This book has a two-pronged task: to identify the process of neoliberal restructuring of âthe socialâ observed in the social policies and development in the Global South, and to discuss what kind of alternative public sphere, which will be conceptualised as a âvernacular public sphereâ later in this introduction, is emerging in such restructuring. In this study, âthe socialâ is considered as an assemblage of ideas and institutions to nurture mutuality and solidarity for the security of peopleâs lives. It is based on the formal and impersonal mutuality that lies at the basis of redistribution, under which, people accept that the money they earn will be paid for services to someone they have never known or met. Originally, in the history of the West, âthe socialâ was âinventedâ to deal with various risks found in the process of industrialization during the 19th century in Western Europe (Donzelot 1984).1 Accordingly, mutual associations, insurance, and social welfare were institutionalised to mitigate the risks of industrialised society, which could no longer be tackled by mutuality based on primordial attachments, such as those among kinsmen and neighbours, or based on charity from the wealthy or the Church. Under contemporary globalization, however, and particularly with the progress of the neoliberal restructuring of âthe socialâ, widespread arguments have emerged on the âwithdrawalâ, âshrinkingâ, âlossâ, and âcollapseâ of âthe socialâ. Although the potential contours of alternative institutions and ideas after such restructuring remain unclear, we are increasingly reminded that our existence faces precarity and uncertainty, particularly by unpredictable incidents, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. It is hence an urgent task to reimagine and reconceptualise âthe socialâ in times of precarity and uncertainty. The present work deals squarely with this task by shedding light on the emergence of the alternative public sphere in the Global South.
The different historical paths and discrepant experiences of modernity between the West and Global South do not necessarily indicate that âthe socialâ is absent in the latter. Even without the welfare state established in modern Western countries, various social policies and development projects, accompanied by nation-state building, indicate attempts to expand and strengthen âthe socialâ. This work maintains that the reconceptualization of âthe socialâ from an unexpected place of the Global South sheds new light on the issues of mutuality, solidarity, and security for not only the Global South, but also the Global North.
As such an âunexpected placeâ, this book focuses on the Philippines as an ethnographic field. In particular, it presents an ethnography of the communities, both local and transnational, and the connectedness of the people, which interact with various social policies and development projects. While the question of how a welfare state can be built as an embodiment of âthe socialâ in the Philippines and other parts of the Global South is quite intriguing and significant to ask, it is beyond the purpose of this book, and beyond my ability as well, to make practical policy recommendations regarding the institutional aspects of the welfare of the people. Rather, this book attempts to decentralise the model of âthe socialâ, which has been based on the experience of the modern West, by examining the concrete ethnographies of development and globalization in the Philippines. In other words, I attempt to âprovincializeâ (Chakrabarty 2000) the seemingly universal concept of âthe socialâ by showing that it is always bound by local specificity and emerges as situated knowledge. Through this, while avoiding privileging the concept rooted in the specific history and space of the modern West, this book sheds light on the plurality and multivocal character of this concept, as well as the rich possibilities inherent in it.
Invention of âthe Socialâ
As has been convincingly discussed by those scholars as Donzelot and Castel, âthe socialâ as an assemblage of ideas and institutions had been âinventedâ in the specific historical experience of Western Europe since the mid-19th century and developed and established by the mid-20th century. Historically, it was an ideology that called for solidarity to deal collectively with risks that had been newly found in the process of rapid industrialization in Western Europe during this period. Castel (2003), for example, argued that the place of âthe socialâ had been clearly noticed for the first time in the 1830s, particularly in France, when pauperism became prevalent as a âsocial questionâ. Donzelot, on the other hand, emphasises the importance of the February Revolution of 1848 in France in terms of the invention of âthe socialâ (Donzelot 1988). According to him, the cause of the Revolution was the widely shared recognition among the people regarding the contradiction between the formal equality of the citizens promised by the French Revolution on one hand, and the actual mass poverty seen among the labourers on the other. Thus, âthe socialâ was invented as a solution to this contradiction between the promise of the republic and the misery of the people.
This âsocial questionâ was closely connected to âan awareness of the living conditions of populations who were both the agents and the victims of the industrial revolutionâ, and was âthe question of the place to be occupied by the most desocialized fringes of workers in an industrial societyâ (Castel 2003: xx).
