Government Studies Research Articles

The government of life: an effect of neoliberal political rationality

This article analyzes the strategies of post-military dictatorship governments until the government Dilma Rousseff to show the emergency conditions of public policies of social assistance in Brazil in a date/ dated political rationality and human life becomes useful and efficient neoliberal logic. To realize this analysis, we look at the conditions that ac-companied the emergence and articulation of a set of discourses (practices) social assis-tance the government strategies in today, identifying the event discourse from which it came to define social assistance. From Foucault's studies of governmentality, we organized this discussion from two points - that government wants to talk and government stakes in Brazil and neoliberalism. Thus, we pointed out as such proliferation of social assistance policies consistent with a neoliberal agenda, already announced and established in the country, which leads to life government.

‘The spirits that we summoned’: A study on how the ‘governed’ make accounting their own in the context of market-making programs in Nepal

This paper presents an ethnography on the ways in which a large international NGO operating in Nepal mobilizes accounting in order to make operable a new market-based approach to development. Focusing on diverse groups of actors along the chain of translation, we show how it required unfolding experimentation to make accounting fit local contexts. Initially, these unfolding forms of using accounting constituted a particular strength in inscribing the ideals of the markets into the everyday doings of beneficiaries. However, we continue to explore the momentum created by the increasing levels of reflexivity on the side of ‘the governed’ that led to unforeseen discoveries in which also their personal hopes and desires, initially vague and abstract, can become translated into the NGO’s accounting designs. In so doing, accounting became locally reprogrammed into a host within which seemingly unrelated local ambitions matured into enforceable agendas - something which gradually eroded accounting’s thrust to govern along the NGO’s aspired market rationales. We built upon studies in governmentality and Michel de Certeau’s theory of everyday practice to conceptualize a form of resistance that is not outside accounting’s webs of power but emerges in the course of ‘consuming’ accounting locally. We demonstrate how this resistance through (rather than against) accounting left the NGO with little capacity to guard against the ways in which the project became used for different ends locally. Like Goethe’s sorcerer’s apprentice, the NGO’s managers did not get rid of the ’spirits that they summoned’ but became trapped in their own accounting and, at least in part, themselves subject to governance ‘from below’.

Private security guards policing public space: using soft power in place of legal authority

ABSTRACT Only a few studies have examined how private security guards operate in public spaces. In order to address this gap, this paper examines a public/private partnership of installing security guards on a public square in Aarhus, Denmark. This was a response to the presence of a group of homeless and marginalised alcohol and drug users. The policing of the public square was investigated through document analysis, interviews with different stakeholders and observations with a patrolling security guard. The case study illustrates that private security guards are able to exercise considerable control in public spaces, without having any legal authority over these spaces. Furthermore, by drawing on the analytical framework of governmentality studies, the case illustrates how the security guards were engaged in practices of ‘soft power’ in their policing of the public square. This constitutes a contribution to the growing literature that has started to survey the different powers and resources at the disposal of private security.

Governmentality and Language

This article reviews how the analytics of governmentality have been taken up by scholars in linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, and applied linguistics. It explores the distinctive logics of “linguistic governmentality” understood as techniques and forms of expertise that seek to govern, guide, and shape (rather than force) linguistic conduct and subjectivity at the level of the population or the individual. Governmentality brings new perspectives to the study of language ideologies and practices informing modernist and neoliberal language planning and policies, the technologies of knowledge they generate, and the contestations that surround them. Recent work in this vein is deepening our understanding of “language”—understood as an array of verbal and nonverbal communicative practices—as a medium through which neoliberal governmentality is exercised. The article concludes by considering how a critical sociolinguistics of governmentality can address some shortcomings in the study of governmentality and advance the study of language, power, and inequality.

