Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society

by Mitchell Dean

What is governmentality? How are individuals and cultures organized in modern society? Foucault′s work placed the subject of governmentality back on the social science agenda. Foucault′s discussion of knowledge and power revealed the micro-politics of governmentality. His work extended our understanding of the principles of governmentality to the bio-politics, the police, the state, welfarism, liberalism and proposed new areas of study such as authoritarian rule and reflexive government. But his work also obscured the history of the concept of governmentality and blunted the heritage of work in sociology and political science on the subject.

This book aims to reclaim governmentality as a central concept in sociology. Author Mitchell Dean seeks to learn from Foucault, but also to draw on wider analytical frameworks and traditions to provide the first complete overview of the concept. He argues that governmentality encapsulates a fundamentally new orientation to the study of power and authority. It allows for a new, more relevant understanding of how the individual is connected to the state and vice versa.

Lucid, timely and shrewd, the book makes a major contribution to understanding a concept that is belatedly being recognized as a core concept in the social sciences.

Genres: Philosophy, Sociology, Nonfiction, Academic, Politics, Theory, Anthropology

240 pages, Paperback

First published October 4, 1999

About the author

Mitchell Dean is Professor of Public Governance and Head of the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy at the Copenhagen Business School. He is author of the best-selling Governmentality, a title that has been cited in the first edition of Foucault’s lectures and the Oxford English Dictionary.

Reviews

[Janine Gertz]

Read this book if you are interested in how governments structure power to direct human behaviour. Mitchell Dean builds on Foucault's work providing a contemporary explanation of the continued presences of external and internal colonialism. Very useful theoretical framework for studies which aim to decolonize power structures.

[Veronika Valkovicova]

This book (first published in 1999) is a wonderful introduction to the "governmentality studies" in political sciences. Most of the current literature within this field refers to Dean and his work and I can only recommend this overview. While the author mostly built this publication on the "analysis of the state", many authors who study governmentality within the Inernational Relations look up to him as they extend the analythical apparatus.

[Raina Isabela]

Dean simplifies, examines and builds on Foucault's lectures on Governmentality in such a way that he modernizes it to investigate 21st century conflicts and beyond.

[Ole]

So, this is actually a good introduction to Foucault. It`s well written, and quite easy to read.

Having said that - Foucault is a very good writer. So i recommend to skip the middle man, and just check out the original material. Foucault is easy. Somewhat.

I really liked the ideas of Risk, in this book - and the refrences to Ulrich Beck, and a refleksive modernication. That makes the book worth the read.

Yeah, and the book isn`t really memorable - it doesn`t stick with you. Call it average.

[Kåre]

En bog, jeg har overtaget fra biblioteket. Jeg ville ikke selv have begyndt den, men nu den stod der...

Det er en begynder-bog og måske god som sådan. På mig virker den dog meget langsom og tung i det. Gentagelse af sig selv og af pointer, som man ligesom har hørt massere af gange. Den har også tendensen til meget tit at placere Foucault i klokkeklar og bedrevidende modsætning til alle andre forskere, som ikke efteraber Foucault. Ind imellem er der optakt til forsoning - f.eks. med Habermas - men så bliver det alligevel som regel brugt til at udpege Heltens fortrin.

[Emil Petersen]

First 2 chapters are very good; they neatly describe what governmentality is and why You should care. Unfortunately, the majority of the rest of this book is a convoluted wall of text, that did not bring much else to the table other than pages.

[Linda]

It will twist your head around, but in good way and offers the strongest theory-based critique of neoliberalism I've read to date.