuries, it was thought that desire needed to be dominated in order for the good life to flourish. This began to change in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, when desire was no longer seen as something to be governed, or as an object of pastoral and spiritual care, but as an instrument of government. Liberalism, the book argues, coincides with this shift in attitude. Far from amounting to a straightforward liberation of desire, this onto-historical shift amounts to a specific process of subjectivation, one that continues to shape our present. It required the emergence of specific rationalities (political economy, the science of sexuality, the philosophy and psychology of recognition), each of which frames desire in a precise way, and the collaboration of various institutions – the court room, the market, the family, schools, the office, etc. Together, they amount to a formidable operation of normalization - that is, a new way of experiencing, understanding and governing the (desiring) self - and constitute the pillars of what, following Foucault, the book calls liberal governmentality. But a critique of ourselves also asks if and how we could govern ourselves differently, and the sort of subjects we could become. The book concludes by advocating a sovereign, anarchic form of desire as an alternative to liberal governmentality.
M. Safa Saraçoglu
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474430999
- eISBN:
- 9781474449762
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474430999.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Middle Eastern Studies
This book explores Ottoman local governance during the liberal-capitalist state formation of the long 19th century (1789-1922) with a particular focus on the administrative and judiciary councils of ...
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This book explores Ottoman local governance during the liberal-capitalist state formation of the long 19th century (1789-1922) with a particular focus on the administrative and judiciary councils of the Vidin County in the second half of the 19th century. It explains the structure and procedures of these councils and provides an analysis of their function in local politics and economics in addition to an examination of their correspondence and people who worked in the governmental sphere dominated by these councils. Between 1396 and 1878, Vidin was a town under Ottoman administration and became a county centre in the Danube Province when an imperial reform restructured provincial governance and redefined imperial administrative divisions in 1864. The processes explored here focus mostly on the individuals’ rights to the means of production because a majority of the disputes within and petitions from the provinces during the nineteenth century were concerned with property and taxation. Local agents and groups engaged with each other within the judicio-administrative sphere dominated by these councils and sought to advance their interests by using the language, rules and practices of Ottoman governance. This book argues that in 19th century Vidin, we do not see a binary opposition between a state that coerces transformation against a society that opposes reforms. Vidiners, including the notables and the less wealthy inhabitants utilized the judicio-administrative sphere as a hegemonic domain to pursue their strategies as they problematized proper governance (debating matters of property, security, market order and population) as part of Ottoman biopolitics.Less
This book explores Ottoman local governance during the liberal-capitalist state formation of the long 19th century (1789-1922) with a particular focus on the administrative and judiciary councils of the Vidin County in the second half of the 19th century. It explains the structure and procedures of these councils and provides an analysis of their function in local politics and economics in addition to an examination of their correspondence and people who worked in the governmental sphere dominated by these councils. Between 1396 and 1878, Vidin was a town under Ottoman administration and became a county centre in the Danube Province when an imperial reform restructured provincial governance and redefined imperial administrative divisions in 1864. The processes explored here focus mostly on the individuals’ rights to the means of production because a majority of the disputes within and petitions from the provinces during the nineteenth century were concerned with property and taxation. Local agents and groups engaged with each other within the judicio-administrative sphere dominated by these councils and sought to advance their interests by using the language, rules and practices of Ottoman governance. This book argues that in 19th century Vidin, we do not see a binary opposition between a state that coerces transformation against a society that opposes reforms. Vidiners, including the notables and the less wealthy inhabitants utilized the judicio-administrative sphere as a hegemonic domain to pursue their strategies as they problematized proper governance (debating matters of property, security, market order and population) as part of Ottoman biopolitics.
Claire Edwards and Eluska Fernández (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780719095870
- eISBN:
- 9781526128607
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719095870.001.0001
- Subject:
- Public Health and Epidemiology, Public Health
Recent years have witnessed a burgeoning international literature which develops the potential of Foucauldian-inspired notions of governmentality to understand the construction of health problems, ...