Neoliberal environmentality in the land of Gross National Happiness

This paper explores how a growing trend towards neoliberalization throughout Bhutan manifests within environmental governance in particular. Bhutan’s well-known Gross National Happiness (GNH) development strategy can be seen to represent a shift towards a variegated governmentality more generally that increasingly exhibits neoliberal tendencies as the country seeks to negotiate its further integration into the global economy. Part of this integration entails efforts to promote ecotourism as a key element of the country’s future conservation strategy. Ecotourism has been described as a growing manifestation of a “neoliberal environmentality” (Fletcher, 2010) within environmental conservation policy and practice, and hence Bhutan’s promotion of ecotourism can be seen as contributing to the promotion of neoliberal conservation. Yet in practice, my analysis demonstrates that environmental governance in Bhutan is a complex of external neoliberal influences filtered through local formal and informal institutions, specifically a Buddhist worldview, a history of state paternalism and the Gross National Happiness governance model, all of which express contrasting governance rationalities. This study thus contributes to governmentality studies by promoting a variegated environmentality perspective that calls for more nuanced analyses beyond “variegated” neoliberalization. This perspective also affords a holistic understanding of discrepancies between the vision and execution of neoliberal conservation that can be attributed to the articulation of alternative rationalities in policy formulation and implementation.

The New Mongolian State Herder: Examining Invocations and Improvisations of the State in Rural Mongolia

This article aims to advance understandings of contemporary state-making in rural Mongolia, contingent on historical processes rather than a taken-for-granted natural category. Writing on postsocialist Mongolia often emphasizes the “retreat of the state” in rural areas; this article offers a counterpoint to this discourse by illustrating the ways in which herder livelihoods and the idealization of herder labor are actively drawn into contemporary state-making practices. Based on ethnographic research in Bayanhongor province, this article examines the interactions between an active local government administration system and pastoralist households at the subdistrict level in rural Mongolia. The analysis focuses on the implementation of two government initiatives tailored for herder households: a State Herder diploma, medal, and stamp, as well as a government–herder communication notebook. Governmentality studies, performativity theory, and the concept of improvisation provide a conceptual framework to argue that the neoliberal retreat of the state in rural Mongolia does not adequately capture the types of state-making in the 2010s. Rather, it proposes that scholars should shift attention to how the rural governance works on the ground and focus on the ways in which the state is invoked and made visible in everyday practice with attention to historical legacies. Key Words: governmentality, improvisation, Mongolia, pastoralism, the state.

Making up leaders: Reconfiguring the executive student through profiling, texts and conversations in a leadership development programme

Are leaders born or made? In this study of contemporary leadership development programmes, we find that leaders are not only made but also – in Ian Hacking’s sense – made up. Such programmes increasingly employ practices like personality profiling, appraisals, feedback and coaching aimed at creating knowledge about individual leaders in order for them to develop. The effects of these practices on participants have been theorized in terms of identity regulation and resistance, yet in our view the situated accomplishments of authority and identity remain inadequately theorized. This study follows a number of such practices as texts and conversations, and shows how a programme participant’s leader identity becomes authorized and acknowledged as participants and instructors ventriloquize texts in conversations. We theorize this as identity reconfiguration, as it entails the continual staging and authorizing of diverse figures. Our findings have implications for the relation between governmentality studies and studies of texts and conversations in leadership development programmes as well as for how we approach agency and context in this realm.

Security in the sovereignty-governmentality continuum

There is broad interest in both analytics and politics of governmentality in international security studies. Going beyond sovereignty-focussed perspectives, governmentality approaches contribute to a better understanding of security rationalities, strategies, and practices as well as provide important new insights into trans-border security issues. However, because the rejection of traditional, sovereign understandings of security is a constitutive trait of governmentality, governmentality-focussed approaches in general ignore the security logics and practices in non-liberal settings as well as the persistence of sovereign security patterns besides and within governmental security rationalities. Such blind spots are even more problematic in light of universalist analytical tendencies in governmentality IR. This paper aims at highlighting these blind spots of governmental security studies and argues for a more inclusive perspective that takes into account the ongoing relevance of sovereign security logics and practices. As a result, I suggest a linear conceptual model of a sovereignty-governmentality continuum that is able to grasp the complex and adjustable configurations of sovereign and governmental politics in empirical research, while sovereign and governmental patterns still remain distinguishable.

