Governmentality is a theory of power developed by French philosopher Michel Foucault, which analyses "governmental" power through both the power states have over the population and the means by which subjects govern themselves.
As a form of power, governmentality differs from state discipline or punishment, which relies upon coercion to force individuals into specific actions. Rather, governmentality also comprises the power that individuals have within a population to self-govern, which the state may influence or guide through non-coercive means such as education.
The concept of governmentality has found application and reception in the fields of anthropology, history, law, philosophy, political science, and sociology. Prominent scholars include Peter Miller, Nikolas Rose and Mitchell Dean.
History The concept of "governmentality" was developed by Michel Foucault roughly between 1977 and his death in 1984, particularly in his lectures at the Collège de France during this time. Governmentality is a neologism, which some commentators have argued combines the terms "government" and "mentality" or "rationality", in this context, referring to modes of thinking. However, this view is disputed, with others arguing that the term is a mere combination of "government" and the suffix "-ality" to form the abstract noun "governmentality".See Michel Senellart's "Course Context" in Foucault's "Security, territory, population" lectures
In using the word "government", Foucault did not only use the strictly political definition of "government" popular today, but he drew upon a broader definition of governing or government that was employed until the eighteenth century.Burchell, 90 For Foucault, "'government' also signified problems of self-control, guidance for the family and for children, management of the household, directing the soul, etc."Lemke, 2
The development of governmentality segues from Foucault's ethical, political and historical thoughts from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. His most widely known formulation of this notion is his lecture entitled "Security, territory and population" (1978). Foucault elaborated on this concept in his course on "The Birth of Biopolitics" at the Collège de France in 1978–1979. The course was first published in French in 2004.Naissance de la biopolitique: Cours au Collège de France (1978-1979) (Paris: Gallimard & Seuil) Foucault's governmentality was part of a wider analysis on the topic of disciplinary institutions, neoliberalism, the "Rule of Law", the "microphysics of power" and also on what Foucault called biopolitics and power-knowledge.See the second and third volumes of The History of Sexuality, The Use of Pleasure (1984) and The Care of the Self (1984), and his lecture on "Technologies of the Self" (1982). 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 that were linked to his understanding of the notion of "governmentality".
The notion of governmentality first gained wider attention in the English-speaking academic world through the edited book The Foucault Effect (1991), which contained a series of essays on the notion of governmentality, together with a translation of Foucault's 1978 short text on "gouvernementalité".
Definition Governmentality is most popularly defined as the "conduct of conduct".Foucault in Burchell, 48 It has also been described as the organized practices (mentalities, rationalities, and techniques) through which subjects are governed,Mayhew, Susan (ed) A Dictionary of Geography (Article: Governmentality) Oxford University Press, 2004 the "art of government", the calculated means of directing how we behave and act),Jeffreys and Sigley (2009) 'Governmentality, Governance and China' in China's Governmentalities, (ed.) Elaine Jeffreys, "governmental rationality", "a 'guideline' for the analysis that Michel Foucault offers by way of historical reconstructions embracing a period starting from Ancient Greece right through to modernity and neo-liberalism",Michel Foucault, The Government of Self and Others: Lectures at the Collège de France 1982-1983 (2010)Michel Foucault The Courage of Truth : Lectures at the Collège de France 1983-1984 (2011)Michel Foucault The Birth of Biopolitics Lectures At The College de France 1978-1979 (2008) "the techniques and strategies by which a society is rendered governable",Foucault, Governmentality, and Critique (2002) and the "reasoned way of governing best and, at the same time, reflection on the best possible way of governing".Foucault, M., (2008), The birth of biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France, 1978‐79. Palgrave MacMillan
Foucault In his lecture titled Governmentality, Foucault defines governmentality as:
The last part of Foucault's definition of governmentality describes the evolution from the Medieval state, which maintained its territory and an ordered territorial society through the blunt and simple imposition of laws upon subjects, to the early Renaissance state, which became more concerned with the "disposing of things",Burchell, 95 and so began to employ strategies and tactics to maintain a content and thus stable society, or in other words to "render a society governable".Jones 174 Read with the first two definitions, the third definition describes the process through which a form of government with specific ends, means to these ends ("apparatuses of security"),Burchell, 102 and with a particular type of knowledge ("political economy") to achieve these ends, evolved from a medieval state of justice to a modern administrative state with complex bureaucracies.
Further development Hunt and Wickham, in their work Foucault and Law (1994) begin the section on governmentality with a very basic definition derived from Foucault: "governmentality is the dramatic expansion in the scope of government, featuring an increase in the number and size of the governmental calculation mechanisms".p 76 In giving this definition, Hunt and Wickham conceive of the term as consisting of two parts 'governmental' and '–ity', with 'governmental' pertaining to the government of a country; and the suffix –ity meaning the study of. They also contextualise the definition in broader Foucaultian theory referring to concepts such as the reason of state, the problem of population, modern political economy, liberal securitisation, and the emergence of the human sciences.p 77
Kerr's approach to the term is more complex. He conceives of 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. To him it is not "a zone of critical-revolutionary study, but one that conceptually reproduces capitalist rule" [1999:197] by asserting that some form of government (and power) will always be necessary to control and constitute society.
Dean Dean's understanding of the term incorporates both other forms of governance and the idea of mentalities of government, 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 [1999:19]. 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: "Governmentality: How we think about governing others and ourselves in a wide variety of contexts" including the analysis of those mechanisms that try to shape, sculpt, mobilise and work through the choices, desires, aspirations, needs, wants and lifestyles of individuals and groups [Dean, 1999:12].
Dean's main contribution to the definition of the term, however, comes from the way he breaks the term up into 'govern' 'mentality', or mentalities of governing—mentality being a mental disposition or outlook. This means that the concept of governmentality is not just a tool for thinking about government and governing but also incorporates how and what people who are governed think about the way they are governed. He defines thinking as a "collective activity" [1999:16], 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" [1999:16]. This raises the point that those who are governed may not understand the unnaturalness of both the way they live and the fact that they take this way of life for granted—that the same activity in which they engage in "can be regarded as a different form of practice depending on the mentalities that invest it" [1999:17]. 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. [1999:18]
According to Dean, any definition of governmentality should incorporate all of Foucault's intended ideas. 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" [Dean, 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" [1999:16], 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 others as well.
Components
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' [Lemke, 2001:191]. For example, 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 [Foucault, 1997:74].
Fukuyama [in Rose, 1999: 63] writes "a liberal State is ultimately a limited State, with governmental activity strictly bounded by the sphere of individual liberty". However, as Rose notes, 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 realize its goals, individuals must come to recognize and act upon themselves as both free and responsible [Rose, 1999:68].
As Lemke states, a mentality of government "is not pure, neutral knowledge that simply re-presents the governing reality" [Lemke, 2001:191]. 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" [Rose, 1999:87].
From governmentality to neoliberal governmentality: cartography
Governmentality and cartography