Governmentality, Calculation, Territory

Abstract

In this paper I discuss Foucault's two recently published courses, Sécurité, Territoire, Population and Naissance de la Biopolitique. Foucault notes that he has undertaken a genealogy of the modern state and its different apparatuses from the perspective of a history of governmental reason, taking into account society, economy, population, security, and liberty. In the “Governmentality” lecture—the fourth of the first course—Foucault says that the series of the title—that is, security, territory, population—becomes “security, population, government”. In other words, territory is removed and government appended. And, yet, the issue of territory continually emerges only to be repeatedly marginalised, eclipsed, and underplayed. A key concern of the course is the politics of calculation which Foucault discusses through the development of political arithmetic, population statistics, and political economy. Explicitly challenging Foucault's readings of Machiavelli and the Peace of Westphalia, I argue that territorial strategies should themselves be read as calculative, with the same kinds of mechanisms brought to bear on populations applied here too. I therefore discuss how Foucault's discussions of political economy, the police, and calculation are useful in thinking the history of the concept of territory.

Anticipating ubiquitous computing: Logics to forecast technological futures

“…In this section I will outline the 'knowledges' associated with anticipation, particularly related to governance, which can be read through recent discussions in geography, and cognate disciplines, about calculation (Elden, 2006(Elden, , 2007 and fear (and pre-emption) (Massumi, 2005(Massumi, , 2007a(Massumi, , 2007b. From these debates, and building upon recent work by Ben Anderson (2010c), I…”

The Promise of the Affordable Artist's Studio: Governing Creative Spaces in London

“…Their argument was that the spatial reordering of the factory was made possible only by a variety of organisational discourses about the ideal means of manufacture, knowledges about those processes, and material changes of the factory floor and reassignment of the expertise of subjects associated with the production process. This body of work recognises, as Rose (1999 p. 33 -40) points out, that space does not represent a terrain upon which government is performed, but instead is constituted through rule by the processes of government that imagine, divide, regulate and otherwise describe spatial arrangements (Elden, 2007). In other words, spaces are not only an object of management, but also a product of it.…”

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“…Although some authors posit that Foucault ultimately abandons territory in favour of population (Elden 2007a), the above considerations show that the characteristics of power, even if they are preoccupied with the governing bodies and populations, do not recede from space. While knowledges are generated and perused in other dimensions, it is ultimately space that provides the tangible and direct approach to the subjects.…”

“…Examples include: a Foucauldian look at the knowledge in critical cartography (Crampton and Krygier 2006), applicability of Foucauldian approaches to various strands of geography (Elden 2007a(Elden , 2007bLegg 2005), application of "affirmative" rather than "sceptical" postmodern analysis to criminology (Arrigo et al . 2005;35-49), and a general critique of non-critical, non-political application of Foucault for empirical interpretation (Valverde 2010).…”