Gourt Home::Gourt :: Governmentality
Governmentality was a concept developed by French philosopher Michel Foucault in the later years of his life, roughly between 1979 and his death in 1984, particularly in his lectures at the Collège de France during this time.
Basic definition of governmentality
Foucault sees government as a general technical form which encompasses everything from one's control of the self to the control of populations. Correspondingly, he feels that the important thing in the political arena is to encourage the cultivation of the appropriate governmentality by politicians. For Foucault, this concept replaces his earlier concept of power-knowledge.
Governmentality refers to a historically specific economy of power. It refers to societies where power is de-centered and its members play an active role in their own self-governance. Because of its active role, individuals need to be regulated from 'inside'. Society is based on different institutional domains (family, school, prison,...), and each domain has its own logic. A particular form of governance applies to each domain, and a certain knowledge (savoir) of subjects is produced. The knowledge produced allows the state to govern how individuals will behave in certain contexts from inside the subject, from the subject itself.
History of the term
The concept of governmentality segues from Foucault's ethical thoughts during this time. In the second and third volumes of The History of Sexuality, namely, The Use of Pleasure (1984) and The Care of the Self (1984), and in work on Technologies of the Self (1982), he began to distinguish between subjectivation and forms of subjectification by exploring how selves were fashioned and then lived in ways which were both heteronomously and autonomously determined. Also, in a series of lectures and articles, including The Birth of Biopolitics (1979), Omnes et Singulatim: Towards a Criticism of Political Reason (1979), The Subject and Power (1982) and What is Enlightenment? (1984), he posed questions about the nature of contemporary social orders, the conceptualization of power, human freedom and the limits, possibilities and sources of human actions. His best known formulation of these issues is his lecture entitled Governmentality (1978).
Understanding the concept
Hunt and Wickham, in their work Foucault and Law begin the section on governmentality with a very basic definition derived from Foucault’s work. They state, “governmentality is the dramatic expansion in the scope of government, featuring an increase in the number and size of the governmental calculation mechanisms” *. Yet they fail to incorporate these ideas into a new definition of the term. By failing to do so, their definition remains too simple.
Kerr’s approach to the term is much more complex. Based on his own understanding of Foucault’s intentions, he criticises the use of the term. Kerr believes that Foucault’s use of the term serves the purposes of reproducing capitalism. To him it is not “a zone of critical-revolutionary study, but one that conceptually reproduces capitalist rule” by asserting that some form of government (and power) will always be necessary to control and constitute society. His criticism is based on a too-narrow understanding of the term. He sees the term as an abbreviation of “governmental rationality” [1999:174. In other words it is a way of thinking about the government and the practices of the government. By defining governmentality only in terms of the state, Kerr fails to take account of other forms of governance and the idea of mentalities of government in this broader sense.
Dean’s understanding of the term incorporates both of these ideas, as well as Hunt and Wickham’s, and Kerr’s approaches to the term. In line with Hunt and Wickham’s approach, Dean acknowledges that in a very narrow sense, governmentality can be used to describe the emergence of a government that saw that the object of governing power was to optimise, use and foster living individuals as members of a population He also includes the idea of government rationalities, seeing governmentality as one way of looking at the practices of government. In addition to the above, he sees government as anything to do with conducting oneself or others. This is evident in his description of the word in his glossary: “Governmentality: How we think about governing others and ourselves in a wide variety of contexts…” *," target="_blank" >that is, the sum of the knowledge, beliefs and opinions held by those who are governed. He also raises the point that a mentality is not usually “examined by those who inhabit it” *. Dean highlights another important feature of the concept of governmentality - its reflexivity. He explains: “On the one hand, we govern others and ourselves according to what we take to be true about who we are, what aspects of our existence should be worked upon, how, with what means, and to what ends. On the other hand, the ways in which we govern and conduct ourselves give rise to different ways of producing truth.” * By drawing attention to the ‘how and why’, Dean accomplishes what Hunt and Wickham failed to do by connecting “technologies of power” 2001:191 to the concept of governmentality. Dean’s definition is therefore useful in coming to an understanding of the term because he manages to incorporate all of Foucault’s intended ideas.
Each of the three authors has something important to say. Hunt and Wickham’s notion of the term being a theoretical instrument used to studying government is important though not enough on its own. Kerr’s criticism that governmentality implies that humanity can never escape from systems of power and governmentality is important in not allowing ourselves to be blinkered, but Dean’s use of the term shows a greater understanding of the term. And it is from his work that the best understanding of the term can be drawn. A complete definition of the term governmentality must include not only government in terms of the state, but government in terms of any “conduct of conduct” 1999:10. It must incorporate the idea of mentalities and the associations that go with that concept: that it is an attitude towards something, and that it is not usually understood “from within its own perspective” *, and that these mentalities are collective and part of a society’s culture. It must also include an understanding of the ways in which conduct is governed, not just by governments, but also by ourselves and others.
