> I am intrigued to see so much being built by contemporary theorists of governance and policy on Foucault's conception of governmentality, which if I recall correctly grew out of his work on public health and ideas of population in the C17th-C18th, two lectures in the 1970s in particular.
This is very true - one can also think of the widespread (mis)use (or interpretation to be more charitable) of Foucault's ideas on 'panopticism' also very much historically (and perhaps spatially) contingent. Michalis Lianos, most of whose work has unfortunately only been publsihed in French is very good on this - see 'Le Nouveau Contrôle Social' (L'Harmattan: Paris, 2001) and his newer piece in Surveillance & Society. He basically argues that you can't really base an contemporary theory of social control around Foucault's reading of the Panopticon (or the extended idea of panopticism), because Foucault's analysis was specific to the development of the subject in the modern period (which Lianos claims ended very specifically in the early 1970s - though I am sure we could all put different dates on it (if indeed, as Latour asks, we have ever been 'modern'). It would be like taking Felix's (excellent) book on the workhouse and arguing that this was enough to understand contemporary systems of welfare (and post-welfare). But many people still continue to do it...
David.
Dr David Wood
Managing Editor
Surveillance & Society
http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/
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