The Government of Childhood

Discourse, Power and Subjectivity

K. Smith

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137312273
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Grounded in the Foucauldian literature on governmentality and drawing on a broad range of disciplines, this book examines the government of childhood in the West from the early modern period to the present. The book deals with three key time-periods and examines shifts in the conceptualization and regulation of childhood and child-rearing.

1

Conceptualising Governmentality

The starting point for this book is that modern Western childhood cannot be properly understood without appreciation of the concept of governmentality. Equally it is difficult to understand the concept of governmentality and its importance to the analysis of the exercise of power in Western liberal democracies without also looking at childhood. The aim of this chapter is to set out in detail the origins and meaning of the concept of governmentality as it was developed in the work of Michel Foucault. While this chapter is thus not directly concerned with the government of childhood, it represents a necessary preliminary to the more focused discussion which unfolds over the remainder of the book. I first examine what is meant by the term governmentality and explore key terms such as ‘rationality of government’ and ‘technology of government’ deployed in the post-Foucauldian governmentality literature. The following sections examine Foucault’s genealogical analysis of the ‘governmentalization of the state’ – the genesis of the concept of governmentality – in which he traces the emergence of liberal practices of governing, as well as his analysis of the distinctive characteristics of liberal forms of rule. To inform discussion I draw mainly on Foucault’s published works and lectures given at the Collège de France as well as on the work of those governmentality scholars, in particular Mitchell Dean, Nikolas Rose and Colin Gordon, whose interpretations of Foucault’s writings were among the most important resources on governmentality in the English language prior to the recent publication of translated versions of the relevant Collège de France lecture series.

Governmentality

Dean writes that governmentality refers to any rational approach to the question of how to govern.¹ As noted earlier, to govern is not simply to command or prohibit, but is a means of exercising power which attempts to guide or ‘conduct’ human behaviour.² According to Foucault a distinctive aspect of the concept of governing is that it refers to the exercise of power over people rather than over a territory or state.³ The concept of governing does not refer exclusively to the exercise of political power but is relevant to the dynamics at play in diverse forms of relationship in which attempts are made to shape the behaviour of others, including those between parents and children.⁴ It is the interconnection between such relations of power at the level of the personal and particular and those at the centralised political level which is at the heart of the concept of governmentality.⁵

Rose writes that Foucault’s genealogical studies demonstrate that the question of ‘how to govern’ has been posed with particular urgency at specific historical periods, leading to the emergence of political rationalities which represent distinctive modes of conceptualising the exercise of power.⁶ Political rationalities or ‘mentalities of government’ are defined by Dean as characteristic ways of thinking about governing which are ‘collective and relatively taken for granted’.⁷ Rose is emphatic that governmental rationalities must be regarded as practical rather than ideological, suggesting that they can be regarded as tools or ‘intellectual technologies’ for guiding thought and action, making possible shared understandings of what and who is to be governed and for what purpose, as well as the means by which this is to be achieved.⁸

According to O’Malley⁹ the development of rationalities of government can be regarded as encompassing two distinct stages: formation and systemisation. Rationalities are typically formed in relation to a particular issue or problem and assembled from whatever ‘intellectual, social and material resources’ happen to be available in a particular historical and cultural context.¹⁰ Rose suggests that a distinctive feature of ‘modern strategies of governmentality’ is their close association with scientific or ‘veridical’ discourses. ¹¹ Liberal rationalities of government depend heavily upon human sciences such as economics, psychology and sociology in apprehending the ‘objects, processes and persons {to be} governed’.¹² According to Rose the forms of ‘languages and techniques’ which have been found to be most useful in informing governmental strategies have not necessarily been those derived from the cutting-edge of theory or research, but rather those developed at the ‘vulgar, pragmatic, quotidian and minor level’ as solutions to specific mundane or localised concerns.¹³ Once formed rationalities undergo a process of systemisation. They are refined or polished as tensions between disparate elements are smoothed out in response to external or internal criticism and attempts are made to impose an over-arching unity.¹⁴ This unified ‘policy logic’ can then be deployed in dealing with any number of disparate issues or problems in a consistent manner.¹⁵

The emphasis in the governmentality literature on rationalisation makes it clear, as Rose emphasises, that government must be understood in the first instance in terms of thought,¹⁶ however the process of governing requires that ‘thought…becomes technical’.¹⁷ This is achieved through the deployment of ‘governmental apparatuses’¹⁸ or ‘technologies of government’.¹⁹ These are defined by Rose as technologies designed to act upon and shape human behaviour and capacities.²⁰ Rose stresses that such technologies are not the product of particular rationalities, but are ‘assemblages’ put together from multifarious resources, including for example methods of recording (for example a school register or patient record), calculating (for example, book-keeping), ordering time (such as a timetable or schedule) or space (a map or an architectural plan) which are brought together and deployed in order to achieve a particular end.²¹ Miller and Rose are careful to dispel any notion of a straightforward realisation of the aims of government through technologies, pointing out that while ‘“governmentality” is eternally optimistic, “government” is a congenitally failing activity’, hampered by the innumerable obstacles to be overcome in moving from the identification of issues to be addressed to developing, assembling and implementing programmes in order to do so.²²

