Liberalism, Governmentality and Counter-Conduct; An Introduction to Foucauldian Analytics of Liberal Civil Society Notions

Abstract

This article gives an analysis of Foucault’s studies of civil society and the various liberalist critiques of government. It follows from Foucault’s genealogical approach that “civil society” does not in itself possess any form of transcendental existence; its historical reality must be seen as the result of the productive nature of the power-knowledge-matrices. Foucault emphasizes that modern governmentality—and more specifically the procedures he names “the conduct of conduct”—is not exercised through coercive power and domination, but is dependent on the freedom and activeness of individuals and groups of society. Civil society is thus analyzed as fundamentally ambivalent: on the one hand civil society is a field where different kinds of technologies of governance meet the lives and wills of groups and individuals, but on the other hand it is a potential field of what Foucault called ‘counter-conduct’ – for both collective action and individual political action.

The Governmentalization of the Trade Union and the Potential of Union-Based Resistance. The Case of Undocumented Migrant Domestic Workers in the Netherlands Making Rights Claims

“…Hence, instead of being a limiting and correcting force to the state, under liberal governmentality, civil society has become an object of government ( Pyykkönen, 2010 ). This process of governmentalization has been intensified under neo- liberal governmentality where ‘civil society organizations and private actors [have] become partners of administration and service production, and partially submit their actions to the control of public administration, market rules and legislation’ ( Pyykkönen, 2015 : 24).…”

“…For Foucault, the paradox is that under (neo)liberalism, government is increasingly conducted in and through civil society organizations, which are at the same time potential sites for radical political actions . Indeed, as Pyykkönen (2015 ) asserts, it is ‘in and through [civil society organisations] that new and different interests and subjectivities of citizen emerge and become articulated, and marginalized individuals can get their voices heard’ ( Pyykkönen, 2015 : 27). In other words, civil society is a place where new forms of the self and autonomy are invented, where new identities are formed and where politics takes place.…”

The re-signification of state-funded community development in Ireland: A problem of austerity and neoliberal government

“…Contemporary civil society organisations are ‘governmentalised’ in that they self-identify and are responsibilised as sites and solutions to the problems of society (Pyykkönen, 2015: 10) while state agencies or central government are themselves ‘products’ of the complex interplay of governmental rationalities and practices. Despite the asymmetries of power involved, civil society actors repeatedly make demands of the state, while simultaneously claiming territories of government and presenting as experts on particular societal problems (McGregor et al, 2013; Pyykkönen, 2015). A governmentality perspective on community development thus invites us to view the ostensibly separate ‘community’ and ‘state’ sectors as proximate, overlapping and in certain instances mutually constitutive.…”

‘Reaching the land of jihad’ - Dutch Syria volunteers, hijra and counter-conduct

“…The study of hijra is an important theme in research on Salafism (Adraoui, 2019) and on Islamic jurisprudence (Demichelis, 2019). Recently, the relationship between hijra and the recent conflict in Syria has been explored in particular paying attention to IS rhetoric about hijra (Abdelrahim, 2019;Barton, 2019;Colas, 2017;Larsson, 2019;Toguslu, 2018), in relation to IS' recruitment work (Lakomy, 2019;Sarat-St. Peter, 2019;Schulze & Liow, 2019) and some critical work https://doi.org/10.1007/s11562-021-00465-3 1 Many thanks to the editors of this special issue for their support and critical comments on earlier versions of this article.…”