How Foucault's Governmentality Can Help

CHAPTER 4 How Foucault’s Governmentality Can Help

It is the examination which, by combining hierarchical surveillance and normalizing judgement, assures the great disciplinary functions of distri- bution and classification foucault (1995, p. 192) ∵

The Theory

Michel Foucault’s governmentality is a term that can be utilized and inter- preted in varied ways dependent upon the circumstances. As with any social theory, the perceived benefits and shortcomings are analyzed through the specific lens of the researcher. To ground this research, I will explore the theory of governmentality through my personal context and experiences with elemen- tary education, standardized assessment, and student voice practices. Through my research, I have encountered an extensive variety of ways in which schol- ars define Foucault’s governmentality. However, one key element is commonly present, government as the conduct of conduct (Foucault, 1982, pp. 220–221). In this way, I will begin by discussing how conduct is shaped through Foucault’s mechanisms of control.

Mechanisms of Control In his 1975–76 Lectures at the Collège de France, Foucault (1997) establishes power’s hold over life historically progressed from man as a body to man as a species and the birth of biopower (pp. 240–264). While forms of discipline and mechanisms of control between these disciplinary and regulatory periods are not mutually exclusive I have organized them in two separate, yet related subsections.

Disciplinary Disciplinary mechanisms of control are characteristically individualizing and techniques of power are centered on the body. These structures of government emerged in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries through secular formation

(Dean, 2010, p. 89). The notion that the state should care for the welfare of its citizens developed during this time as pastoral power. In this way, power is exerted as care through knowledge. Foucault personifies this type of control through the likeness of the shepherd and his flock. Foucault (1981) establishes some critical themes typical of pastoral power in the Christian allegory of the shepherd and his flock. (1) “The shepherd wields power over a flock rather than over a land,” (2) “the shepherd gathers together, guides, and leads his flock,” (3) “The shepherd’s role is to ensure the salvation of his flock,” and (4) “wielding power is a ‘duty’” (pp. 228–230). Additionally, (5) the shepherd must account for each of his sheep and their actions, (6) the flock complies to the will of the shepherd through pure obedience, and (7) the knowledge between the shepherd and each of his sheep is deeply particular (pp. 236–237). Next, I will frame the ideas represented by Foucault’s metaphor in terms of governmental control. (1) The relationship between those in power and the governed citizens is of greatest importance, (2) the immediate pres- ence and direct action of a governmental body is the primary cause society as a whole exists, (3) the welfare state ensures the wellbeing of its individual citizens, (4) a constant concern of the governing body is maintaining the good of the masses through surveillance and individual attention to each member, (5) power is held in the comprehensive understanding of each individual and his/her actions, (6) citizens depend on the government, which requires their obedience, and (7) the knowledge between the governing body and those governed is individualizing, as it is not enough to understand the state of society, specific knowledge of each member is necessary. Disciplinary technologies of control, characteristic of pastoral power began shifting around the midpoint of the eighteenth century. Foucault (1997) explains,

This [new] technology of power does not exclude the former, does not exclude disciplinary technology, but it does dovetail into it, integrate it, modify it to some extent, and above all, use it by sort of infiltrating it, embedding itself in existing disciplinary techniques…Unlike discipline, which is addressed to bodies, the new nondisciplinary power is applied not to man-as-body but to…man-as-species. (p. 243)

Mechanisms of control began to take new forms directed at the masses rather than individuals. The formation of the state and rationalization of the state is through a primary focus upon the population as a whole. While individualizing methods of control such as surveillance, obedience, and docility do not disappear from the state’s range of possibility, techniques of power begin to