For all interested and unaware, William Waters has a new book out on the subject- Governmentality: Critical Encounters- that offers some very thorough insight into a re-reading of Foucault's charge

Cheers

________________________________________
From: A forum for critical and radical geographers [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Eric N Olund [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 15 August 2012 08:42
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Governmentality and geography

I suppose a 'proper' geographical perspective would emphasise the
unevenness of its field of operation and that it is inherently a
spatialising practice.  But we can't claim that as 'our' insight as
these were fundamental to Foucault's account--all we can do is
remind/refine/revise those central claims.  At best we can define a
'geographically-minded' approach on which we have no monopoly and
hopefully wouldn't in any case.

Given the above, I would revise two of your summary claims below:

--the national scale of its emergence; true, that was Foucault's focus
in the 'Governmentality' essay, but it's clear in other related
lectures that the urban scale was crucial to its emergence, and also
more recent historical-geographical research on imperial and federal
polities show how the centralised European nation-state has been by no
means the only important site of governmentality's/governmentalities'
emergence.

--neoliberalism is indeed a dominant governmental discourse in the
present, but it is not the only one.  While the current research focus
on neoliberalism and its accompanying securitisation is unsurprising,
market relations have not in actual material accomplished fact taken
control of absolutely everything (neoliberalism wouldn't have to work
so hard if it had).  There are other governmental rationalities
persisting into the present or emerging in response to or even simply
alongside neoliberalism that are important in people's lives and worth
researching.  Foucault's sidetrack into his genealogy of neoliberalism
was productive, but I would hope collectively we have the capacity to
diversify our focus in present-oriented research.

I say all this one day in advance of the public release of A-level
results in England as I am about to go into work as admissions tutor
to choose who's in and who's out in our 'newly' marketised HE
system...

Best wishes,
Eric Olund

On 15 August 2012 07:38, Nicholas James <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Recently a friend at Goldsmiths asked me "What would be the 'proper'
> geographic perspective [on governmentality]?" One, I didn't know what proper
> geography was. Two, I didn't know how distinctly different the geography
> perspective on 'governmentality' might be. Any help on this would be
> gratefully received.
> Nick
> PS this is my attempt at a thumb-nail definition.
>
> "Governmentality is a philosophical term increasingly adopted in geography
> and the social sciences.  It refers to the analysis of the conduct and
> ever-changing rationalities in managing populations derived from Michel
> Foucault’s historiography of modern forms of knowledge taken up by
> administrative powers. Early governmentality had “the population as its
> target, political economy as its major form of knowledge, and apparatuses of
> security as its essential technical instrument” (Foucault, 2007: pp.
> 108-109). For Foucault, ‘governmental apparatuses’ taken up in the 18th
> century are intended to explain strategic forms of knowledge later
> constituting what was developed as a resources for politics in the 20th
> century with respect to national populations. In contemporary geography,
> governmentality looks to changes in technologies and assumed global risks
> that are currently being conducted under economic and political discourses.
> Governmentality therefore offers a critical eye, engaging with the spaces
> between the theories and rationalities of discourses, for example such as
> neo liberalism economic theory and policy actions which enable and steer its
> practice of governance. Today emerging arts of government have been unfolded
> to form complex, contested and uneven contexts [...geo political ?] , in
> which water security fits with a globalised governmentality by relating an
> emerging understanding of environmental policy to the international context
> which is currently framed around the battles between sustainability and
> development and competitive national interests."
>
> Reference:
> Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de
> France, 1977-1978, translated by Graham Burchell, edited by Arnold I.
> Davidson (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 108-9