🏁 10. Module in Review

 

Main point

Governments care for citizens; but along with that comes control. That's this week's takeaway. Specifically, in the modern era, governments took on the task of safeguarding people, who were now understood as 'population' or 'citizens'. To achieve this care, new kinds and levels of knowledge were created. People became legible to the government through things like statistics. This is the governmentality concept.

Significance

Using the structure-agency concept we could say that governmentality is a structure. We can use the "governmentality" to analyse government policies. But I think Foucault's point is not that the governments force this on us. It's not some big conspiracy. Instead the point is that we do this to ourselves. We make ourselves legible and keep an eye on ourselves. We turned ourselves into disciplined subjects. And that's where it might become really significant for you. Who you are might be, in part, a disciplined subject.

What's next

As with every concept we study, governmentality is not necessarily correct or even useful. That is for you to decide. In the late 1970s Foucault himself, ever creative and insightful, turned to another kind of structure:  neoliberalism.

Here the question changes slightly. What happens when governments increasingly try to govern through markets, competition and individual choice? Rather than simply caring for citizens directly, governments can encourage us to take responsibility for ourselves — for our health, education, employment, retirement and care.