Page 35 - Contemporary Political Sociology Globalization Politics and Power

Changing Definitions of Politics and Power 21

In this section, we will first look at an outline of Foucault ’ s “ analytics

of power, ” and then at work on “ governmentality ” that has been infl u-
enced by his later work. Although the study of neo - liberal governmental-
ity is an important and influential strand of contemporary political

sociology in itself, it does not exhaust Foucault ’ s influence on contempo-
rary political sociology, which has been both broader and deeper than

this body of work alone. We will look at this wider influence on “ cultural
politics ” in the final section of the chapter.

F oucault ’ s a nalytics of p ower

Foucault explicitly denies that he has constructed a theory of power,
arguing that power must be analyzed in its operations and effects and
cannot be captured in a systematic set of related concepts conceived in
advance of its application (Foucault, 1984b : 82). He prefers, therefore,
to think in terms of an “ analytics of power ” in which power is identifi ed
only in the instances of its exercise. It is, nevertheless, possible to make
some general points about this “ analytics. ”
Power for Foucault is, above all, productive. His analyses are opposed
to what he calls the “ juridico - discursive ” model in which power is seen
as possessed by the state, especially the law, and is used to impose order
on society. According to this theory, power involves legitimate prohibition
modeled on the legal contract, according to liberals, or repressive legisla-
tion and policing to preserve class domination, according to radicals. It
is, at any rate, essentially negative, restrictive, and inhibitory (Foucault,
1980a ). According to Foucault, to think of power in this way is to miss
how it works in institutions and discourses across the social fi eld. Foucault
is concerned to analyze power in the details of social practices, at the
points at which it produces effects, as a fluid, reversible, and invisible

“ microphysics ” of power. In Foucault ’ s model, power is productive in the
sense that it is constitutive, working to produce particular types of bodies
and minds in practices which remain invisible from the point of view of
the older model of power as sovereignty. Power is pluralist: it is exercised
from innumerable points, rather than from a single political center. It is
not the possession of an elite, and it is not governed by a single overarch-
ing project. However, seeing power as productive is not to see it as good.
On the contrary, in most of his work at least, Foucault ’ s use of the term
“ power ” implies a critical perspective on social practices. It is productive
of regulated and disciplined social relations and identities which are to be
resisted.