Abstract
Since 1945 in the West we have seen a multiplication and diversification of arguments for and against regulation, with sexual liberation arguments put by sex therapists at one extreme and legal moralism at the other. For government this revolves round the need to fmd a 'rational' solution to problems posed by governments themselves about the management of mass populations enclosed in confmed spaces. 'Government rationality' or 'governmentality' is aimed at maximising 'social defence' or 'security', and so to construct 'techniques of power' and power Iknowledge complexes that allow the surveillance, disciplining and control of both individual and group behaviour (Foucault 1991; Burchell et at. 1991). Government sees the need to control growing populations, dangerous bodies and rogue reproduction, and it develops 'bio-power' to do this. Controlled populations respond by developing 'counter-conducts'. This conflicts with the very freedoms liberal governments are committed to protect, so they become trapped in the logic of governmentality and by problems of governability (Burchell et at. 1991: 46-8).
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