The government of childhood obesity provides a good example of the diverse means by which attempts are made to reshape behaviour along desired ends, as well as of the serious difficulties involved in such endeavours. In liberal democracies government acts upon the behaviour of the governed not primarily through diktat but by, what Rose calls, translation by which is meant the multi-directional diffusion of ideas, concerns, aims and objectives between various spheres such as the political, medical, educational, commercial and personal.²³ The construction of obesity in medical terms as an ‘epidemic’ has been taken up by policy-makers, health and educational professionals, media commentators as well as by individual parents and children. Numerous programmes of action have been devised in various countries to promote ‘healthy eating’. Various technologies have been assembled in developing and implementing these programmes, such as body mass indicators, calorie counters and ‘food pyramids’ in order to encourage children and parents to monitor food intake and weight gain. The discourse of healthy eating/lifestyle has also been taken up by various commercial media and manufacturing interests and deployed in marketing and advertising campaigns. At the same time there are also in existence multiple discourses, rationalities and strategies which encourage ways of being and acting which are at odds with efforts to promote ‘healthy lifestyles’, while many of those targeted by ‘healthy eating’ discourses actively resist the messages such discourses convey.

From a Foucauldian perspective relations of power are to be distinguished from relations of domination – there is always potential for action or resistance.²⁴ As stated above, to govern is not to attempt to coerce, neither is it to ‘brainwash’ or indoctrinate; in governing others we may seek to guide them towards choosing particular behaviours or shape them into particular ways of being but success – as any parent recognises – is never assured. To analyse the exercise of power from the perspective of governmentality is to recognise, following Foucault,²⁵ that although power ‘infuses’ every relationship this by no means implies that every relationship is oppressive, nor that such relations are fixed. Relations of power are to be understood as ‘mobile, reversible and unstable’.²⁶ To take the example of parents and children, while parents generally seek to guide and shape children’s behaviour, we can easily conceive of circumstances where children actively resist such guidance or even situations in which parental conduct is actively adjusted under the tutelage of their offspring.

It was noted above that from a governmentality perspective what is of particular interest in the analysis of relations between parents and children is the extent to which they are intertwined with relations of power at the wider, societal level, especially the manner in which the power which parents exercise over their children supports and maintains the political authority exercised by the state over its citizens. It is clear that over the last two hundred years the regulation of child-parent relations has come more directly under state control, however, as Rose²⁷ writes, the majority of families in contemporary liberal democracies are governed indirectly. As with the example of the government of child obesity above there are various channels through which parents receive advice, guidance and support on particular aspects of the child-rearing process from promoting the cognitive development of infants to curbing teen drinking or substance abuse. As long as the minimum child-rearing standards set out in legislation are met parents are in theory free to adopt or ignore this advice as they see fit. Even where parents endeavour to follow the advice of experts to the letter, as noted above, they not infrequently meet with resistance from their offspring. What is more difficult to resist, however, are the ontological and epistemological assumptions embedded in the information, advice and guidance with which we subjects of government are daily bombarded. It is in illuminating and challenging these assumptions that Foucault’s ideas on governmentality can come to our aid.²⁸

The ‘governmentalization of the state’

The concept of governmentality emerged from Foucault’s genealogical analysis of ‘the governmentalization of the state’. This he defined as the transformation of the aims, strategies and apparatus of political power from those relating to rule over territories to those concerned with managing populations.²⁹ Foucault described his approach as a ‘little experiment of method’, an attempt to link the analysis of power at the micro and macro levels, by looking at the state not as a ‘transcendent reality’ but as a set of practices or mode of governing.³⁰ The ‘governmentalization of the state’, is outlined by Foucault in terms of the trajectories of three distinct ‘mechanisms of power’ sovereignty, discipline and security, which have as their targets territory, individuals and populations respectively.³¹ Foucault is careful to stress that this should not be understood in terms of a succession of social orders – ‘we should not see things as the replacement of a society of sovereignty by a society of discipline, and then of a society of discipline by a society, say, of government’.³² Instead we are bidden to think in terms of transformations in the exercise of political power as sovereign mechanisms were supplemented by and adapted to disciplinary mechanisms and mechanisms of security, shifts predicated on new ways of rationalising the aims and objects of power.

Prince, Pastor, Pater

The starting point for the governmentalisation of the state is that juridical theories are inadequate for explaining how political power is exercised;³³ the question of governing is conceptualised as a distinct issue from that of sovereignty and is based on a completely different template. The concept of sovereignty is grounded in the ‘right to rule’ traditionally a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Conceptualising Governmentality
• 2 Subjects of Government
• 3 Disciplining Childhood
• 4 The Gentle Way in Child Government
• 5 Governing the Responsible Child
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Index