Developing the concept
Governmentality, a term Foucault coined, is a theoretical concept that aims to reveal the general mechanisms of society's governance. By government Foucault meant not so much the political or administrative structures of the modern state as the way in which the conduct of individuals or of groups may be directed. To analyse government is to analyse those mechanisms that try to shape, sculpt, mobilise and work through the choices, desires, aspirations, needs, wants and lifestyles of individuals and groups 1999:12. The practice of going to the gym is a useful example because it shows how our choices, desires, aspirations, needs, wants and lifestyles have been mobilised and shaped by various technologies of rule. The semantic linking of governing and mentalities in governmentality indicates that it is not possible to study technologies of rule without an analysis of the mentality of rule underpinning them.
Mentality of rule
A mentality of rule is any relatively systematic way of thinking about government. It delineates a discursive field in which the exercise of power is ‘rationalised’ 2001:191 . Thus Neo-liberalism is a mentality of rule because it represents a method of rationalising the exercise of government, a rationalisation that obeys the internal rule of maximum economy 1997:74. As Fukuyama Rose, 1999: 63 writes “A liberal State is ultimately a limited State, with governmental activity strictly bounded by the sphere of individual liberty”. However, only a certain type of liberty, a certain way of understanding and exercising freedom is compatible with Neo-liberalism. If Neo-liberalist government is to fully realise its goals, individuals must come to recognise and act upon themselves as both free and responsible 1999:68. Thus Neo-liberalism must work to create the social reality that it proposes already exists. For as Lemke states, a mentality of government “is not pure, neutral knowledge that simply re-presents the governing reality” 2001:191 instead, Neo-liberalism constitutes an attempt to link a reduction in state welfare services and security systems to the increasing call for subjects to become free, enterprising, autonomous individuals. It can then begin to govern its subjects, not through intrusive state bureaucracies backed with legal powers, the imposition of moral standards under a religious mandate, but through structuring the possible field of action in which they govern themselves, to govern them through their freedom. Through the transformation of subjects with duties and obligations, into individuals, with rights and freedoms, modern individuals are not merely ‘free to choose’ but obliged to be free, “to understand and enact their lives in terms of choice” 1999:87. This freedom is a different freedom to that offered in the past. It is a freedom to realise our potential and our dreams through reshaping the way in which we conduct our lives.Self-governing capabilities
Through our freedom, self-governing capabilities can be installed in order to bring our own ways of conducting and evaluating ourselves into alignment with political objectives 1996:155. These capabilities are enterprise and autonomy. Enterprise here designates an array of rules for the conduct of one’s everyday existence: energy, initiative, ambition, calculation, and personal responsibility. The enterprising self will make an enterprise of its life, seek to maximise its own human capital, project itself a future, and seek to shape life in order to become what it wishes to be. The enterprising self is thus both an active self and a calculating self, a self that calculates about itself and that acts upon itself in order to better itself 1996:154. Autonomy is about taking control of our undertakings, defining our goals, and planning to achieve our needs through our own powers 1996:159. The autonomy of the self is thus not the eternal antithesis of political power, but one of the objectives and instruments of modern mentalities for the conduct of conduct 1996:155. These three qualities: freedom, enterprise and autonomy are embodied in the practice of going to the gym. It is our choice to go the gym, our choice which gym to go to. By going to the gym we are working on ourselves, on our body shape and our physical fitness. We are giving ourselves qualities to help us get ahead in life, whether to attract a better mate than others, or to be able to work more efficiently, more effectively and for longer without running out of steam to give us an advantage over our competitors. When we go to the gym, we go through our own discipline, on our own timetable, to reach our own goals. We design and act out our routine by ourselves. We need not the ideas or support of a team, it is our self that makes it possible. The practice of going to the gym, of being free, enterprising, autonomous, is imbued with particular technologies of rule.Technologies of rule
Technologies of rule are those “technologies imbued with aspirations for the shaping of conduct in the hope of producing certain desired effects and averting certain undesired ones” 1999:52. The two main groups of technologies of rule associated with going to the gym are technologies of the self, and technologies of the market. Foucault defined technologies of the self as techniques that allow individuals to effect by their own means a certain number of operations on their own bodies, minds, souls, and lifestyle, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, and quality of life. Technologies of the market are those technologies based around the buying and selling of goods that enable us to define who we are, or want to be. These two technologies are not always completely distinct, as both borrow bits of each other from time to time.Technologies of the self
One of the main features of technologies of self is that of expertise. Expertise has three important aspects. First, its grounding of authority in a claim to scientificity and objectivity creates distance between self-regulation and the state that is necessary with liberal democracies. Second, expertise can “mobilise and be mobilised within political argument in distinctive ways, producing a new relationship between knowledge and government. Expertise comes to be accorded a particular role in the formulation of programs of government and in the technologies that seek to give them effect” 1996:156 . Third, expertise operates through a relationship with the self-regulating abilities of individuals. The plausibility inherent in a claim to scientificity binds “subjectivity to truth and subjects to experts” Rose, 1996:156]. Expertise works through a logic of choice, through a transformation of the ways in which individuals constitute themselves, through “inculcating desires for self-development that expertise itself can guide and through claims to be able to allay the anxieties generated when the actuality of life fails to live up to its image 1999:88.The technologies of the self important to the practice of going to the gym are the: technology of responsibilisation, technology of healthism, technology of normalisation and technology of self-esteem.
