DOI: 10.1515/irsr-2011-0014 IRSR INTERNATIONAL REVIEW of SOCIAL RESEARCH Volume 1, Issue 2, June 2011, 109-124 International Review of Social Research Neoliberalism: a Foucauldian Perspective Călin COTOI• University of Bucharest Abstract: The contemporary investigations on power, politics, government and knowledge are profoundly influenced by Foucault’s work. Governmentality, as a specific way of seeing the connections between the formation of subjectivities and population politics, has been used extensively in anthropology as neoliberal governmentalities have been spreading after the 1990s all over the world. A return to Foucault can help to clarify some overtly ideological uses of ‘neoliberalism’ in nowadays social sciences. Keywords: governmentality, governance, ethnography, neoliberalism ‘The market is in human nature’ is the proposition that cannot be allowed to stand unchallenged; in my opinion, it is the most crucial terrain of ideological struggle in our time. Frederic Jameson There is no alternative. Margaret Thatcher Governmentality or ideology? some kind of vague and simplistic political alignment: anti-neoliberalism Neoliberalism has become – alongside on the left and pro-neoliberalism on or, sometimes, replacing ‘globalization’ the right. – one of the buzzwords in public and ddIn this article I propose a way academic discourses on the ‘form of out a narrow ideological meaning the world-as-a-whole’ (Robertson, of neoliberalism, by a close 1990). It is used to forge new academic reading of Foucault’s research on alliances and to identify new political, governmentality, of Nikolas Rose’s moral and epistemological enemies. governmentality studies and of some It works, many times, as an umbrella ethnographical case studies. concept or a badge that helps to create •email: [email protected]. This paper was written with the support of the CNCSIS research grant nr 2077, IDEI programme, and the postdoctoral programme POSDRU ID 62259. © University of Bucharest, June 2011 110 | IRSR Volume 1, Issue 2, June 2011 Governance or governmentality. A meanings. There is a normative one, question of truth usually spelled as ‘good governance’ - implying also the existence of ‘bad The 1980s were the period when Theda governance’, less used, though, in Skocpol, Juan Linz, P. Rueschemeyer or this negative form. One of the most Alfred Stepan (Evans & Rueschemeyer important texts that introduced this & Skocpol, 1985) were urging social meaning was Reinventing Government: scientists to ‘bring the State back in’, How the Entrepreneurial Spirit Is but, also, the time when the critique Transforming the Public Sector of welfarism and all state centred (1992), written by David Osbourne approaches to public and social policies and Ted Gaebler that was used brought the field of ‘governance’ during the neoliberal attacks on ‘big to the fore front of social sciences government’ in USA and coincided investigations. The political power with the emergence of the ‘Washington was not seen anymore as a hegemonic, Consensus’ (Rose, 1999). thoroughly structurant, state dwelling ddThere is also a less normative, power. The analyses of modern control more descriptive and sociological systems were, gradually, disentangled meaning that has to do with the new from state centred theories. Non-state ‘sociology of governance’ or ‘social- authorities, expert systems (Giddens, political governance’ (Kooiman, 1990), quasi or non-governmental 2003; Rose, 1999). Jan Kooiman organizations, informal power systems defines governing and governance as and new forms of citizenship were connected concepts. Governing is ‘the seen as augmenting, subverting or totality of interactions, in which public competing with the centrality of state as well as private actors participate, power. Governance emerged as another aimed at solving societal problems umbrella concept referring to any or creating societal opportunities; ‘strategy, tactic, process, procedure or attending to the institutions as contexts programme for controlling, regulating, for these governing interactions; and shaping, mastering or exercising establishing a normative foundation authority over others in a nation, for all those activities’ and governance organization or locality’ (Rose, 1999: ‘the totality of theoretical conceptions 15). Used in this way, governance on governing’ (Kooiman, 2003: 4). could be applied to a huge area of ddThere are quite a few resemblances expertise, starting with business and between governance and govern- getting to universities, environment or mentality: both bring a critical stance cyberspace. Compared to the notions towards classic sociology dichotomies: of administration, management or state versus market and public versus reglementation, this notion seemed to