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Recent years have witnessed a burgeoning international literature which develops the potential of Foucauldian-inspired notions of governmentality to understand the construction of health problems, policies and practices. This book bring these insights to bear on the Irish health policy arena through a range of empirical examples, including smoking, obesity, child health, ageing, mental health and disability, and even approaches to the dead body. It explores how specific health issues have been constructed as problematic and in need of intervention in the Irish state, and considers the strategies, discourses and technologies involved in the art of governing health in advanced liberal democracies. Through these examples, the book demonstrates how governmentality, as a social theoretical approach, can be operationalised and utilized to reframe the way we think about health problems and practices in Ireland, and how we ‘do’ heath policy analysis. Building on the dialectic between social theory and policy, the volume also reflects on the potential of govermentality for developing a critical politics of health policy in Ireland.Less
Recent years have witnessed a burgeoning international literature which develops the potential of Foucauldian-inspired notions of governmentality to understand the construction of health problems, policies and practices. This book bring these insights to bear on the Irish health policy arena through a range of empirical examples, including smoking, obesity, child health, ageing, mental health and disability, and even approaches to the dead body. It explores how specific health issues have been constructed as problematic and in need of intervention in the Irish state, and considers the strategies, discourses and technologies involved in the art of governing health in advanced liberal democracies. Through these examples, the book demonstrates how governmentality, as a social theoretical approach, can be operationalised and utilized to reframe the way we think about health problems and practices in Ireland, and how we ‘do’ heath policy analysis. Building on the dialectic between social theory and policy, the volume also reflects on the potential of govermentality for developing a critical politics of health policy in Ireland.
Jürgen Martschukat
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781479892273
- eISBN:
- 9781479804740
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479892273.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Social History
A brief introduction outlines the architecture of the book: the significance of the family for the governing of American society, the analysis of discourses with a simultaneous focus on historical ...
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A brief introduction outlines the architecture of the book: the significance of the family for the governing of American society, the analysis of discourses with a simultaneous focus on historical actors and their agency, the scrutiny of power relations in American history and society, the entanglement of close-ups and long shots in twelve separate yet interdependent chapters, and the presentation of a history of continuity and change.Less
A brief introduction outlines the architecture of the book: the significance of the family for the governing of American society, the analysis of discourses with a simultaneous focus on historical actors and their agency, the scrutiny of power relations in American history and society, the entanglement of close-ups and long shots in twelve separate yet interdependent chapters, and the presentation of a history of continuity and change.
Maiken Umbach
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199557394
- eISBN:
- 9780191721564
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199557394.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History, European Modern History
This is a study of a distinctive brand of modernism, which first emerged in late 19th‐century Germany, and remained influential throughout the inter‐war years and beyond. Its supporters saw ...
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This is a study of a distinctive brand of modernism, which first emerged in late 19th‐century Germany, and remained influential throughout the inter‐war years and beyond. Its supporters saw themselves as a new elite, ideally placed to tackle the many challenges facing the young and rapidly industrializing German nation‐state. They defined themselves as bourgeois, and acted as self‐appointed champions of a modern consciousness. Focusing on figures such as Hermann Muthesius, Fritz Schumacher, and Karl‐Ernst Osthaus, and the activities of the Deutscher Werkbund and other networks of bourgeois designers, writers and ‘experts', this book shows how bourgeois modernism shaped the infrastructure of social and political life in early 20th‐century Germany. Like the project of liberal governmentality described by Foucault, bourgeois modernism exercised its power not so much in the realm of ideas, but by transforming the physical environment of German cities, from domestic interiors, via consumer objects, to urban and regional planning. Drawing on a detailed analysis of key material sites of bourgeois modernism, and interpreting them in conjunction with written sources, this study offers new insights into the history of the bourgeois mindset and its operations in the private and public realms. Thematic chapters examine leitmotifs such as the sense of locality and place, the sense of history and time, and the sense of nature and culture. Yet for all its self‐conscious progressivism, German bourgeois modernism was not an inevitable precursor of neo‐liberal global capitalism. It remained a hotly contested historical construct, which was constantly redefined through its performance in different geographical and political settings.Less
This is a study of a distinctive brand of modernism, which first emerged in late 19th‐century Germany, and remained influential throughout the inter‐war years and beyond. Its supporters saw themselves as a new elite, ideally placed to tackle the many challenges facing the young and rapidly industrializing German nation‐state. They defined themselves as bourgeois, and acted as self‐appointed champions of a modern consciousness. Focusing on figures such as Hermann Muthesius, Fritz Schumacher, and Karl‐Ernst Osthaus, and the activities of the Deutscher Werkbund and other networks of bourgeois designers, writers and ‘experts', this book shows how bourgeois modernism shaped the infrastructure of social and political life in early 20th‐century Germany. Like the project of liberal governmentality described by Foucault, bourgeois modernism exercised its power not so much in the realm of ideas, but by transforming the physical environment of German cities, from domestic interiors, via consumer objects, to urban and regional planning. Drawing on a detailed analysis of key material sites of bourgeois modernism, and interpreting them in conjunction with written sources, this study offers new insights into the history of the bourgeois mindset and its operations in the private and public realms. Thematic chapters examine leitmotifs such as the sense of locality and place, the sense of history and time, and the sense of nature and culture. Yet for all its self‐conscious progressivism, German bourgeois modernism was not an inevitable precursor of neo‐liberal global capitalism. It remained a hotly contested historical construct, which was constantly redefined through its performance in different geographical and political settings.
