Sociological Approach II: Governmentality Flashcards
What is the governmentality approach about?
Looking at how risk and knowledge is used to govern populations.
-Risk is a form of knowledge ordering the world to govern populations.
-Governmentality perspectives allow us to explore the rationalities and technologies behind risk management.
-Precautionary risk uses surveillance technology to
create and act upon a (fictional) future.
What/who is the theoretical base of the governmentality approach?
Foucault, but now governmentality has moved beyond.
What is ‘governing at a distance’ and power/knowledge?
2 ways start from Panopticon:
- Something to strive for - internalises & self disciplines: (order) conduct of (individual’s) conduct.
- Risk is not ‘out there’ but a tool for ordering our world, making sense of it and acting upon it - knowledge is tool for control.
What is ‘nudging’?
Risk identification and knowledge of how people behave/act - subtle implementations so people act according to your wishes by themselves (free will) without thinking about it - changing peoples’ behaviour in a way that they think they chose the action themselves.
-Linked to conduct of conduct, governing at a distance and knowledge/power.
What is governmentality of crime prevention?
Responsibilization of citizens to ensure their own and state security as the manager of their own risk portfolio (link to neoliberalism/ insurance/ public-private divide).
-Yet, is neoliberalism the only or primary power/knowledge
logic?
How does surveillance fit into governmentality?
Surveillance is a precautionary response to uncertainty. It entails a shift from governing individuals to governing populations. It includes and excludes (knowledge categories).
- Bureaucratised, made technical, neutral and ordinary.
- Performative power: delineates normal from abnormal.
How does governmentality link to the precautionary principle?
The precautionary principle is related to risk situations marked by two principal features: a context of scientific uncertainty and the possibility of serious and irreversible damage on the other (the double infinity) (Ewald 2002).
- It is a rationality articulated in policy.
- Risks are inconsistent with the chosen levels of protection.
- Shifts burden of proof onto the individual, everyone and everything is a potential risk and therefore have to ‘prove’ that they are not a risk.
- Therefore surveillance becomes an important part of governmentality.
What features distinguish precaution vs. insurance?
- Risk level: Zero risk tolerance vs. Reduction to threshold
- Method: Worst case scenarios vs. Pool and spread risk
- Time: Future-oriented vs. Past-oriented
- Logic: Individualization (everyone is a(t) risk) vs. Solidarity (risk is a normal distribution)
- Knowledge: Imagined & limitless vs. Collected & bounded
Precaution (surveillance) manages risk as individuals (actors) whist insurance manages risks as events.
What is Lyon (2006)’s text about?
How surveillance is a key aspect of risk governance – used to mitigate certain risks but also used as a form of governance of the population as a way to ensure order and control. This form of governance categorizes people, and brings to attention ‘high-risk’ areas of the population.
What is Haggerty (2003)’s text about?
The role of neoliberalism within dominant cultural reactions to risk and security, in the sense that individuals are expected to take responsibility for themselves; they decide and mitigate the levels of risk. E.g. the crime boom of the 1960s wherein individuals had to adapt to the rising crime rates and therefore the personal security markets exploded.
What is Bigo (2006)’s text about?
He develops on Michel Foucault’s idea of the ‘panopticon’ as a disciplinary tool, arguing that we are witnessing a transformation from a society of discipline to a society of management and monitoring the line of populations. The term ‘ban-opticon’ describes the new situation, in which profiling technologies are used to determine who should be placed under surveillance (categorising normal from abnormal). The main advantage of this policy is that it hides itself behind ‘technical neutrality’ since it appears as reasonable and not subjected to “classic racism”.