The discovery of âsocial questionsâ was at the same time the discovery of new risks arising from the environment of factory work and urban life in particular, such as accidents, injuries, diseases, mass poverty, and unemployment. These risks are no longer covered by the âprimary sociabilityâ argued by Castel (2003: 10) such as family, the community, or religious and charitable organizations, which provided the âprotection of proximityâ, meaning a âsystem of rules linking directly the members of a group on the basis of their familial belonging, locality, work, and by weaving networks of interdependence without the mediation of particular institutionsâ (Castel 2003: 10). Compared with this âprotection of proximityâ based on âprimary sociabilityâ, or informal and personal mutuality, protection by âthe socialâ enabled the formal and impersonal mutuality that was institutionalised in the social state or welfare state in the early part of the 20th century in the West, which matured into a stable regime by the 1970s.2 Through this process, âthe socialâ was embodied into a system that enabled risks to be insured and managed collectively by people who shared national solidarity and identity.
âThe Socialâ as Governmentality
As another important aspect of âthe socialâ, it should be mentioned that it represents not only ideas and institutions to protect life and security, but also an aspect of power to govern people. In this sense, âthe socialâ contains ambivalent power relations. On the one hand, it is the workings of power that protect our lives and enable us to be freed from various constraints. On the other hand, it makes us governable subjects by disciplining, normalising, and controlling our lives. As pointed out by Tanaka, a political scientist, the expansion of âthe socialâ liberates the individual from dependence on, and bondage to, various traditional groups, such as the community and family, yet, it also re-embeds them in new social relations, under which they are disciplined to become conducive to the maintenance of social order (Tanaka 2006: 256). In other words, the individual is guaranteed the right to survive by being conducive to such social order, while at the same time, their everyday lives, including education, hygiene, food and nutrients, and relationships among families and friends, are meticulously monitored and collectively controlled so that they become responsible for minimizing various risks that would be a threat to the social order (Tanaka 2006: 180). Simply put, âthe socialâ is an assemblage of the ambivalent powers of âliberationâ and âdiscipliningâ (Tanaka 2006). In a similar vein, anthropologist Majima argues that inherent in âthe socialâ is the ambivalence of âoppressive discipliningâ and âemancipating freedomâ, âsubjectionâ and âsubjectificationâ, and âbureaucratizationâ and âsolidarityâ (Majima 2006). What is needed is a framework for deciphering the complicated entanglement of disciplining and freedom and subjection and subjectification as a duality inherent in âthe socialâ.
Such aspect of ambivalent power of âthe socialâ is also discussed by Dean (2010), who states that the reconfiguration of âthe socialâ today is accompanied by the emergence of a new disposition of power and subjects. Under this disposition, the subject is âa free subject of need, desire, rights, interests and choiceâ (Dean 2010: 193). Such freedom, however, has subjection as a condition. Dean argues that âin order to act freely, the subject must first be shaped, guided and moulded into one capable of responsibility exercising that freedom through systems of dominationâ (Dean 2010: 193). In other words, a free subject becomes possible only when it is steered, taught, and forged to bear the responsibility for exercising freedom. As free subjects, non-state actors such as individuals, families, neighbourhood associations, and communities are empowered, activated, and motivated on one hand. On the other hand, the performance of these actors is monitored, measured, and rendered calculable by various ânorms, standards, benchmarks, performance indicators, quality controls and best practice standardsâ under this new disposition of power and subjects (Dean 2010: 193).
In considering âthe socialâ as an assemblage to govern people, the concept of governmentality coined by Foucault provides compelling analytical importance for this work. According to Foucault, governmentality is a form of power that originated in the political economy of liberalism emerging in Western Europe in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. To govern the population, it does not take the form of a âregulatory system of injunction, imperatives, and interdictionsâ (Foucault 2009: 352), but rather it aims to âarouse, to facilitate, and to laisser faire, in other words to manage and no longer to control through rules and regulationsâ (Foucault 2009: 353). For Foucault, the aim of governmentality is not to disturb the natural processes of the population, economy, and society by âclumsy, arbitrary and blind interventionâ, but rather to ensure natural regulation to work in such a way that those natural phenomena âdo not veer off courseâ (Foucault 2009: 353). As such, governmentality is a mode of power that utilises and mobilises the natural processes inherent in the population, economy, and society that were found to have their own autonomous functions and mechanisms, particularly in the historical processes of urbanization and industrialization in Western Europe since the end of the 18th century.
As already made clear, governmentality differs from the government by empirical institutions such as law, administration, or the state; it is âa way of framing human actions to be guided in a certain directionâ (Yoneya 1996: 81), especially through âeducating desires and configuring habits, aspirations and beliefsâ (Li 2007a: 5). Thus, governmentality can be understood broadly as âa form of activity aiming to shape, guide or affect the conduct of some person or personsâ (Gordon 1991: 2). Foucault himself states that governmentality does not ârefer only to political structures or to the management of states; rather, it designated the way in which the conduct of individuals or of groups might be directedâ (Dreyfus & Rabinow 1983: 221). It is directed towards various populations, as in âthe government of children, of souls, of communities, and of families, of the sickâ (Dreyfus & Rabinow 1983: 221). Government in this sense does not âonly cover the legitimately constituted forms of political or economic subjection, but also modes of action, more or less considered and calculated, which were destined to act upon the possibilities of action of other people. To govern, in this sense, is to structure the possible field of action of othersâ (Dreyfus & Rabinow 1983: 221).