Rafael Sánchez
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823263653
- eISBN:
- 9780823268887
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823263653.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Latin American Cultural Anthropology
Since independence from Spain the trope of an endless antagonism pitting civilization against barbarism has remained pervasive in Latin America’s republican imaginary. This book apprehends that trope ...
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Since independence from Spain the trope of an endless antagonism pitting civilization against barbarism has remained pervasive in Latin America’s republican imaginary. This book apprehends that trope not just as the phantasmatic projection of postcolonial elites fearful of the popular sectors, but also as a symptom of a stubborn historical predicament: the cyclical insistence with which the subaltern populations return to the nation’s public spaces in the form of crowds. Focused on Venezuela but relevant to Latin America, Dancing Jacobins is a genealogical investigation of the populist “monumental governmentality” that in response to this predicament began to take shape in that nation at the time of independence. Informed by a Bolivarian political theology, the nation’s representatives, or “dancing Jacobins,” recursively draw on the repertoire of busts, portraits, and equestrian statues of national heroes scattered across Venezuela in a montage of monuments and dancing—or universal and particular. They monumentalize themselves on the stage of the polity as a ponderously statuesque yet occasionally riotous reflection of the nation’s general will. To this day, the nervous oscillation between crowds and peoplehood intrinsic to this form of government has inflected the republic’s institutions and constructs, from the sovereign “people” to the nation’s heroic imaginary, its constitutional texts, representative figures, parliamentary structures, and last, but not least, its army. Through this movement of collection and dispersion these institutions are at all times haunted and imbued from within by the crowds that they otherwise set out to mould, enframe, and address.Less
Since independence from Spain the trope of an endless antagonism pitting civilization against barbarism has remained pervasive in Latin America’s republican imaginary. This book apprehends that trope not just as the phantasmatic projection of postcolonial elites fearful of the popular sectors, but also as a symptom of a stubborn historical predicament: the cyclical insistence with which the subaltern populations return to the nation’s public spaces in the form of crowds. Focused on Venezuela but relevant to Latin America, Dancing Jacobins is a genealogical investigation of the populist “monumental governmentality” that in response to this predicament began to take shape in that nation at the time of independence. Informed by a Bolivarian political theology, the nation’s representatives, or “dancing Jacobins,” recursively draw on the repertoire of busts, portraits, and equestrian statues of national heroes scattered across Venezuela in a montage of monuments and dancing—or universal and particular. They monumentalize themselves on the stage of the polity as a ponderously statuesque yet occasionally riotous reflection of the nation’s general will. To this day, the nervous oscillation between crowds and peoplehood intrinsic to this form of government has inflected the republic’s institutions and constructs, from the sovereign “people” to the nation’s heroic imaginary, its constitutional texts, representative figures, parliamentary structures, and last, but not least, its army. Through this movement of collection and dispersion these institutions are at all times haunted and imbued from within by the crowds that they otherwise set out to mould, enframe, and address.
Paul Sargent
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780719089169
- eISBN:
- 9781781706626
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719089169.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Law, Crime and Deviance
This book is the first history of juvenile justice in Ireland. Utilising a ‘governmentality’ framework, it charts the emergence of juvenile justice from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the ...
