Page 41 - Contemporary Political Sociology Globalization Politics and Power

Changing Definitions of Politics and Power 27

the sovereign ’ s rule over the territory and subjects of the state. For its
opponents, however, this type of rule is too external to the society and,
therefore, too fragile to be successful. The practices of government should
rather be immanent to society, exercised over “ men and things ” to
promote wealth and well - being. It was from the eighteenth century
onwards, however, according to Foucault, that governmentality was
increasingly established with the development of capitalist agriculture and

the redefinition of the “ economy, ” which became associated with “ popu-
lation ” rather than the family, and with a range of knowledges and tech-
niques concerned with managing its expansion, health, and productivity.
Through the expansion of these knowledges and techniques, including the
gathering and manipulation of large bodies of statistical data, “ govern-
ment ” itself became a science, the science of managing the welfare of the
population. At the same time, the modern state, already somewhat cen-
tralized territorially as an administrative and military apparatus around
the sovereign in early modernity, becomes increasingly “ governmental-
ised. ” It is increasingly dispersed through disciplinary practices and
“ micro - politics, ” concerned with the “ conduct of conduct, ” with increas-
ing the productivity of people and things rather than with imposing order
and security from above (Foucault, 1991 ).
The idea of governmentality clearly develops Foucault ’ s “ analytics of
power ” beyond the earlier critique of the “ juridico - discursive ” model of
power as sovereignty. But Foucault does not seem to be entirely clear or
consistent on how we should understand state formation and develop-
ment in modernity in relation to disciplinary power. On some occasions,
he continued to write in his later work as if he understood the state as
largely irrelevant to disciplinary power. For example, in his lecture on
“ Governmentality ” in 1978, Foucault argues that “ maybe, after all, the
State is not more than a composite reality and a mythical abstraction
whose importance is more limited than we think ” (Foucault, 1991 : 103).
This seems close to his earlier position on the study of power: it is neces-
sary to “ cut off the King ’ s head ” to avoid getting caught up in over -
estimating the importance of the state and related ideas like sovereignty
and law at the expense of understanding how disciplinary power actually
works. Indeed, in language reminiscent of Marxism, Foucault went so far
as to insist that, “ The State is superstructural in relation to … power
networks that invest the body, sexuality, the family, kinship, knowledge,
technology and so forth ” (Foucault, 1980b : 122). On other occasions,
however, Foucault seems to suggest that the state is not irrelevant to the
exercise of disciplinary power; government through state institutions is
an important aspect of strategies of “ governmentality ” (see the discussion