Neoliberalism, Governmentality, and Ethnography: A rejoinder

Abstract

Mitchell Dean and I agree there is an important discussion to be had about Foucault and the social sciences. My recent article sought to advance this debate. Dean has responded because he views my article as an attack on his work. This interpretation is mistaken. My article is not focused on Dean’s work though, as he points out, it does make reference to what he has called his “very simplified framework” for engaging in an analytics of governmentality.1 My article seeks to explain the logics that underpin recent efforts to use ethnographic methods (broadly defined) together with an analytics of governmentality. The arguments that motivate these “ethnographic” works have been advanced by various scholars for a number of years. However, the visibility of these works has been reduced by the fact that they have been scattered across various social science disciplines. My article also locates these works within broader debates about governmentality studies, including common criticisms. In his response, Dean pursues four key criticisms of my article, suggesting that it: (1) makes an untenable claim that Foucault was a realist sociologist “seeking to access the complexity of everyday life”2; (2) claims ethnography has “special access to the real in the form of ‘actual people’”3; (3) accuses the governmentality literature of a tendency towards “cookie-cutter” analysis, but fails to name an author or work that displays this weakness; and (4) discusses what Dean has referred to as his “simplified framework” in Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society4 but fails to consider his other works. I will address each of these points in turn. First, Dean devotes three pages to advancing the claim that my article argues that Foucault was a realist who addressed the “sociological reality of the singular ontological domain of practice”5 and who sought “to access the complexity of everyday life,”6 with