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This book is the first history of juvenile justice in Ireland. Utilising a ‘governmentality’ framework, it charts the emergence of juvenile justice from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present. It unearths the underlying rationalities, technologies and forms of identity that are employed to govern the child and young person within the modern Irish juvenile justice system. In Ireland, the state was to a large extent absent from the practicalities of regulating children for most of the twentieth century, abdicating its responsibilities to religious and voluntary organisations. Also, for almost a century there was little in the way of legislative or policy development in this area. With this in mind, it makes little sense to concentrate primarily on the state in order to explain how we arrived at the youth justice system. By utilising a governmentality approach the book takes the focus away from an analysis of the ‘state’ and concentrates on an analysis of the ‘problematics’ of government. The book charts the changing mentalities or lines of government in a wide range of documents, including reports of inspectors of reformatory and industrial schools, reports from prison authorities, police reports, reports of commissions of inquiry, reports from lobbyists, individual testimonies, academic studies, policy or strategy documents, management guidelines and training and practice manuals.Less
This book is the first history of juvenile justice in Ireland. Utilising a ‘governmentality’ framework, it charts the emergence of juvenile justice from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present. It unearths the underlying rationalities, technologies and forms of identity that are employed to govern the child and young person within the modern Irish juvenile justice system. In Ireland, the state was to a large extent absent from the practicalities of regulating children for most of the twentieth century, abdicating its responsibilities to religious and voluntary organisations. Also, for almost a century there was little in the way of legislative or policy development in this area. With this in mind, it makes little sense to concentrate primarily on the state in order to explain how we arrived at the youth justice system. By utilising a governmentality approach the book takes the focus away from an analysis of the ‘state’ and concentrates on an analysis of the ‘problematics’ of government. The book charts the changing mentalities or lines of government in a wide range of documents, including reports of inspectors of reformatory and industrial schools, reports from prison authorities, police reports, reports of commissions of inquiry, reports from lobbyists, individual testimonies, academic studies, policy or strategy documents, management guidelines and training and practice manuals.
Maiken Umbach
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199557394
- eISBN:
- 9780191721564
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199557394.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History, European Modern History
This chapter analyses the discourse of ‘Bürgerlichkeit’ in German reformist circles, arguing that it designated not a class identity, but the political ambition to invent a modern bourgeois identity, ...
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This chapter analyses the discourse of ‘Bürgerlichkeit’ in German reformist circles, arguing that it designated not a class identity, but the political ambition to invent a modern bourgeois identity, which was defined through individual self‐cultivation (Bildung) on the one hand, and rigorous self‐control and discipline on the other. The chapter traces how this bourgeois habitus emerged out of German Enlightenment culture, and became a prerequisite for the transformation of direct rule into ‘liberal’ or indirect government. This process is exemplified through a close reading of Muthesius's music chamber as a training ground for bourgeois sensibilities and sensory control. The chapter then traces how in modern German cities at large, a new visual openness was constantly kept in check by the invention of new psychic ordering mechanisms, which became more pronounced and openly authoritarian during the Weimar years.Less
This chapter analyses the discourse of ‘Bürgerlichkeit’ in German reformist circles, arguing that it designated not a class identity, but the political ambition to invent a modern bourgeois identity, which was defined through individual self‐cultivation (Bildung) on the one hand, and rigorous self‐control and discipline on the other. The chapter traces how this bourgeois habitus emerged out of German Enlightenment culture, and became a prerequisite for the transformation of direct rule into ‘liberal’ or indirect government. This process is exemplified through a close reading of Muthesius's music chamber as a training ground for bourgeois sensibilities and sensory control. The chapter then traces how in modern German cities at large, a new visual openness was constantly kept in check by the invention of new psychic ordering mechanisms, which became more pronounced and openly authoritarian during the Weimar years.
Tom Boland and Ray Griffin (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719097904
- eISBN:
- 9781781708903
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719097904.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
Unemployment is not just the absence of work, but a specific experience, formed historically by various forms of governmentality. Indeed, only those who meet the official criteria are registered as ...
