Pastoral power outside Foucault’s Europe: public education and the ‘epistemic authority’ of social scientists in Mexico

Abstract

This article presents a genealogical analysis of the ‘epistemic authority’ practices by social scientists in the public-university field in Mexico. Drawing on Foucault’s genealogy of governmentality and his concept of pastoral power, I will argue that there is a contested, partial yet pervasive continuity between the pastoral techniques of government and education implemented by the Catholic Church and clergy in colonial Mexico and both the current authority practices by secular social scientists and the secular constitutional principles of public education in this country. In arguing this, I will also criticise Foucault’s Eurocentric theorisations by accounting for an overlooked modality of pastoral power.