The concept of governmentality urges us to reconsider fundamentally the conventional view of power. Governmentality is not power emanating from the âcentreâ or the âaboveâ, but rather âa form of power that regulates social life from its interiorâ (Hardt & Negri 2000: 23). It works not through a unidirectional vector of domination and subordination, but as a sort of magnetic field that entangles all actors alike and makes their lives possible. In other words, governmentality is not a power that oppresses, exploits, or constrains, but rather a power that produces and reproduces life itself, through which society, the economy, and the population as a whole are animated. To put it differently, the paradigm of power inherent in governmentality is biopower, described by Foucault as something qualitatively different from conventional sovereign-juridical power, which is âexercised mainly as a means of deduction, a subtraction mechanism, a right to appropriate a portion of the wealth, a tax of products, goods and services, labor and blood, levied on the subjectsâ (Foucault 1990: 136). In contrast to sovereign-juridical power, biopower is âa power that exerts a positive influence on life, that endeavors to administer, optimize, and multiply it, subjecting it to precise controls and comprehensive regulationsâ (Foucault 1990: 137). As Negri and Hart state, âthe highest function of this power is to invest life through and through, and its primary task is to administer lifeâ (Hardt & Negri 2000: 24). It is a power that aims to make people live rather than threaten them with death, and it demonstrates its effectivity by guiding them towards how to live a âbetter lifeâ through a mixture of discipline, surveillance, and control.
What is significant to note here is that on the one hand, a regime of biopower works to âmake people liveâ, while on the other hand, those who do not follow, or are perceived as âunfitâ to the regime, are âlet dieâ (Li 2009). Whether such power is âgoodâ or âbadâ is not actually relevant to ask in the context of the present argument (Higaki 2011: 11â12). Whether it is good or bad, we have already and always lived in, and been entangled with, such a field of power. Rather, the questions to ask are as follows. What is produced and reproduced by such power? What is failed to be produced? And what, as well as who, is marginalised or even left to die under such a regime of power? Similarly, the question of âwhoâ holds power does not make sense here. Rather, the questions are âhowâ, and âin what wayâ, does power flow and operate?
âThe socialâ as argued in this book is considered to be a realm permeated by the power of governmentality delineated above. The actions and behaviours of each one of us entangled in this realm are framed and guided by the subtle workings of power that infiltrate all corners of everyday life in order for us to be moulded into governable, or self-governing, subjects. As such, âthe socialâ is a regime of governmentality as a power that works to produce subjects capable of dealing with contemporary precarity and uncertainty, not through command and regulation, but through structuring the environment in which we, as free actors, navigate to act.
Neoliberal Restructuring of âthe Socialâ
The rise of neoliberalism in the contemporary world resulted in the fundamental restructuring of âthe socialâ as governmentality and biopower discussed so far. Here, I delineate first how neoliberalism and governmentality penetrate each other to constitute the contemporary regime of power. I then argue how âthe socialâ as a mode of intervention by the government was restructured with the progress of neoliberalism.
Neoliberalism, according to Harvey, is âa theory of political and economic practices that propose that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free tradeâ (Harvey 2005: 2). However, neoliberalism is not only a theory of political economy, but also a power that penetrates into the most internal and intimate spheres of our being, such as relationships with others, identity, and personality. It is a power that shapes the self and being according to a certain logic of political economy. Foucault describes the implication of neoliberalism on our being as a âgeneralization of the âenterpriseâ formâ that âinvolves extending the economic model of supply and demand and of investment-costs-profit so as to make it a model of social relations and of existence itself, a form of relationship of the individuals to himself, time, those around him, the group, and the familyâ (Foucault 2008: 242). As the thing that is brought out by this power of neoliberalism penetrating into our most personal relationships, life itself becomes a âpermanent enterpriseâ and society is given a new form based on the model of enterprise âdown to the fine grain of its textureâ (Foucault 2008: 241). Hence, neoliberalism precisely becomes an object of anthropological inquiry as a cultural device to shape individuals and society according to the norms and values optimal for the self-regulating market, such as self-help, self-reliance, resilience, self-responsibility, self-activation, self-monitoring, entrepreneurship, audit, evaluation, and accountability.
Now, it is widely recognised that the rapid and widespread penetration of neoliberalism in Europe and the US since the late 1970s has led t...