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Unemployment is not just the absence of work, but a specific experience, formed historically by various forms of governmentality. Indeed, only those who meet the official criteria are registered as unemployed, and thereafter have their lives shaped and managed by governmental institutions. Generally, social science understands unemployment as the absence of work, particularly through the ‘deprivation theory’. However, this volume demonstrates how these cultural values actually reflexively shape the experience of unemployment and even inform governmental practices. Drawing from multiple studies with diverse methods, the book fleshes out the complex experience of unemployment. Then, we turn to the various forms, organisations and sites which governmentally define and shape unemployment, including claims forms, welfare offices, social policy and job-seeking advice. Finally, we examine how unemployment is constituted publicly through the performative measures of official statistics and the relatively limited range of narratives and values within print media coverage. Taken together, these chapters constitute a new perspective on unemployment as a diverse experience, reflexively shaped by the idea that individuals are shaped decisively by the absence of a job, but most particularly shaped by governmental interventions which have accumulated historically over decades and centuries. While drawn from the context of recent Irish experience, this perspective is relevant to any contemporary welfare state.Less
Unemployment is not just the absence of work, but a specific experience, formed historically by various forms of governmentality. Indeed, only those who meet the official criteria are registered as unemployed, and thereafter have their lives shaped and managed by governmental institutions. Generally, social science understands unemployment as the absence of work, particularly through the ‘deprivation theory’. However, this volume demonstrates how these cultural values actually reflexively shape the experience of unemployment and even inform governmental practices. Drawing from multiple studies with diverse methods, the book fleshes out the complex experience of unemployment. Then, we turn to the various forms, organisations and sites which governmentally define and shape unemployment, including claims forms, welfare offices, social policy and job-seeking advice. Finally, we examine how unemployment is constituted publicly through the performative measures of official statistics and the relatively limited range of narratives and values within print media coverage. Taken together, these chapters constitute a new perspective on unemployment as a diverse experience, reflexively shaped by the idea that individuals are shaped decisively by the absence of a job, but most particularly shaped by governmental interventions which have accumulated historically over decades and centuries. While drawn from the context of recent Irish experience, this perspective is relevant to any contemporary welfare state.
Richard Iton
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195178463
- eISBN:
- 9780199851812
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195178463.003.0005
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
When trying to establish the identity of something, one does not automatically refer to the aspects that do not involve the subject, or to attributes from which the subject is exempted. That being ...
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When trying to establish the identity of something, one does not automatically refer to the aspects that do not involve the subject, or to attributes from which the subject is exempted. That being said, and the word citizen being taken into consideration, it is therefore essential to know the values and limitations that this term is to assume. We have to identify a field that would dictate the styles of engagement and interpellation, agendas, and the goals and orders of politics. Looking into Foucault's notion of governmentality and biopolitics, this chapter concentrates on welfare policy and the movement that resulted in the removal of federal financial support for Americans who earn lower level incomes. More so, we study how the black community has reacted through popular culture to such political and cultural issues.Less
When trying to establish the identity of something, one does not automatically refer to the aspects that do not involve the subject, or to attributes from which the subject is exempted. That being said, and the word citizen being taken into consideration, it is therefore essential to know the values and limitations that this term is to assume. We have to identify a field that would dictate the styles of engagement and interpellation, agendas, and the goals and orders of politics. Looking into Foucault's notion of governmentality and biopolitics, this chapter concentrates on welfare policy and the movement that resulted in the removal of federal financial support for Americans who earn lower level incomes. More so, we study how the black community has reacted through popular culture to such political and cultural issues.
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.
Christine Hentschel
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816694310
- eISBN:
- 9781452952475
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816694310.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
Security in the Bubble is about the struggles of urbanites to come to terms with life in the city as dangerous. This book examines newly emerging aesthetic, affective and inclusionary spatialities of ...
