McKee, K. (2009) Post-Foucauldian governmentality: what does it offer
critical social policy analysis? Critical Social Policy, 29 (3). pp. 465-486.
ISSN 0261-0183
http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/6331/
Deposited on: 16 July 2009
Enlighten – Research publications by members of the University of Glasgow
http://eprints.gla.ac.uk
Post-Foucauldian Governmentality:
what does it offer critical social policy analysis?
Abstract
This article considers the theoretical perspective of post-Foucauldian governmentality,
especially the insights and challenges it poses for applied researchers within the critical
social policy tradition. The article firstly examines the analytical strengths of this
approach to understanding power and rule in contemporary society, before moving on to
consider its limitations for social policy. It concludes by arguing that these insights can
be retained, and some of the weaknesses overcome, by adopting a ‘realist
governmentality’ approach (Stenson 2005, 2008). This advocates combining traditional
discursive analysis with more ethnographic methods in order to render visible the
concrete activity of governing, and unravel the messiness, complexity and unintended
consequences involved in the struggles around subjectivity.
Keywords: ethnography, Foucault, governing, power, resistance
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Introduction
Governmentality, derived from the work of Michel Foucault, has gained increasing
popularity within social policy in the last decade. Although applied by different people
in different ways, it has nonetheless been embraced as a valuable theoretical perspective
for understanding power and rule across diverse fields such as crime (see for example,
Garland 1997; Stenson 1998, 2005); education (see for example, Ball 1990; Morgan
2005); housing (see for example, Flint 2002, 2003; Cowan and McDermont 2006; Author
2007, 2008; Author and Cooper 2008); local government and public service reform (see
for example, Newman 2001; Raco and Flint 2001; Clarke et al 2007); social welfare (see
for example, Dean 1995, 1999; Cruikshank 1994, 1999; McDonald and Marston 2005);
and social work (see for example, Baistow 1994/5; Lewis 2000).
Foucault’s original essay on governmentality emerged from a lecture series that
he presented at the College de France in the 1970s, which was concerned with tracing the
historical shift in ways of thinking about and exercising power in certain societies (Elden
2007).
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Here, Foucault highlights the emergence of a particular rationality of rule in
early-modern Europe, in which the activity of government became separated from the
self-preservation of the sovereign and redirected towards optimising the well-being of the
population, hence making this population potentially more ‘docile’ and ‘productive’
(Foucault 2003a, 2003b). Crucially, he introduces the term “biopolitics” to draw
attention to a mode of power, which operates through the administration of life itself –
meaning bodies (both individually and collectively), their health, sanitation, procreation,
mental and physical capacities and so forth (Foucault 2003c: 202). In doing so, Foucault
illuminates an ‘art of governing’ that involves sets of practices and calculated strategies
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that are both plural and immanent in the state. In addition, he articulates a mode of
political government more concerned with the management of the population than the
management of a territory per se (Jessop 2007).
Alongside this historically specific meaning a more generic definition and usage
of the term governmentality has emerged. The insights and analyses advanced by
secondary commentators within this field have been pivotal. A review of the literature
highlights that this is a phenomenon that took off in the late 1990s, although a small
number of authors were drawing influence from Foucault’s work a little earlier (see for
example, Gordon 1980; Rose and Miller 1992; Burchell 1993; Dean 1995). Importantly,
these commentators have developed and utilised governmentality in a wider sense to
draw attention to the ‘how’ of governing, by considering how we think about the nature
and practice of government. This is illuminated through a focus on both the discursive
field in which the exercise of power is rationalised – that is the space in which the
problem of government is identified and solutions proposed; and the actual
interventionist practices as manifest in specific programmes and techniques in which
both individuals and groups are governed according to these aforementioned rationalities
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(Lemke 2001). By emphasising the interconnection between thought and modes of
governing – as manifest in the emergence of particular governmentalities (or mentalities
of rule) – attention is directed to what authorities wanted to happen, in pursuit of what
objectives and by what means, but without collapsing analysis solely on to the sovereign
will of the ruler(s).
This article reviews both the strengths as well as the potential challenges that a
governmentality perspective offers researchers within the critical social policy tradition.
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To achieve this aim the next section of the paper considers the analytical insights of
governmentality, particularly its challenge to the self-evidence of power; its broader
definition of governing; its consideration of the productive nature of power; and its
critical approach. In contrast, the section that follows explores the theoretical limitations
of this perspective, focusing specifically on its disregard for empirical reality; its
tendency to conflate thought and practice; its inattention to social difference; its neglect
of the role of the state; and the adequacy of its politics of resistance. Many of these
critiques reflect the way in which governmentality “is often deployed in ways that belie
its original formulation”, and indeed, generate analyses which “are decidedly ‘un-
Foucauldian’” (Rutherford 2007: 292). As such, they would be more accurately directed
at secondary commentators who have interpreted and applied Foucault’s work, rather
than his original analysis, which does provide the conceptual apparatus to engage with
these issues. The paper concludes by arguing that the way forward for critical social
policy is to reconfigure governmentality and adopt a ‘realist’ perspective (Stenson 2005,
2008). A welcome departure from the rather abstract and text centred approaches that
have tended to dominate governmentality studies, this mixed-methods approach gives
more attention to the empirical concerns of social policy by examining particular
mentalities of rule in their local context. In doing so, it renders visible the actual effects
of governing practices, and the behaviour and situated knowledge of subjugated
populations. This sensitivity to time and place, coupled with a strong focus on the
resistant ‘subject’, represents a return to, as opposed to a departure from, Foucault’s own
thinking.
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