Technique Of Governmentality Research Articles

The city eats the worker: migrant negotiations of COVID-19 and resistance amidst the COVID-19 crisis

ABSTRACT This essay draws upon a digital ethnography and in-depth interviews with Bangladeshi low-wage migrant workers in Singapore to theorize the COVID-19 outbreak in dormitories housing the workers as a crisis of the consuming city. Building on the concept of extreme neoliberalism, we examine the ways in which the erasure of worker voice as a technique of smart governmentality coded into the “Singapore model” underlies the pandemic outbreak. The in-depth interviews document the ways in which the poor infrastructures for migrant living are already always in crisis because of their exploitative design that maximizes profits while undermining the health, wellbeing, and dignity of workers. In this backdrop, the workers narrate strategies of resistance, enacted in articulations that resist and disrupt the smart propaganda crafted by the authoritarian state.

Searching for the Forest among the Trees

Searching for the Forest among the Trees

The coloniality of Holocaust memorialization in post-apartheid South Africa

Abstract This article investigates local endeavours for Holocaust memory in post-apartheid South Africa in their relation to global memory imperatives that are, among others, produced by supranational organizations such as UNESCO and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. Drawing on a larger case-study on globalized memory, I analyse to what extent a generalized mnemonic framework is reflected in South Africa's 2007 curriculum reform, namely its inclusion of the Holocaust and subsequent memory politics. In order to illuminate the coloniality of memorialization, I trace the epistemic location of the narrative that suggests that Holocaust memory nourishes democratic values and human rights—maybe even more so than local memories of violence and oppression such as colonization and apartheid. In this regard, I found that while many activists for Holocaust memory continuously and sometimes uncritically advocate for its global implementation, a decolonial perspective enables us to understand the power dynamics constitutive of universal moral norms around Holocaust memory that tacitly transmit global demands to local contexts. I therefore suggest that, within the global colonial matrix of power, a universally advised practice of memorializing the Holocaust to specific ends can be regarded as a technique of governmentality, because it risks limiting utopian thought beyond the Euro-modern paradigm.

“Conspiracy theory”: The case for being critically receptive

“Conspiracy theory”: The case for being critically receptive

‘We are in the process’: The exploitation of hope and the political economy of waiting among the aspiring irregular migrants in Nepal

‘We are in the process’ was the phrase used by my Nepali interlocutors, soon-to-be migrants, who were waiting for their departure abroad for months on end. Based on conversations with irregular migrants, this paper explores the relationship between time and power, focusing on the political economy of waiting. It suggests that making people wait has become a key technique of governmentality used by the migration industry actors to control aspiring migrants’ movement, exploit their desires and hopes, and extract surplus value, turning the migration industry in Nepal into a major system of profiteering. Forcing aspiring migrants to wait in a state of suspense (not boredom) for departures that are imminent but not certain, unscrupulous brokers create an affective state in suspended subjects, which allows those in power to prey on migrants’ vulnerability and their hope for a better life, pushing many of the aspiring migrants into grave debt.

Beyond borders: trans-local critical pedagogy for inter-Asian cultural studies

This paper challenges the apparatus of knowledge in the reproduction of the nationalist narrative of historical trauma that leads to the making of exclusive nationalism and unequal citizenship, particularly in East and Southeast Asia. I take the case of the 1965-66 genocide in Indonesia as an example to illustrate how the cultural trauma that took place in the Cold War Era had marked the turning point for follow-up nation-building and the cooperative distortion of the past through the politics of denial. This phenomenon does not happen only in Indonesia but also in other countries in the Northeast and Southeast Asia. The post-event juridical reform after these historical traumas established the foundation of national constitutions and planted the seeds of unequal citizenship in these countries. The legal practices of the post-colonial modern states repeat colonial strategies, and technique of governmentality reproduces itself through the education system at all levels. I want to suggest that to go beyond ideological borders and avoid the vicious circles of knowledge reproduction requires an innovative educational model of trans-local and critical pedagogy in the form of curricular decolonization. It aspires for a type of the university beyond the borders, beyond the walls. Through a trans-local, interdisciplinary, and cross-referencing critical studies, we then can attend to both the local but also the regional and global contexts. I also want to argue that such a model should bridge university and society to assist us in practicing epistemic decolonization to challenge the current cultural consensus.