Responsibilisation
In line with its desire to reduce the scope of government (eg. welfare) Neo-liberalism characteristically develops indirect techniques for leading and controlling individuals without being responsible for them. The main mechanism is through the technology of responsibilisation. This entails subjects becoming responsibilised by making them see social risks such as illness, unemployment, poverty, etc. not as the responsibility of the state, but actually lying in the domain for which the individual is responsible and transforming it into a problem of ‘self-care’ 2001:201. The practice of going to the gym can be seen as a result of responsibilisation, our responsibility to remain free of illness so as to be able to work and to care for our dependants (children, elderly parents etc). This technology somewhat overlaps with the technology of healthism.
Healthism
Healthism links the “public objectives for the good health and good order of the social body with the desire of individuals for health and well-being” 1999:74 . Healthy bodies and hygienic homes may still be objectives of the state, but it no longer seeks to discipline, instruct, moralise or threaten us into compliance. Rather “individuals are addressed on the assumption that they want to be healthy and enjoined to freely seek out the ways of living most likely to promote their own health” 1999:86-87 such as going to the gym. However while the technology of responsibilisation may be argued to be a calculated technique of the state, the wave of Healthism is less likely to be a consequence of state planning, but arising out of the newer social sciences such as nutrition and human movement. Healthism assigns, as do most technologies of the self, a key role to experts. For it is experts who can tell us how to conduct ourselves in terms of safe, precise techniques to improve cardiovascular fitness, muscle strength, and overall health. The borrowing from technologies of the market by technologies of the self can be clearly seen in the area of healthism. The idea of health, the goal of being healthy, the joys brought by good health and the ways of achieving it are advertised to us in the same manner as goods and services are marketed by sales people. By adhering to the principles of healthism, our personal goals are aligned with political goals and we are thus rendered governable.
Normalisation
Another technology of rule arising from the social sciences is that of normalisation. The technology of norms was given a push by the new methods of measuring population. A norm is that “which is socially worthy, statistically average, scientifically healthy and personally desirable”1999:76 . The important aspect of normality, is that while the norm is natural, those who wish to achieve normality will do so by working on themselves, controlling their impulses in everyday conduct and habits, and inculcating norms of conduct into their children, under the guidance of others. Norms are enforced through the calculated administration of shame. Shame entails an anxiety over the exterior behaviour and appearance of the self, linked to an injunction to care for oneself in the name of achieving quality of life 1999:73. Norms are usually aligned with political goals, thus the norm would be fit, virile, energetic individuals, able to work, earn money, and spend it and thus sustain the economy. The practice of going to the gym allows one to achieve this ‘normality’. Through shame we are governed into conforming with the goals of Neo-liberalism.
Self-esteem
Self-esteem is a practical and productive technology linked to the technology of norms, which produces of certain kinds of selves. Self-esteem is a technology in the sense that it is a specialised knowledge of how to esteem ourselves to estimate, calculate, measure, evaluate, discipline, and to judge our selves 1996:273. The ‘self-esteem’ approach considers a wide variety of social problems to have their source in a lack of self-esteem on the part of the persons concerned. ‘Self-esteem’ thus has much more to do with self-assessment that with self-respect, as the self continuously has to be measured, judged and disciplined in order to gear personal ‘empowerment’ to collective yardsticks2001:202. These collective yardsticks are determined by the norms previously discussed. Our self-esteem is linked to our body image, and thus to improve our self-esteem we can improve our body image. Going to the gym is a great way of improving the physical shape of bodies, as experts can identify specific exercises that will work on particular parts of the body. Self-esteem is a technology of self for “evaluating and acting upon ourselves so that the police, the guards and the doctors do not have to do so” 1996:234. By taking up the goal of self esteem, we allow ourselves to be governable from a distance. The technology of self-esteem and other similar psychological technologies also borrow from technologies of the market, namely consumption. A huge variety of self-help books, tapes, videos and other paraphernalia are available for purchase by the individual.
