Search results

Today, the environment is everywhere. For less than ten years, it goes without saying that all individuals, the population and the State are obliged to minimize their impact on the environment, even if they would not be affected themselves by potential consequences. For almost every action, concern for its environmental impact is present. That obligation manifests itself in a myriad of ways that affect individual behavior - what Foucault identifies as power. This paper seeks to understand how, through which forms and technologies, we are subject to power in the name of climate protection in Germany. Or, if turned on its head, it analyses how the climate is governed in Germany. ; 3

International audience ; Research has shown that the knowledge worker, the decisive driver of the knowledge economy, works increasingly longer hours. In fact, it would appear that instead of working to live, they live to work. There appears to be three reasons for this living-to-work development. First, the knowledge worker 'has to' on account of the pressure to become ever more efficient. Such pressure translates into internalized coercion in the case of the self-responsible knowledge worker. Secondly, working is constant, because the Internet and smart technologies and mobile devices have made it 'possible'. It gives the worker the capacity and management omnipotent control. In the final instance, the neoliberal knowledge worker works all the time because s/he paradoxically 'wants to'. It is a curious phenomenon, because this compulsive working is concomitant with a rise of a host of physical, emotional, and psychological disorders as well as the erosion of social bonds. The paradox is exacerbated by the fact that the knowledge worker does not derive any of the usual utilities or satisfactions associated with hard work. Elsewhere I have ascribed this apparent contradiction at the heart of the living-to-work phenomenon to the invisible thumotic satisfaction generated by knowledge work. In the present article, I argue that neoliberal governmentality has found a way to tether thumos directly to the profit incentive. I draw on Foucault's 1978-1979 Collége de France lecture course in which he analysed neoliberal governmentality with specific emphasis on the work of the neoliberal theorist of human capital, Gary Becker.

The author analyzes Estonia as a case study to explore two interrelated research questions – how exceptions are produced and reversed through the mechanisms of sovereignty and governmentality projected onto geo- and biopolitical domains, and how the new practices of exceptionalization and de-exceptionalization contribute to the emergence of a new spatial order at Europe's eastern margins? Three types of policies unfolded in Estonia as reactions to the Russian war against Ukraine are identified. First, the Estonian government introduced extraordinary measures based on the logic of national interests, which left much space for discretionary power to define risks, threats, and dangers. Secondly, some policy domains were intentionally de-exceptionalized for the sake of their better integration into Estonian normative space and as a reaction to the effects of the war. Third, in some cases there were exceptions from exceptions, which meant certain steps back toward normalization of the previously taken exceptional measures. The theoretical frame of the article consists of two nodal concepts – sovereignty and governmentality to be projected onto geo- and biopolitics treated as spheres in which sovereign and governmental powers operate and expose their political qualities.

Research has shown that the knowledge worker, the decisive driver of the knowledge economy, works increasingly longer hours. In fact, it would appear that instead of working to live, they live to work. There appears to be three reasons for this living-to-work development. First, the knowledge worker 'has to' on account of the pressure to become ever more efficient. Such pressure translates into internalized coercion in the case of the self-responsible knowledge worker. Secondly, working is constant, because the Internet and smart technologies and mobile devices have made it 'possible'. It gives the worker the capacity and management omnipotent control. In the final instance, the neoliberal knowledge worker works all the time because s/he paradoxically 'wants to'. It is a curious phenomenon, because this compulsive working is concomitant with a rise of a host of physical, emotional, and psychological disorders as well as the erosion of social bonds. The paradox is exacerbated by the fact that the knowledge worker does not derive any of the usual utilities or satisfactions associated with hard work. Elsewhere I have ascribed this apparent contradiction at the heart of the living-to-work phenomenon to the invisible thumotic satisfaction generated by knowledge work. In the present article, I argue that neoliberal governmentality has found a way to tether thumos directly to the profit incentive. I draw on Foucault's 1978-1979 Collége de France lecture course in which he analysed neoliberal governmentality with specific emphasis on the work of the neoliberal theorist of human capital, Gary Becker.

This article discusses the arts of governing Islam in Indonesia, a majority Muslim country, which is neither secular nor Islamic. It tries to explain how the premise of governmentality is modelled into the state structure and politics. Rather than seeing Islamophobia as a cultural practice, the article argues that Islamophobia develops partly because of power relations between the ruler and the ruled, or as I call it "regimented Islamophobia". It is the fear of "Islamic threats" – whether real or imagined – that is deemed as a potent challenge to regimes' power and authority. While the notion of majority-minority relation remains essential to analyse the forms of Islamophobia, this article offers a new insight of how political regimes exercise "governmentality practices" or the arts of governing Islam and controlling Muslim aspirations. This practice of governmentality is a key strategy to pacify Islam during the colonial and post-colonial Indonesia. As far as Indonesian political history is concerned, this governmentality practice is old wine in a new bottle; it is the technique Dutch colonial government and the regimes following the Indonesian independence have exercised for subjugating Islam and controlling aspirations of its believers.