private, both try to find new ways of be more flexible, less ideological and describing the ways political power more adapted to the modifications of is developing outside the state, the modern control systems brought by without ignoring, in the process, the global spread of neoliberalism. the importance of the state and the ddBesides this wide semantic field, doctrines and legitimacies connected governance has, also, two more precise with it. Both distance themselves from CĂLIN COTOI Neoliberalism: a Foucauldian Perspective | 111 an image of a state that is a continuous knowledges, technologies and experts process of expanding, centralizing and relatively autonomous from state and colonizing the ‘life worlds’ (Habermas, public institutions. 2000). Still, governmentality has ddThe analytics of governmentality, far more ambitious theoretical aims. as it is practised, following Michel Scholars working inside the ‘analytics Foucault, by Nikolas Rose, Barry of governmentality’ perspective are Hindes or Thomas Osborne is not critical towards ‘governance’ as they the same thing as the sociology of believe that, under the appearance governance. It is not about describing of a good connection to present day the organization and operationality of world and its new political forms, systems of governing and control, of there still lingers on, an anachronistic, political relations that appear between XIXth century concept of the state that public and private actors or of the sustains a fragmented state/ market/ constitution of self governing networks. civil society model (Rose, 1999). At its best, the object of investigation ddGovernmentality tries to dissolve the for governance is ‘an emergent pattern very roots of this compartmentalization. or order of a social system, arising The borders between public and out of complex negotiations and private, state and non-state, politic and exchanges between intermediate social non-politic are created and defined actors, groups, forces, organizations, inside the governmentality field public and semi-public institutions through historical series of conflicts, in which state organization are only continuities and new constructions one amongst many others seeking to that combine ideologies with practices steer or manage these relations’ (Rose, and technical knowledge. A change in 1999: 21; Kooiman, 1993) governmentality signifies a change in ddThe most concise definition of the ways state and life worlds are being governmentality that Foucault ever defined and separated; the borders produced, states that governmentality between state, market and social is the ‘conduct of conducts’ (conduite society are created by governmentality de conduits) (Foucault, 2008). This and not the other way around. The definition is not as simple as it may neoliberal governmentality is very seem. Governmentality analysis - and active and interventionist even when that differentiates it, radically, from it is a ‘minimal’ one. The interventions governance - a special stratum of are going on, and power seeps through discourses and practices of knowledge various crisscrossing capillaries and power (Rose 1999: 19). It is about in the social body: heterogeneous the emergence of specific ‘regimes of networks of actors and technologies; truth’, exploring the ways in which new fields of knowledge like social various modalities of speaking the sciences, economy, management or the truth are formed, authorised truth sociology of governance; old micro- speaking persons designated, and fields of power and expertise that are areas in which, about whom and from being connected in new ways. The where, statements, discourses and government that emerges is founded on practices rooted in truth are generated. heterogeneous networks of activities, Governmentality does not fetch a 112 | IRSR Volume 1, Issue 2, June 2011 new theory or paradigm as much state reason principle and on the older as a new perspective, a new area of knowledge and ordering techniques research. The starting point consists embodied in the police sciences of a basic set of questions: how is it (Polizeiwissenschaften) and the state possible to utter true statements about sciences (Staatswissenschaften) persons, their behaviour and ways of (Foucault, 2007: 291). intervening on these? How were the ddThe French author uses a nominalist truths put into practice and by whom, methodology, which presupposes through which conflicts, alliances, that there are no such things as the blackmails, violences, seductions universals usually employed by social and subordinations, as alternative sciences and historiography: ‘state’, to what other truths? The area that ‘civil society’, ‘people’, ‘sovereign’ is thus opened by the analytics of and ‘subjects’. By dissolving these,