Os limites da governança global: a governamentalidade como alternativa analítica

No presente artigo, busco demonstrar as possíveis contribuições que o conceito de “governamentalidade” pode trazer para a área de Relações Internacionais, especificamente, na discussão sobre governança. Para tanto, faço um mapeamento da utilização do conceito de governança global na área, suas diferentes utilizações, e como ele se insere na literatura. Posteriormente, traço algumas críticas ao termo, seja por sua amplitude conceitual, que supostamente causou seu “esvaziamento”, ou por sua capacidade de explicar as mudanças ocorridas na política internacional em diferentes momentos históricos. Sendo assim, apesar de sua importante contribuição conceitual e como agenda de pesquisa, a governança global encontrou certos limites em explicar as diferentes interações entre os atores públicos e privados. Pautado nisso, trago algumas contribuições dos estudos da governamentalidade para as Relações Internacionais, e sobre as possibilidades de pesquisa e questionamento que eles podem trazer. Sendo assim, o objetivo do presente artigo é trazer um pouco mais do debate “governança versus governamentalidade” tão pouco abordado e discutido no Brasil. Portanto, viso fomentar o interesse por pesquisas utilizando tal referencial teórico pensando a “governamentalidade” não como uma forma de “superar” a governança, mas como uma lente analítica alternativa para a esfera internacional.Recebido em: setembro de 2019Aceito em: março de 2020

Standards without standardisation? Assembling standards-based reforms in Australian and US schooling

ABSTRACT Our aim in this paper is to examine how standards-based reforms (SBRs) relating to teachers and teaching are being constituted in Australia and the US. Our focus is not the specific impacts of these policies as enacted practices in schools or teacher training institutions, but rather the dynamics of policy production, with a specific focus on how federally-driven policies have been assembled in each country. Bringing together the notion of ‘global forms’ with the dual concepts of ‘political rationality’ and ‘political technology’ from governmentality studies, we consider SBRs as a global techno-scientific form that coheres at the level of political rationality and which can be abstracted across contexts, but which also manifests in unique place-specific assemblages of political technologies. The global form of SBRs thus represents the logics by which policymakers may attempt to align and create commonality across systems in the search for standardisation, even if this can never be fully realised in practice.

Hard-working Heroes or Curious Students? - Au pair Positioning, Organizing, and Negotiation

The precarious position and poor working conditions of au pairs in the Nordic and other western labor markets are well documented. Furthermore, research on au pairs and migrant domestic workers emphasizes many obstacles to their organizing (e.g., in trade unions) and negotiation to improve their working conditions. Using an ethnographic study of Filipino au pairs in Denmark as an illustrative case, we supplement this previous research by presenting an analytical approach inspired by governmentality studies. This approach highlights the complex transnational interplay of migration policies and practices affecting Filipino au pairs’ positioning in the Danish labor market and contributes to exploring how this positioning relates to their prospects for negotiating and organizing. We suggest that with a close examination of the often contradictory and multifaceted positioning of migrant workers in transnational policy fields, not only obstacles but also possibilities for negotiation and organizing to improve working conditions will become visible

Governmentality and Statification: Towards a Foucauldian Theory of the State

This article contributes to governmentality studies and state theory by discussing how to understand the centrality and importance of the state from a governmentality perspective. It uses Giorgio Agamben’s critique of Michel Foucault’s governmentality approach as a point of departure for re-investigating Foucault as a thinker of the state. It focuses on Foucault’s notion of the state as a process of ‘statification’ which emphasizes the state as something constantly produced and reproduced by processes and practices of government, administration and acclamation. As a result of this, the state appears as a given entity which is necessary for the multiplicity of governmental technologies and practices in modern society to function. Only by reference to the state can governmental practices be effective and legitimized. Finally, the article conceptualizes the centrality of the state through Foucault’s (preliminary) notions of the state as a ‘practico-reflexive prism’ and a ‘principle of intelligibility’.

