Foucault

Studying the Agency of Being Governed

Methodology Workshop - Call for papers at  the School of Global Studies, Gothenburg University

19-20 May 2010

Studies of governmentality during the last decades have productively explored and analysed how rationalities, techniques and technologies of government are applied and used in order to make societies and its citizens governable (see for example Dean 1999, Rose 1996, Burchell 1996, Hindess 1996). Focusing on neoliberal governmentality, research has shown how technologies of performance (such as targeting, benchmarking, mid-term budget frameworks and refined methods of monitoring and evaluation) work together with technologies of agency (such as participatory and emancipatory methods) to shape conduct and subject as well as their interests and agency.

Objects of security

Securitisation has been seen as largely part of the linguistic and social constructivist turn in international relations. Risk, security, disaster and war have been unpacked as discursive and institutional practices that constitute both that which is to be secured and the threat. As a performative and intersubjective practice, securitisation has largely ignored the role of ‘things’ in the articulation of insecurities.