The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality

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University of Chicago Press, Jul 9, 1991 - Philosophy - 307 pages
Based on Michel Foucault's 1978 and 1979 lectures at the Collège de France on governmental rationalities and his 1977 interview regarding his work on imprisonment, this volume is the long-awaited sequel to Power/Knowledge. In these lectures, Foucault examines the art or activity of government both in its present form and within a historical perspective as well as the different ways governmentality has been made thinkable and practicable.

Foucault's thoughts on political discourse and governmentality are supplemented by the essays of internationally renowned scholars. United by the common influence of Foucault's approach, they explore the many modern manifestations of government: the reason of state, police, liberalism, security, social economy, insurance, solidarity, welfare, risk management, and more. The central theme is that the object and the activity of government are not instinctive and natural things, but things that have been invented and learned.

The Foucault Effect analyzes the thought behind practices of government and argues that criticism represents a true force for change in attitudes and actions, and that extending the limits of some practices allows the invention of others. This unique and extraordinarily useful collection of articles and primary materials will open the way for a whole new set of discussions of the work of Michel Foucault as well as the status of liberalism, social policy, and insurance.
 

Contents

Politics and the Study of Discourse
53
Questions of Method
73
Governmentality
87
The Genealogy of Capital Police
105
Civil Society and Governing The System
119
Social Economy and the Government of Poverty
151
The Mobilization of Society
169
Insurance and Risk
197
Popular Life and Insurance Technology
211
The Birth of a Special Knowledge
235
Pleasure in Work
251
From Dangerousness to Risk
281
Index
299
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