“Be authentic”: Authenticity Norms in German Politics and Self-Idealizations of Members of the Bundestag

This contribution goes back to a study of the formative power of identity norms in professional fields of occupation (fine arts and politics). In this article, we focus on the understanding of identity norms that members of the German Bundestag have to meet and/or to cope with. Thus, our research question is which demands professional politicians encounter and which ways of dealing with them are established. Operating at the intersection of governmentality studies, subjectivation analysis and qualitative inquiry, and based on narrative interviews with MPs, this paper demonstrates how in the field of German politics (at federal level) the MPs orientate their professional praxis towards the identity norm of an authentic self and conform to the expectation of a contradiction-free relationship between professional and private lives. In the process, the MPs develop idealizations of their selves in which aspects of their habitus become reflexive. We especially discuss these results against the backdrop of the emergence of modern parliaments and, methodologically, regarding the relation between habitual-implicit and reflexive-explicit structures of knowledge which are especially relevant in subjectivation analysis.

Geopolitical Transition of the European Body in Ukraine

The article studies the emergence of the transgender phenomenon within LGB activism in contemporary Ukraine in relation to an ongoing geopolitical process of Europeanisation, which involves negotiations over the country’s belonging to Europe. The article is based on PhD research (2013–2018) and has borrowed from governmentality studies and also from literature about the Europeanisation process. It pays particular attention to the instrumentalisation of sexual diversity and the transfer of ideas from Western to Eastern Europe. Using data from field research, the article brings to light the discrepancies between the globalised frameworks for LGBT activism and localised meanings and practices.

Productive but not constructive: The work of shame in the affective governance of fat Pregnancy

The productivity of shame as an affective-discursive practice implicated in the neoliberal governance of “healthy pregnancy” is examined in the narratives of 27 ethnically diverse, cis-gendered, self-identified fat pregnant people in Aotearoa New Zealand. Shame is identified as a dominant affective-discursive practice produced in response to the problematising medical discourses surrounding the fat pregnant body, leading to the constitution of shamed maternal subjectivities. Seeking reparation in order to restore their maternal identities, participants adopted a range of self-governance strategies. However, fat shaming, while productive in constituting self-governed maternal subjects, was not constructive. We demonstrate how shame induced self-governed action, rather than improving maternal and infant health, instead led to a range of unhealthful behaviours and negatively impacted how participants experienced their pregnancies, emerging maternal selves, and newly born children. We call for attention to affect in feminist governmentality studies of reproduction and fatness.

‘Technologies of the self’ – bridging academic theory and practice-based research through Creative Documentary enquiry

ABSTRACTIn this article, I argue that Foucault's ‘Technologies of the Self’ (1988) provides not only a theoretical framing of how human beings are made subjects, but also how identity and belonging are shaped by structures of power/knowledge and governmentality that impact upon migrant experiences in Glasgow. Citing examples from my documentary film ‘Atlas of Belonging’ (2018), exploring self-inscription and place-making within the Roma communities in Govanhill, I consider how ‘technologies of the self’ illuminates the ways that the ‘performances of everyday life’ [De Certeau, M. 1988. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley and London: University of California Press.] are understood through the interrelated concepts of structure and agency. Intrinsic to this is how hierarchies of power/knowledge as well as governmental controls [Foucault, M. 1988. Technologies of the Self. A Seminar with Michel Foucault. Edited by L. Martin, H. Gutman, and P. Hutton. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.]; [Gordon, C. 1991. “Governmental Rationality: An Iintroduction.” In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, edited by G. Burchell, C. Gordon, and P. Miller. Chicago: Chicago University Press.] operate in respect of my own positioning (subjectivity) as a practice-based filmmaker [McIntyre, P. 2012. Creativity and Cultural Production: Issues for Media Practice. London: Palgrave Macmillan.]; [Batty, C., and S. Kerrigan, eds. 2018. Screen Production Research. Creative Practice as a Mode of Enquiry. Palgrave Macmillan. e-book.]; [Candy, L., and E. Edmonds. 2018. “Practice-Based Research in the Creative Arts. Foundations and Futures Ffrom the Front Line.” LEONARDO 5 (1): 63–69.]. Dividing the paper into three sections, using case histories from my Creative Documentary film, I explore how ‘technologies of the self’ illuminates the interconnected themes of; (1) selfhood and identity; (2) the practices of everyday life; (3) strategies and tactics deployed as acts of resistance by the Roma communities in Govanhill. ‘Technologies of the self’ can, therefore, be seen to bridge academic theory and creative enquiry by providing a critical lens to ‘think through’ the challenges of documentary representation and help ‘make sense’ of the polyphony of conflicting voices arising from this ‘contested’ space.