Biopolitical Frames of Impoverished Women in Journalistic Photography about the Bolsa-Família Program

In this article we argue, with Foucault, Fassin and Butler, that there is a particular modality of government of collective bodies: the biopolitical framing of impoverished citizens and groups in the context of the implementation of social politics. The corpus of the research features a total of 120 images related to the Bolsa-Família Program, published between 2003 and 2015 in newspapers such as Folha de S. Paulo, Estado de S. Paulo and O Globo. The paper investigates the political and ethical dimensions of these images in order to show how the biopolitical and neoliberal government of collective bodies involves the production of narratives, arguments and discourses that trace distinctions between ways of life considered as dignified and those widely perceived as despicable. The biopolitical framing is a technique of government or governmentality that formats the scenes of appearance, preparing them to define exemplary citizens and groups, considered as a parameter, whose project and vulnerable way of life are seen as an antithesis of deviation and of existences morally judged as unworthy of consideration and appreciation.

Countering violent extremism, governmentality and Australian Muslim youth as ‘becoming terrorist’

This article explores how a ‘regime of truth’ about Muslim youth has been historically produced through the underlying logic of Australia’s counter-terrorism and countering violent extremism (CVE) policies and practices. The article is divided into three parts. I first look at how the pre-emptive logic of countering the ‘becoming terrorist’ constitutes young Australian Muslims. I then interrogate the way CVE has constituted Australian Muslims as a self-contained space, a governmental population divided between ‘moderates’ and ‘extremists’. Lastly, I discuss how CVE operates as a technique of governmentality in the way that it deploys grants programs to foster the ‘conduct of conduct’ of Muslim subjects within this self-contained racialised space. I argue that the central organising logic of community partnership has been the targeting of the conditions of emergence of ‘extremist’ Muslim subjects, thereby guaranteeing the racialisation of Muslim youth as always at-risk, marked with the ‘potential’ of ‘becoming terrorist’.

The Political Project of Postcolonial Neoliberal Nationalism

The starting point of this article is the recognition of globally proliferating right-wing electoral successes of a specific kind that rely upon a weaving together of seemingly contradictory aspects of neoliberalism and nationalism. An important dimension of these globally occurring changes is that they reflect something more than simply the empirical instantiation of a right-wing success in any one specific context. They require us to unravel and understand the transmutations in the nature of the political and the economic in the contemporary postcolonial world. Here, I focus on the relevance of uncovering the powerful weave of nationalism, neoliberalism, and postcolonialism that lies behind such configurations of power; a governmentality I refer to as PNN (postcolonial neoliberal nationalism). An understanding of PNN requires us to challenge the a priori availability to analysis of either neoliberalism or nationalism in isolation; neoliberalism and nationalism are not only not contradictory to each other, but as projects of re-forming imaginaries, they co-constitute the ideas of “market/economy” and “nation/culture.” Further, PNN makes visible the ambivalent status of “the West,” since it is imbued with the historical legacy of colonial memory re-called into the present as a revanchist pride, and combined with the conflicting aspirational/actual consumption desires to emulate the capitalist imperial metropolitan fantasies. I use the example of India to illustrate how PNN has been enacted as a technique of governmentality by the Modi-led BJP government through the reformulation of Swadeshi and the Make in India project.

The Rise of Caesarism, or Erdoğan’s Way

The state of emergency following the military uprising of July 15, 2016, revealed a process of multilayered and multi-actor crises in Turkey. The resistance and offenses of Kurdish, Islamist, and Socialist movements historically challenged the republic that situated them on the border of the constitutional order. In response, from the 1990s onward, classical state of emergency practices, which were ongoing for almost seventy years, evolved into antiterrorism policies as a technique of governmentality and politics of law. While it demolished the organized sections of the socialist movements with heavy-handed repression and politics of destruction, the Kemalist Republic, in the 2000s, gradually lost its traditions and institutional consistency as a result of the permanent and resilient resistance of the Kurdish and Islamist movements. The dissolving power relations and the political turmoil rooted in an inability to construct a new power bloc turned Caesarism in the person of Erdoğan into a process of political transition similar to those in Russia, Iran, and Egypt. Hence, the structural crises of the Kemalist Republic, merged with the historical crisis of Islamism, became embodied in the crisis of Erdoğan as a political leader. The traditional and creative political potential of Turkey further deepens the current crisis overdetermined by the concerns of a political future that remains uncertain and unpredictable.

