Governmentality

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Governmentality

The term governmentality was coined by the French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault (1926–1984). Foucault’s gouvernementalité was derived from the French word gouvernemental meaning “concerning government.” Foucault introduced the notion in his lectures of 1978 and 1979 at the Collège de France as a guiding principle in his “genealogy of the modern state” (Foucault 2004a, 2004b) illustrating his working hypothesis on the reciprocal constitution of technologies of power and political rationalities. Also, Foucault uses the notion of government in a sense geared strongly to the older meaning of the term, stressing the close link between forms of power and processes of subjectification. He demonstrates that in addition to the management by the state or the administration, government in the past also signified problems of self-control, guidance for the family, management of the household, or directing the soul. For this reason, Foucault defines government as “the conduct of conduct” and thus as a term that ranges from “governing the self” to “governing others” (Foucault 1982, pp. 220–221).

Foucault’s lectures trace the genealogy of governmentality from classical Greek and Roman days via the notion of state reason and the science of the police in early modernity through to liberal and neoliberal forms of government. While Foucault’s analytics of government remained more a fragmentary sketch than an elaborated theory, it has nevertheless inspired many studies in the social sciences and historical investigations. Especially in Great Britain, Australia, Canada, and the United States, scholars have sought to refine and extend Foucault’s work for a critical analysis of political technologies and governmental rationalities in contemporary societies.

These “studies of governmentality” have focused on the shift from the Keynesian welfare state toward the so-called free market policies in Western democracies and the rise of neoliberal political programs. The concept of governmentality offers two important theoretical advantages for this line of investigation. First, power relations are not restricted to the government of the state but include all forms of directing and guiding individuals and collectives in civil society and in the economic sphere. According to this theoretical perspective, the differences between state and society, politics and economy, the private and the public sphere do not function as universal foundations or essential borderlines, but as elements and effects of technologies of government that could be studied and critically assessed (see Foucault 1991, p. 103). Secondly, the liberal polarity of subjectivity and power ceases to be plausible. From the perspective of governmentality, government refers to a continuum, which extends from political government right through to forms of self-regulation. This theoretical stance allows for a more complex analysis of neoliberal forms of government that feature not only direct intervention by political authorities and empowered state agencies, but also develop indirect techniques for guiding and controlling individuals.

SEE ALSO Economics, Keynesian; Foucault, Michel; Government; Liberalism; Welfare State

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dean, Mitchell. 1999. Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Foucault, Michel. 1982. The Subject and the Power. In Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, by Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, 208–226. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Foucault, Michel. 1991. Governmentality. In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, eds. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, 87–104. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Foucault, Michel. 2004a. Sécurité, territoire, population: Cours au Collège de France, 1977–1978. Paris: Gallimard/Seuil.