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Security in the Bubble is about the struggles of urbanites to come to terms with life in the city as dangerous. This book examines newly emerging aesthetic, affective and inclusionary spatialities of security governance. Urban South Africa is an especially pertinent site for such an endeavour: post-apartheid South Africa has reinvented space, using it as a technique of governance in more “positive” and sophisticated ways that ultimately alter the landscape of urban fragmentation. No longer reducible to the after-pains of racial apartheid nor to a new class segregation, this fragmentation is now better conceptualized as a heterogeneous ensemble of bubbles of (imagined) safety. Security in the Bubble is about the political dilemma that this landscape of bubbles creates: Security can only be achieved through particularistic strategies against the commons of the city. The book traces two emerging urban regimes of governing security in contemporary Durban: handsome space and instant space. Handsome space is about aesthetic and affective communication as means to make places safe. Instant space addresses the personal crime-related “navigation” systems of urban residents as they circulate through the city. In both regimes, security is not conceived as a public good, but as a situational experience. The logic of these regimes cuts across distinctions of private and public places or informal and formal actors of security governance and follows remarkably similar rationales of ordering, whether in a bar, a city improvement district, or an informal parking lot.Less
Security in the Bubble is about the struggles of urbanites to come to terms with life in the city as dangerous. This book examines newly emerging aesthetic, affective and inclusionary spatialities of security governance. Urban South Africa is an especially pertinent site for such an endeavour: post-apartheid South Africa has reinvented space, using it as a technique of governance in more “positive” and sophisticated ways that ultimately alter the landscape of urban fragmentation. No longer reducible to the after-pains of racial apartheid nor to a new class segregation, this fragmentation is now better conceptualized as a heterogeneous ensemble of bubbles of (imagined) safety. Security in the Bubble is about the political dilemma that this landscape of bubbles creates: Security can only be achieved through particularistic strategies against the commons of the city. The book traces two emerging urban regimes of governing security in contemporary Durban: handsome space and instant space. Handsome space is about aesthetic and affective communication as means to make places safe. Instant space addresses the personal crime-related “navigation” systems of urban residents as they circulate through the city. In both regimes, security is not conceived as a public good, but as a situational experience. The logic of these regimes cuts across distinctions of private and public places or informal and formal actors of security governance and follows remarkably similar rationales of ordering, whether in a bar, a city improvement district, or an informal parking lot.
Nicholas Heron
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780823278688
- eISBN:
- 9780823280537
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823278688.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
To the question that animated the twentieth-century debate on political theology—namely, whether Christianity is exclusively a religious phenomenon, which must separate itself from all things ...
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To the question that animated the twentieth-century debate on political theology—namely, whether Christianity is exclusively a religious phenomenon, which must separate itself from all things political, or whether its concepts instead underpin secular politics, thereby conditioning and informing its practices—this book advances a third alternative: Christian anti-politics, it contends, entails its own distinct conception of politics. Yet this politics, it argues, in concert with Giorgio Agamben’s recent intervention in this field of inquiry, assumes the form of what today we call “administration,” which the ancients termed “economics.” The book’s principal aim is thus genealogical: It seeks to understand our current conception of government in the light of an important but rarely acknowledged transformation in the idea of politics brought about by Christianity. This transformation in the idea of politics also in turn precipitates a concurrent shift in the organisation of power; an organisation whose determining principle, the book contends, is liturgy (understood in the broad sense as “public service”). To date, only an emphasis on its acclamatory dimension has made the concept of liturgy available for political theory; this book seeks to position it instead as a technique of governance. What Christianity has bequeathed to political thought and forms, it argues, is thus a paradoxical technology of power that is grounded uniquely in service.Less
To the question that animated the twentieth-century debate on political theology—namely, whether Christianity is exclusively a religious phenomenon, which must separate itself from all things political, or whether its concepts instead underpin secular politics, thereby conditioning and informing its practices—this book advances a third alternative: Christian anti-politics, it contends, entails its own distinct conception of politics. Yet this politics, it argues, in concert with Giorgio Agamben’s recent intervention in this field of inquiry, assumes the form of what today we call “administration,” which the ancients termed “economics.” The book’s principal aim is thus genealogical: It seeks to understand our current conception of government in the light of an important but rarely acknowledged transformation in the idea of politics brought about by Christianity. This transformation in the idea of politics also in turn precipitates a concurrent shift in the organisation of power; an organisation whose determining principle, the book contends, is liturgy (understood in the broad sense as “public service”). To date, only an emphasis on its acclamatory dimension has made the concept of liturgy available for political theory; this book seeks to position it instead as a technique of governance. What Christianity has bequeathed to political thought and forms, it argues, is thus a paradoxical technology of power that is grounded uniquely in service.
Brian Lund
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781447327073
- eISBN:
- 9781447327097
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781447327073.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, UK Politics
Housing has been labelled a ‘wicked’ problem: complex, territorial, open-ended and intractable. This book underscores the role of politics in generating this ‘wickedness’, highlighting the ‘actors’ ...