Technologies of the market
The technologies of the market that underlie the practice of going to the gym can be described as the technology of desire, and the technology of identity through consumption. The technology of desire, is a mechanism that induces in us desires that we work to satisfy. Marketers create wants and artificial needs in us through advertising goods, experiences and lifestyles that are tempting to us. These advertisements seek to convey the sense of individual satisfaction brought about by the purchase or use of this product * . We come to desire these things and thus act in a manner that allows us to achieve these things, whether by working harder and earning more money or by employing technologies of the self to shape our lifestyle to the manner we desire . The borrowing of technologies of the self by technologies of the market extends even further in this case. Marketers use the knowledge created by psyche- discourses, especially psychological characteristics as the basis of their market segmentation. This allows them to appeal more effectively to each individual. Thus we are governed into purchasing commodities through our desire.The technology of identity through consumption utilises the power of goods to shape identities 1999:76. Each commodity is imbued with a particular meaning, which is reflected upon those who purchase it, illuminating the kind of person they are, or want to be. Consumption is portrayed as placing an individual within a certain form of life. The technology of identity through consumption can be seen in the choices that face the gym attendee. To go to an expensive gym because it demonstrates wealth/success or to go to a moderately priced gym so as to appear economical. The range of gym wear is extensive. Brand name to portray the abilities portrayed in its advertising, expensive to portray commitment, or cheap to portray you unconcern of other people’s opinions. All of these choices of consumption are used to communicate our identity to others, and thus we are governed by marketers into choosing those products that identify with our identity.
These technologies of the market and of the self are the particular mechanisms whereby individuals are induced into becoming free, enterprising individuals who govern themselves and thus need only limited direct governance by the state. The implementation of these technologies is greatly assisted by experts from the social sciences. These experts operate a regime of the self, where success in life depends on our continual exercise of freedom, and where our life is understood, not in terms of fate or social status, but in terms of our success or failure in acquiring the skills and making the choices to actualise ourself 1999:87. If we engage in the practice of going to them gym, we are undertaking an exercise if self-government. We do so by drawing upon certain forms of knowledge and expertise provided by gym instructors, health professionals, of the purveyors of the latest fitness fad. Depending on why we go to the gym, we may calculate number of calories burned, heart-fate, or muscle size. In all cases, we attend the gym for a specific set of reasons underpinned by the various technologies of the self and the market. The part of ourselves we seek to work upon, the means by which we do so, and who we hope to become, all vary according to the nature of the technology of rule by which we are motivated 1999:17. All of these various reasons and technologies are underpinned by the mentality of government that seeks to transform us into a free, enterprising, autonomous individual, Neo-liberalism.
References
- Cruikshank, B. (1996) Revolutions within: self-government and self-esteem
- Dean, M. (1999) Governmentality
- Foucault, M. (1997) Ethics : subjectivity and truth
- Foucault, M.(1978) `Governmentality', trans. Rosi Braidotti and revised by Colin Gordon, in Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (eds) The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, pp. 87-104. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
- Foucault, M.(1982) `Technologies of the Self', in Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman and Patrick H. Hutton (eds) Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, pp. 16-49. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1988.
- Foucault, M.(1984) The History of Sexuality Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure, trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Random House, 1985.
- Foucault, M.(1984) The History of Sexuality Vol. 3: The Care of the Self, trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1988.
- Hunt, H. & Wickham, G. (1994) Foucault and Law, London, Pluto Press
- Kerr, D. (1999) “Beheading the king and enthroning the market: A critique of Foucauldian governmentality” in Science & Society, New York: v.63, i.2; p.173-203 (accessed through Expanded Academic Index).
- Lemke, T. (2001) “The birth of bio-politics: Michael Foucault’s lectures at the College de France on neo-liberal governmentality” in Economy and Society v.30, i.2, p.190-207
- Rose, N. (1996) Inventing Ours Selves
- Rose, N. (1999) Powers of Freedom: reframing political thought
"Governmentality"