Globalization as Governmentality

Abstract

To repeat: don't think, but look! --Ludwig Wittgenstein At 2002 International Sociological Association meeting, globalization was described in one session as the story we all know. It was suggested that whereas economists tend to develop empiricist accounts of globalization focused on outcomes, scholars of international relations and international political economy were to be commended for their move toward feminist and postpositivist accounts focused on ideas, identities, and culture. Yet in discussion that ensued it became apparent that, despite such theoretical innovations, story of globalization itself remained remarkably unaltered. The shared collective conception was one of epochal macrolevel change. The intellectual challenge was to specify more clearly content of this change, to develop more rigorous accounts of hegemonic projects and institutions, to examine consequences for different places and people, and to identify how globalization was being resisted. Our argument is that while there is considerable diversity in way that globalization is understood, above and beyond this, major international relations and international political economy theories are linked by a certain sociological and political realism. Put simply, globalization is treated as a transformation in very structure of world. This is true not just of mainstream accounts, but even many of those employing critical perspectives. The task of researcher is to capture substance of change along axes such as speed, space, time, territoriality, sovereignty, and identity. We suggest a useful alternative is to consider globalization as a governmentality, that is, as a governmental rationality. (1) More specifically, we are interested in what we call elsewhere governmentality. (2) This article demonstrates value of this approach in terms of four key questions regularly posed or implied by analysts of globalization: What is globalization? When is globalization? Where is globalization? and What are politics of globalization? Our purpose is not to venture another, truer or more complete, definition of globalization or a typology of competing theories. What we seek is a less substantialized account of globalization. With their search for hidden processes animating global change, studies of globalization have been too deep. Tully argues there has been a general reorientation in Western thinking in twentieth century ... a move away from search for an essence hidden behind human activities to surface aspects that give them meaning. (3) We think it is high time that studies of globalization also attended more closely to surfaces, practices, and routines. We argue for greater superficiality in studies of globalization, an empiricism of surface, (4) and aim to demonstrate how this approach might promote different ways of understanding present. The term has been employed in two distinct ways in literature. (5) Used in a specific sense, it denotes a particular way of thinking about and exercising power, whose historical emergence Foucault dates to eighteenth century in Europe. Here names a form of power whose logic is not defense of territory or aggrandizement of sovereign but optimization of health and welfare of population. But governmentality is also used in a second, more general, sense. This is as an approach that explores how governing always involves particular representations, knowledges, and expertise regarding that which is to be governed. This second understanding draws attention to complex relationship between thought and government. Whether it is government of an enterprise, a state, or one's own health, practice of government involves production of particular about these entities. Seeking out history of these truths affords us critical insights concerning constitution of our societies and ourselves. …