‘Drop-outs’ or ‘heritage learners’? Competing mentalities of governmentality and invested meanings at a weekend Japanese language school in the USA

Abstract

Based on fieldwork at a weekend Japanese language school in the USA in 2007–2009, this article illustrates the ways in which different regimes of government arise from an activity depending on meanings individuals invest in it. We examine how two students in the same classroom experienced two different regimes of government: one of a low-track class for ‘native speakers’ and the other of a heritage language class for bilingual speakers. Building on Mitchell Dean's reworking of Foucault, we suggest a new approach to ethnographically studying governmentality which focuses on invested meanings.