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AbstractIn recent years, a research focus on lifestyles has drawn considerable attention from many quarters. Within this area, the influence of several European and continental intellectual currents not widely embraced in American sociology can be detected, some traceable to the work of Michel Foucault. This article will provide a summary and overview of one area of lifestyle sociology that is touched by Foucault's broad influence on the social sciences, particularly his theories on governmentality. Governmentality studies consider the manner in which personal autonomy and self‐responsibility is conveyed to individuals as an ongoing life‐project. Through the lens of governmentality studies, everyday lifestyle choices of individuals are viewed as elements of larger projects of self‐development, implemented by therapeutic discourses of risk management, self‐realization, and enhanced personal well‐being. After a summary of debates within the sociology of lifestyle informed by governmentality theories, commentary and recommendations will be offered on new directions in governmentality research focusing on subjective well‐being or 'happiness' as a feature of contemporary lifestyles and as an object of sociological research. A brief survey of new research comprising the interdisciplinary field of 'happiness studies' suggests a new direction not only for lifestyle research, but for governmentality studies as well.

Foucault's work on biopolitics and governmentality has inspired a wide variety of responses, ranging from philosophy and political science to history, legal studies, and urban planning. Drawing on historical sources from antiquity to twentieth century liberalism, Foucault presented us with analyses of freedom, individuality, and power that cut right to the heart of these matters in the present.

This title provides a readable account of the problem of governmentality that has stirred interests in a variety of disciplines and fields of knowledge.

Luisa Martín Rojo & Alfonso Del Percio: Neoliberalisation of institutions. Kamila Kraft: Linguistic securitisation as a governmentality in the neoliberalising welfare state -- Nelson Flores: Producing national and neoliberal subjects: bilingual education and governmentality in the United States -- Elisa A. Hidalgo McCabe and Noelia Fernández-González: Framing 'choice' in language education: the case of freedom in constructing inequality -- Bonnie Urciuoli: Leadership communication "skills" and undergraduate neoliberal subjectivity -- The neoliberal subject/ speaker. Joan Pujolar: Linguistic entrepreneurship: neoliberalism, language learning, and class -- Andrea Sunyol & Eva Codó: Fabricating neoliberal subjects through the international baccalaureate diploma programme -- Luisa Martín Rojo: The "self-made speaker": the neoliberal governance of speakers -- Alfonso Del Percio & Sze Wan Vivian Wong: Resetting minds and souls: language, employability and the making of neoliberal subjects -- Afterwords. Jacqueline Urla: Towards an ethnography of linguistic governmentalities -- Monica Heller: neoliberalism as a régime of truth: studies in hegemony.

This paper explores synergies between governance and governmentality, especially on neoliberalism. Governance and governmentality diffuse power and ruling. Scholars of governance offer a compelling account of changes in the state, but they might learn from governmentality to pay more attention to interpretation and discourses. Scholars of governmentality provide insights into modern power, but they might learn from governance to pay more attention to agency and heterogeneity. Scholars of governance might recognise the role of technologies of power in neoliberalism. Scholars of governmentality might grasp the way neoliberal marketisation has given way to networks and service integration.

In traditional power analysis, `the international' is a characteristic of the states system — an anarchic realm, qualitatively different from the domestic. To traditional norms analysis, the international is increasingly a realm of shared value allocation, akin to other political realms. Given this bifurcation in the literature, privileging power incurs the cost of not being able to study systemic change of the international, whereas privileging norms incurs the cost of not being able to study power. We argue that extant conceptualisations of the international hail from Weber via Morgenthau, for whom international politics was an ideal type applied to the realm between states. Building on Mike Williams's work, we perform a new reading of these two scholars. We find that Morgenthau's identification of the political as an ideal-typical sphere has room for social theoretical insights as found in constructivist theory. Indeed, by his own Weberian lights, Morgenthau's specific ideal type of international politics is in need of updating. We try to rise to the challenge by drawing on Michel Foucault's work in order to forge an understanding of the international as governmentality. The result is a conceptualisation of the international as a socially embedded realm of governmentality. It is a structure (defined by relations of power) that generates different and changing practices of political rule (defined as governmental rationality) and agencies (for example, polities).