By positing the idea that French Laïcité (loosely understood as 'state secularism') is not the product of the 1905 law but of the contemporary debate on Islam in France, this paper aims to show that Laïcité has been recently weaponised by both right-wing and left-wing parties to question the belonging of Islam to France. This will be done by relying on the Foucaudian notion of governmentality.

"This book reinvigorates the governmentality debate in International Relations (IR) by stressing the interconnectedness between governmentality and globality. It addresses a widening gap in the social sciences and humanities by reconciling Michel Foucault's concept of 'governmentality' with global politics. The volume assembles leading scholars who draw attention to the importance of approaching governmentality in IR from the perspective of globality and thereby highlights the need to consider governmentality and globality as fundamentally entangled. Accordingly, instead of any scaling-up of governmentality, the contributors argue that globality cannot be equated with the international level and should rather be considered as a genuine context of its own requiring distinct consideration. The book builds on the increasing importance and popularity of governmentality studies, not only by updating Foucault's concepts at a theoretical level, but also by introducing novel empirical problems and practices of global governmentality that have not hitherto been explored in IR"--

"This book reinvigorates the governmentality debate in International Relations (IR) by stressing the interconnectedness between governmentality and globality. It addresses a widening gap in the social sciences and humanities by reconciling Michel Foucault's concept of 'governmentality' with global politics. The volume assembles leading scholars who draw attention to the importance of approaching governmentality in IR from the perspective of globality and thereby highlights the need to consider governmentality and globality as fundamentally entangled. Accordingly, instead of any scaling-up of governmentality, the contributors argue that globality cannot be equated with the international level and should rather be considered as a genuine context of its own requiring distinct consideration. The book builds on the increasing importance and popularity of governmentality studies, not only by updating Foucault's concepts at a theoretical level, but also by introducing novel empirical problems and practices of global governmentality that have not hitherto been explored in IR"--

"This book reinvigorates the governmentality debate in International Relations (IR) by stressing the interconnectedness between governmentality and globality. It addresses a widening gap in the social sciences and humanities by reconciling Michel Foucault's concept of 'governmentality' with global politics. The volume assembles leading scholars who draw attention to the importance of approaching governmentality in IR from the perspective of globality and thereby highlights the need to consider governmentality and globality as fundamentally entangled. Accordingly, instead of any scaling-up of governmentality, the contributors argue that globality cannot be equated with the international level and should rather be considered as a genuine context of its own requiring distinct consideration. The book builds on the increasing importance and popularity of governmentality studies, not only by updating Foucault's concepts at a theoretical level, but also by introducing novel empirical problems and practices of global governmentality that have not hitherto been explored in IR"--

How do people living in a company town come to desire to work for the firm that controls it? Based on an in-depth case study of Volkswagen in Wolfsburg, Germany, we make two principal contributions. First, drawing on Foucault's concept of governmentality we investigate the mechanisms of power within which desired identities are shaped. Desired identities, we argue, are one means by which organizations exercise control over local populations. Second, we examine the multiple interlocking discourses by which Volkswagen sought to regulate the life of Wolfsburgers and to form their desired identities. In doing so, we contribute to identity research by demonstrating how biopower and discipline work in combination in neoliberal societies to make the governmentality of employee identity possible. Our research underlines the importance of studying company towns for understanding the relations of power that shape the lives and the identities of employees.

This book focuses on processes of bordering and governmentality around the Greek border islands from the declaration of a refugee crisis in the summer of 2015 up until the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. The chapters trace the implementation of the EU migration hotspot approach across space and time, from the maritime Aegean border to the islands (Lesvos and Samos) and from the islands to the Greek mainland. They do so through the lenses of peoples refusal to succumb to categories that get reified as identities through the hotspot approach, such as that of the deserving refugee, the undeserving economic migrant, the translator, the volunteer, the tourist and the researcher. This book explores how migration management in Greece from 2015-2020, along with the reshaping of space and time, reconfigured peoples relationships with one another and ultimately with ones self. Aila Spathopoulou is Assistant Professor (Research) in the Department of Geography at Durham University, UK. She is also co-coordinator of the Research Area Mobility: Migration and Borders at the Feminist Autonomous Centre for Research (Athens). She holds a PhD in Geography from King's College London and has published her research in peer reviewed journals.

1. Introduction -- 2. From the scene of arrival onto the road: The '(mixed) flow' -- 3. From the Olive Grove onto the ferry: The 'refugee volunteer' -- 4. From the relocation to the vulnerability route: The 'deserving refugee' -- 5. From 'self- detention' to 'self-deportation': The underserving 'economic migrant' -- 6. From humanitarian-bordering work to 'incomplete' translation: The 'cultural mediator' -- 7. From to 'integration' to closed hotspots: The 'migrant' -- 8. Conclusion.