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Housing has been labelled a ‘wicked’ problem: complex, territorial, open-ended and intractable. This book underscores the role of politics in generating this ‘wickedness’, highlighting the ‘actors’ engaged in the process within their political institutions and the entrenched territorial electoral politics involved in the ‘housing question’. It concentrates on the preparing, disputing and implementing policy rather than on policy outcomes and the social and economic determinants ― industrialisation, capitalism, globalisation ― of continuity and change. The major theoretical approaches framing its content are the ‘new institutionalism’, social constructionism and public choice theory. The sub-title reflects the book’s themes. Power is acquired formally through the electoral system but is exercised through a variety of mechanisms including ‘governmentality’ ― the techniques that regulate and order behaviour. Planning draws attention to attempts to modify the role of markets in housing outcomes and includes land use planning and the influence of alleged ‘rational’ solutions applied to ‘the housing problem’ manifest in housing design and specific interventions aimed at mitigating housing problems. Protest concerns the ‘outsiders’ in the political system and their attempts to secure a voice often outside the normal institutional channels approved by authorities and perhaps eventually become the power holders.Less
Housing has been labelled a ‘wicked’ problem: complex, territorial, open-ended and intractable. This book underscores the role of politics in generating this ‘wickedness’, highlighting the ‘actors’ engaged in the process within their political institutions and the entrenched territorial electoral politics involved in the ‘housing question’. It concentrates on the preparing, disputing and implementing policy rather than on policy outcomes and the social and economic determinants ― industrialisation, capitalism, globalisation ― of continuity and change. The major theoretical approaches framing its content are the ‘new institutionalism’, social constructionism and public choice theory. The sub-title reflects the book’s themes. Power is acquired formally through the electoral system but is exercised through a variety of mechanisms including ‘governmentality’ ― the techniques that regulate and order behaviour. Planning draws attention to attempts to modify the role of markets in housing outcomes and includes land use planning and the influence of alleged ‘rational’ solutions applied to ‘the housing problem’ manifest in housing design and specific interventions aimed at mitigating housing problems. Protest concerns the ‘outsiders’ in the political system and their attempts to secure a voice often outside the normal institutional channels approved by authorities and perhaps eventually become the power holders.
Alexander Somek
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199542086
- eISBN:
- 9780191715518
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199542086.003.0012
- Subject:
- Law, Philosophy of Law, EU Law
This chapter takes up individualism's core claim to authority, namely, its appeal to the self's interest. What this claim means is less obvious when the Union promises bounties, as in the case of ...
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This chapter takes up individualism's core claim to authority, namely, its appeal to the self's interest. What this claim means is less obvious when the Union promises bounties, as in the case of European citizenship, than in cases where the pursuit of self-interest involves sacrifice. Arguably, an appeal to self-interest is essentially about the future remuneration that comes from forgoing pleasure. Pursuing one's self-interest, thus understood, requires rational conduct. In order not merely to think, but also to behave rationally, people have to have a certain soul. The unhappiness involved in sacrifice needs to be sustainable. The chapter explores the hidden link between this citizen's soul and the emergence of Union policies where the Union is cast as an inexpensive, neoliberal, caring state.Less
This chapter takes up individualism's core claim to authority, namely, its appeal to the self's interest. What this claim means is less obvious when the Union promises bounties, as in the case of European citizenship, than in cases where the pursuit of self-interest involves sacrifice. Arguably, an appeal to self-interest is essentially about the future remuneration that comes from forgoing pleasure. Pursuing one's self-interest, thus understood, requires rational conduct. In order not merely to think, but also to behave rationally, people have to have a certain soul. The unhappiness involved in sacrifice needs to be sustainable. The chapter explores the hidden link between this citizen's soul and the emergence of Union policies where the Union is cast as an inexpensive, neoliberal, caring state.
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:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199603015.003.0001
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Public Management
This introductory chapter sets out the rationale of the book and outlines its major themes. It seeks to generate an overall interpretation of health policy reforming under New Labour based on ...
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This introductory chapter sets out the rationale of the book and outlines its major themes. It seeks to generate an overall interpretation of health policy reforming under New Labour based on empirically grounded and comparative case studies of managed networks drawn from four health policy arenas. It highlights our distinctive contribution to the debate, bringing in organizing concepts of wicked problems and governmentality. It suggests that if managed networks are to make substantial progress then they need to be supported in three key domains (cross-organizational ICTs, cross-organizational learning, and lateral leadership). It finally provides signposts to each of the chapters in turn.Less
This introductory chapter sets out the rationale of the book and outlines its major themes. It seeks to generate an overall interpretation of health policy reforming under New Labour based on empirically grounded and comparative case studies of managed networks drawn from four health policy arenas. It highlights our distinctive contribution to the debate, bringing in organizing concepts of wicked problems and governmentality. It suggests that if managed networks are to make substantial progress then they need to be supported in three key domains (cross-organizational ICTs, cross-organizational learning, and lateral leadership). It finally provides signposts to each of the chapters in turn.