Participatory heritage in a gentrifying neighbourhood: Amsterdam’s Van Eesteren Museum as affective space of negotiations

ABSTRACTIn this article we analyse the Van Eesteren Museum as a technique of local governmentality. This small but growing institution aims to preserve and showcase the modernist urban planning and architecture of the disadvantaged Amsterdam neighbourhood of Slotermeer. Built on volunteers, residents’ participation played a crucial role in its creation and still does in its day-to-day operation. While many see the museum as a bottom-up project, upon closer inspection, this participatory heritage project appears more ambivalent, effectively functioning as a platform for mediating conflicting interests and agendas in an urban context that is heavily shaped by local and national policies of urban renewal. This neighbourhood museum responds to a specific Dutch policy of state-led gentrification aimed at promoting social control while actually (unintentionally) producing social cleavages. Only a very specific and rather homogenous group of residents volunteer for the museum, other residents with more diverse backgrounds do not really participate. While the Van Eesteren Museum is rooted in this specific Dutch context, we argue that it points to the relevance of heritage to a new rationality of decentralised local governance based on producing ‘caring’ and ‘feeling’ citizens.

CINEMATIC GOVERNMENTALITY: CINEMA AND EDUCATION IN MODERN IRAN, 1900S–1930S

AbstractMuch of the scholarship on the history of Iranian cinema considers film spectatorship in the first three decades of the 20th century as a leisure practice with origins in royalist and elitist entertainment forms. However, a close reading of archival material from this era reveals that cinema's significance extended well beyond its role as a pastime, as it became engaged in the governance of the self and disciplinary strategies of the state in Iran's experience of modernity in the early 20th century. In this article, I reperiodize the history of cinema in Iran by demonstrating the entanglement of cinema in popular nationalist discourses on education prior to cinema's institutionalization in the 1930s. Drawing on newspaper articles, film announcements, official documents, and poems, I show how, despite the absence of a centralized cinema institution in the 1910s and early 1920s, cosmopolitan citizens in dialogue with global trends promoted cinema as a means for the governance of selfhood and moral edification in the service of national progress. With the appropriation of cinema by the Pahlavi state in the 1930s, cinema was used as a technique of governmentality that aimed to conduct the conduct of individuals and shape an Iranian civic society.

Neoliberal populism and governmentality in Turkey

This article is based on the question “How does the current governing party in Turkey, namely Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP), reproduce its social power?” In order to answer this question, it is suggested that a combination of the different techniques of governmentality of the ruling party should be analyzed, with particular reference to the policies and institutions reconfiguring the role of the state and the notion of public deliberation in the midst of the rising discontents of neoliberalism in Turkey. As an instance of such a technique of neoliberal governmentality in populist content, the formation of the communication centers by the AKP in Turkey will be investigated. For this purpose, firstly, the rise of the populism will be related to the increasing need for channels of political participation and a solution to public demands in the midst of rising authoritarian tendencies, in order to solve the political legitimacy crisis as well as creating new forms of representation for the politically excluded masses. Then, secondly, the main cornerstones of the AKP populism will be analyzed and the formation and the future of the communication centers as a particular case will be discussed in details. Lastly, it will be argued that those centers do not only reflect the populist concerns of the governing party but also serve as a crucial source of electoral success, as well as managing tensions stemming from the neoliberal configuration of the public sphere and state–citizen relations.

Pali Scholarship “in Its Truest Sense” in Burma: The Multiple Trajectories in Colonial Deployments of Religion

Why are histories of colonialism and religious transformation in Southeast Asia so often told as inextricably interrelated? Why were Buddhist movements identified as both the locus for resistance to colonialism and the central means of constructing colonial modernity? Part of the reason lies in how religion served as both a European technique of colonial governmentality and a local repository of techniques for comprehending and responding to change. More than this, religion seems to have offered a multivalent medium for a variety of innovations. Pali examinations were central to Buddhist reform in colonial Burma at the turn of the twentieth century but also fomented conflicts between the colonial state and monastic factions over the purpose of language study. However, beyond such conflicts, Pali examinations proved fertile grounds for Buddhist laypeople to experiment with multiple interpretations of what Buddhist modernity might mean in Burma.

Fukushima ETHOS: Post-Disaster Risk Communication, Affect, and Shifting Risks

ETHOS Fukushima is a risk communication (RC) program organized after the Fukushima nuclear accident by the International Commission on Radiological Protection and other international organizations supported by the Japanese government. ETHOS has been hailed as a model RC that is participatory and dialogue-based. Yet the critical and feminist literature has shown the need for analyzing the power relations in participatory projects, and for analyzing affect as a target of management by neoliberal governmentality. The affective work of ETHOS is characterized by narratives of self-responsibility, hope and anticipation, and transnational solidarity with Chernobyl victims. These resonate with the affective regime under neoliberalism that privileges self-responsibility, anticipation, maximization of emotional potential, and cosmopolitan empathy. This particular regime of affect has been integral in shifting risk from the nuclear industry and the government to individual citizens. ETHOS Fukushima has supported continued residence in contaminated areas. It has helped portray the reduction of government/industry responsibility as morally defensible, and the decision to stay in Fukushima as a free choice made by hopeful and determined citizens. At the same time, ETHOS has helped characterize the state’s and the nuclear industry’s roles in cleaning up and compensating the victims as restricting individual freedom and demoralizing the local people. The recent RC literature increasingly argues for a positive assessment of emotion, but this argument warrants careful analysis, as emotion is socially regulated and entangled in power relations. Moreover, deploying affective tropes is a crucial technique of neoliberal governmentality, especially because of affect’s seemingly oppositional and external relationship to neoliberalism.

