Search results for "Governmentality"
showing 10 items of 49 documents
Precarious Sovereignty in a Post-Liberal Europe : the Covid-19 Emergency in Estonia and Finland
2020
The paper addresses a puzzle resulting from the current global state of alert: the coronavirus pandemic brought us back to the world of the allegedly sovereign nation states with borders and national governments in charge, yet in fact, this retrieved sovereignty looks very vulnerable and precarious. We explain this controversy through a triad of concepts—sovereignty, governmentality, and post-liberalism—that we apply to an analysis of a corona-imposed state of emergency in Estonia and Finland. Based on comparative case study research, we posit that sovereignty is precarious in post-liberalism due to its large dependence on the technologies of responsibilization and agency. From a biopolitic…
Conflictual Rebordering: The Russia Policies of Finland and Estonia
2023
This article seeks to analyse the process of conflictual rebordering in the EU’s relations with Russia. The authors single out three major crises that triggered and shaped the process of toughening the border regime and the related transformations of political meaning of the EU-Russia border: the COVID-19 pandemic, the drastic deterioration of Moscow-Brussels relations in the beginning of 2021 and the war in Ukraine that started on 24 February 2022. Correspondingly, the EU’s reactions to each of these critical junctures might be described through the academic concepts of governmentality, normativity and geopolitics. Our aim is to look at the three ensuing models – governmental, normative an…
Foucault, pastoral power, and optics
2015
The article shows that in Foucault’s late 1970s and early 1980s analyses of pastoral, conductive power—most essentially in early and medieval Christianity—the issue of sight and visual perception recurs and occupies a crucial status. In Foucault’s discussion, these Christian relations of power, knowledge, and truth are attached with a surveying gaze that is both totalizing as well as individualizing, one that is mobilized by the thrust towards perfect visibility, transparency, and illumination of the subject turned into an object. The intention is also to develop Foucault’s analysis further, by demonstrating how Christian, providential government can be and actually has been detached from …
The EU'S Explicit and Implicit Heritage Politics
2014
During the past couple of decades, heritage has become topical in a new way in Europe as the concept has been utilized for political purposes in the EU cultural policy. The EU currently administrates or supports three initiatives – the European Heritage Days, the European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage, and the European Heritage Label – that address the fostering of the transnational European cultural heritage. The article discusses the explicit and implicit heritage politics included in these initiatives. In order to understand the constructive and generative nature of the EU heritage politics, it is approached in the article as a discursive meaning-making process consisting of several …
Gramsci e Foucault, Foucault e Gramsci
2017
The purpose of this essay is to analyze the scientific literature that has argued about the presence of possible relationships and similarities between Gramsci and Foucault. In particular, I will focus on the notions of hegemony, power, governmentality, ideology, discourse. Keywords: Hegemony; Governmentality; Power; Ideology; Discourse.
Migration, cultural sustainability, and integration : a discourse analysis of multiculturalism and migration in Canada and Finland
2017
The aim of this thesis is to assess how the discoursesof migration and multiculturalism arebeendepicted in the Finnish and Canadian policy documents. This was assessed by using the concept of governmentality and multiculturalism as the theoretical framework of the study. The concept of governmentality was used as a background to examine and interpret power relations and discourses in the data and how they influence contemporarydebate in these societies. The result was analysedqualitatively using theoretical –discourse analysis. And the analysis of the study was mainly based on the integration policy documents from Finland and Canada. The result of the study indicated that both Canada and Fi…
Is there a need for a new cultural policy strategy in the Nordic welfare state?
1996
Cultural policies have existed as a structural element of the Nordic welfare states from the very beginning. Today these policies are being re‐evaluated, and there are some indications that they may be gradually dismantled. Local cultural politicians in municipalities (cultural boards) and professionals (e.g. cultural secretaries) have become uncertain and anxious about their future role and legitimacy. This new situation is addressed and analysed by using the ideas of Goffman's on‐and off‐stage representations, and Foucault's governmentality. Important background factors in the development of cultural policies both in the past, present and future are identified and used to explain the pres…
Afterword [part 2]: governing bodies and minds
2019
This brief comment is intended to provide some remarks on the possibility of placing the particular entanglements of ‘bodies and minds’ presented in this special issue of History of Education in a ...
Michel Foucault and the enigmatic origins of bio-politics and governmentality
2012
Even a superficial look at the classical ideas and practices of government of populations makes it immediately apparent that there is a peculiarity in Foucault’s genealogy of western bio-politics and governmentality. According to Foucault, western governmental rationality can be traced back to the Judeo-Christian tradition in general and to the Christian ideology and practice of the pastorate in particular. In this article, my purpose is to show that Christianity was not the prelude to what Foucault calls governmentality but rather marked a rupture in the development that started in classical Greece and Rome and continued in early modern Europe. With the rise of Christianity, the majority …
Sources of governmentality
2012
The article scrutinizes Michel Foucault’s interpretation of Machiavelli in his famous lecture on governmentality. Foucault is slightly misguided in his search for the origins of governmentality, the article asserts. Foucault gives credit for the development of what he calls a new art of government to anti-Machiavellian treatises, but also follows those treatises in their distorted interpretation of Machiavelli. Consequently, Foucault’s analysis gets confused and regards as novel those arguments and developments that were essentially of ancient pedigree compared with Machiavelli’s ideas. The article discusses especially two points in Foucault’s interpretation of Machiavelli: Foucault’s insi…