Darin Stephanov
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474441414
- eISBN:
- 9781474460255
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474441414.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Middle Eastern Studies
‘What do we really speak of when we speak of the modern ethno-national mindset and where shall we search for its roots?’
This is the central question of a book arguing that the periodic ceremonial ...
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‘What do we really speak of when we speak of the modern ethno-national mindset and where shall we search for its roots?’
This is the central question of a book arguing that the periodic ceremonial intrusion into the everyday lives of people across the Ottoman Empire, which the annual royal birthday and accession-day celebrations constituted, had multiple, far-reaching, and largely unexplored consequences. On the one hand, it brought ordinary subjects into symbolic contact with the monarch and forged lasting vertical ties of loyalty to him, irrespective of language, location, creed or class. On the other hand, the rounds of royal celebration played a key role in the creation of new types of horizontal ties and ethnic group consciousness that crystallized into national movements, and, after the empire’s demise, national monarchies.
The book discusses the themes of public space/sphere, the Tanzimat reforms, millet, modernity, nationalism, governmentality, and the modern state, among others. It offers a new, thirteen-point model of modern belonging based on the concept of ruler visibility.Less
‘What do we really speak of when we speak of the modern ethno-national mindset and where shall we search for its roots?’
This is the central question of a book arguing that the periodic ceremonial intrusion into the everyday lives of people across the Ottoman Empire, which the annual royal birthday and accession-day celebrations constituted, had multiple, far-reaching, and largely unexplored consequences. On the one hand, it brought ordinary subjects into symbolic contact with the monarch and forged lasting vertical ties of loyalty to him, irrespective of language, location, creed or class. On the other hand, the rounds of royal celebration played a key role in the creation of new types of horizontal ties and ethnic group consciousness that crystallized into national movements, and, after the empire’s demise, national monarchies.
The book discusses the themes of public space/sphere, the Tanzimat reforms, millet, modernity, nationalism, governmentality, and the modern state, among others. It offers a new, thirteen-point model of modern belonging based on the concept of ruler visibility.
Richard A. Lynch
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780823271252
- eISBN:
- 9780823271290
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823271252.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
The central thesis of this book is that Michel Foucault’s account of power does not foreclose the possibility of ethics; on the contrary, it provides a framework within which ethics becomes possible. ...
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The central thesis of this book is that Michel Foucault’s account of power does not foreclose the possibility of ethics; on the contrary, it provides a framework within which ethics becomes possible. Tracing the evolution of Foucault’s analysis of power from his early articulations of disciplinary power to his theorizations of biopower and governmentality, the book shows how Foucault’s ethical project emerged through two interwoven trajectories: analysis of classical practices of the care of the self, and engaged practice in and reflection upon the limits of sexuality and the development of friendship in gay communities. These strands of experience and inquiry allowed Foucault to develop contrasting yet interwoven aspects of his ethics; they also underscored how ethical practice emerges within and from contexts of power relations. The gay community’s response to AIDS and its parallels with the feminist ethics of care serve to illustrate the resources of a Foucauldian ethic—a fundamentally critical attitude, with substantive (but revisable) values and norms grounded in a practice of freedom.Less
The central thesis of this book is that Michel Foucault’s account of power does not foreclose the possibility of ethics; on the contrary, it provides a framework within which ethics becomes possible. Tracing the evolution of Foucault’s analysis of power from his early articulations of disciplinary power to his theorizations of biopower and governmentality, the book shows how Foucault’s ethical project emerged through two interwoven trajectories: analysis of classical practices of the care of the self, and engaged practice in and reflection upon the limits of sexuality and the development of friendship in gay communities. These strands of experience and inquiry allowed Foucault to develop contrasting yet interwoven aspects of his ethics; they also underscored how ethical practice emerges within and from contexts of power relations. The gay community’s response to AIDS and its parallels with the feminist ethics of care serve to illustrate the resources of a Foucauldian ethic—a fundamentally critical attitude, with substantive (but revisable) values and norms grounded in a practice of freedom.