Socialist responsibilization: the government of risk factors for cardiovascular diseases in the German Democratic Republic in the 1970s

ABSTRACTThe article explores the importance of responsible self-government in a ‘non-liberal’ society. Drawing on governmentality and critical ability studies, it argues that the governmental technique of individual responsibilization usually associated with a (neo-)liberal social order constituted an important means of state-socialist rule as well. Furthermore, this article shows that applying such an analytical framework to the investigation of the German Democratic Republic’s government of cardiovascular diseases significantly enhances our understanding of power relations between the state and the individual. Cardiovascular diseases had become a major focus of health policy by the late 1960s. East Germany’s orientation toward the World Health Organization strongly favored the adoption of the risk factor approach originally developed by US epidemiological research. According to this paradigm that centered on individual behaviors as risk factors, health education campaigns sought to enable citizens to modify their self-conduct. Focusing on the problematization of too little physical activity, this article examines cardiovascular able-bodiedness as a norm and vanishing point of responsible self-government on the basis of a detailed analysis and contextualization of health education films. Finally, it argues that the performance of a successful government of individual risk factors was rewarded by increased recognition as a good and productive citizen as well as a ‘socialist personality.’

Thinking critically about smart city experimentation: entrepreneurialism and responsibilization in urban living labs

ABSTRACTThe proliferation of smart technologies, big data, and analytics is being increasingly used to address urban socio-environmental problems such as climate change mitigation and carbon control. Electricity systems in particular are being reconfigured with smart technologies to help integrate renewable generation, enhance energy efficiency, implement new forms of pricing, increase control and automation, and improve reliability. Many of these interventions are experimental, requiring real-world testing before wider diffusion. This testing often takes place in “urban living labs,” integrating urban residents as key actors in experimentation with goals for broader sustainability transitions. In this paper, I investigate one such urban living lab focused on smart grid research and demonstration in a residential neighbourhood in Austin, Texas. I develop a framework based in governmentality studies to critically interrogate urban experimentation. Findings suggest that the focus of experimentation devolves urban imperatives into individual responsibilities for socio-environmental change. Managing carbon emissions through energy efficiency, renewable energy, and conservation is promoted as a form of self-management, wherein households reconfigure everyday activities and/or adopt new technologies. At the same, sociotechnical interventions are shaped by technology companies, researchers, and policy-makers marking a central feature of contemporary urban entrepreneurialism. This skews the potential of active co-production, and instead relies on the delegation of responsibility for action to a constrained assemblage of smart technologies and smart users.

Performative technologies: agricultural research for development and gender

ABSTRACT The article draws on insights from feminist literature, science and technology studies (STS) and governmentality studies to explore how technologies introduced through agricultural research for development (ar4d) participate in performing gender. Drawing on gender audits of two international agricultural research institutions, we discuss the performativity of three types of technologies: material technologies intended to increase agricultural productivity, such as new seed varieties; social technologies, such as household surveys and evaluation techniques used to monitor projects; and political technologies, such as participation, deployed to enlist farmers in the adoption of productivity-enhancing material technologies. We show that all three technologies participate in performing gender as they are introduced into rural environments, sometimes in interaction with an “apparatus of gender” that emerges from gender mainstreaming. But performances are not uniform, producing both an iron cage of hierarchical gender dualism, but also enactments that exceed the vision of the apparatus, blur binaries and diffract the realities they project in unanticipated directions.

Book review: Paul McIlvenny, Julia Zhukova Klausen and Laura Bang Lindegaard, Studies of discourse and governmentality: New perspectives and methods

Book review: Paul McIlvenny, Julia Zhukova Klausen and Laura Bang Lindegaard, <i>Studies of discourse and governmentality: New perspectives and methods</i>