Governmentality

João Afonso Baptista

João Afonso Baptista

University of Hamburg, Germany

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Abstract

Governmentality is a neologism developed by Michel Foucault. It involves constituting rationality and the subjects of government in a way that the power of governing is seen as rational. Governmentality can be defined as a noncentralized attempt to regulate human conduct through multiform techniques and procedures. It dismantles the idea of government as singular by illuminating the interconnected and heterogeneous agents involved in the government of the conditions, possibilities, and limits under which one lives and self-regulates. Besides state agencies, these agents may consist of scientific experts, nongovernmental organizations, activists, the media, corporations, courts, labor unions, as well as natural processes that constrain governance, such as pandemics, earthquakes, or tsunamis.

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