Responsibilizing individuals, regulating health: debating public spots, risk, and neoliberal governmentality in contemporary Turkey

AbstractCurrently, a mass media campaign is underway in Turkey using a new communication means called the “public spot” (kamu spotu). This article concentrates on the public spots produced by Turkey’s Ministry of Health, and more specifically on those that advocate quitting smoking and preventing obesity. Drawing on interviews with Ministry of Health personnel and analyzing the content of these spots, we suggest that they operate as risk caveats. They caution individuals against smoking and obesity’s potential harms and guide her/him towards self-health governance by encouraging the maintenance of a particular lifestyle that embraces a balanced diet, regular activity, and no smoking. As such, we read these spots as a technique of neoliberal governmentality. This technique works primarily by responsibilizing individuals as health entrepreneurs investing in risk free lifestyles; that is, by conceptualizing health as a matter of self-conduct where personal responsibilities are emphasized.

Fuzzy books and sideways looks: discourses of schooling on Australian television advertisements

Media constructions of schooling provide suggestions about what should be expected of the school experience. Studies on discourses of schooling have examined how the school is framed in media discourses, but few have examined how it is formed mundanely and repeatedly in advertisements promoting products that are not directly educational. This paper examines how the school is constructed in a range of television advertisements that sell products that are not directly educational such as cereal and broadband Internet, focusing on how schools come to be framed negatively in advertising narratives. The television advertisements often use the technique of governmentality, whereby they attempt to direct the conduct of viewers by suggesting that self-improvement is achievable through personal enterprise. These advertisements position parents as agentive consumers of education, whose consumption habits are central to their children's scholarly success within problematic educational spaces.

Policing, planning and sex: Governing bodies, spatially

Literatures on the regulation of conduct have tended to focus on the role of policing and the enforcement of criminal law. This paper instead emphasizes the importance of planning in shaping conduct, using the example of how planning shapes sexual conduct to demonstrate that planning can, in different times and places, exercise police-type powers. We illustrate this by analysing the regulation of brothels in Sydney and Parramatta, NSW, Australia, providing a case study of spaces of sexuality that historically were constructed and regulated as criminal, but have since become lawful. This paper examines the ways in which these transitions in law have been differently expressed and accomplished through local planning enforcement. In making such arguments, the paper emphasizes not only the potential for planners to act like police, but also the capacity of planning to supplant policing as a key technique of governmentality.

CONSTRUCTING ‘DECENCY’

This article examines the production of normative subjectivity and the construction of ‘appropriate’ and exportable knowledge through cultural policy during the culture wars of the 1980s–1990s in the USA. During this time, the performing and visual arts, and mass media were increasingly seen as the cause, rather than the reflection, of social instability, and quickly became subject to governmental regulation. Focusing on a 1998 US Supreme Court case, National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley, I examine the construction and application of decency offered in the oral transcripts, and attend more broadly to the relationship between cultural policy and law. Cultural policy is a technique of governmentality, and a means through which citizenship and national identity is constituted and regulated, and self-governance inculcated. Similarly, law is a key technology through which governance, and subjectivity is produced, constituted and regulated. Policies such as the ‘decency’ clause depend on a series of coercive technologies and practices, which ensure that only particular kinds of individuals are understood as embodying norms that are constitutive of citizen-subjects that the State desires. The introduction of the ‘decency’ clause may be understood, in part, as a response to a perceived failure in the arts community of individuals to effectively self-regulate and embody standard sociocultural norms.

Integration by Interpellation: The European Capitals of Culture and the Role of Experts in European Union Cultural Policies

AbstractIn analyzing the European Capitals of Culture programme, this article argues that transnational experts have had a large impact on this flagship of European Union (EU) cultural policy by forming a close‐knit advocacy coalition with official EU actors. Most recent developments, however, have added a new dimension. The Commission has now developed a subtle technique of governmentality focusing the programme more on its ‘European dimension’. The article discusses this evolution and the role of transnational actors, the limits to integration intrinsic to culture as a policy domain, and the attempts of both official actors and experts to work around such constraints.