The Sociology Book

272 MICHEL FOUCAULT

In the Middle Ages, there were two “rulers” for

every person in Europe...

These roles were then combined in secular government,

which took care of the land (now the “state”) and its people.

Government increasingly became the art of managing “things”

in a rational way (“governmentality”).

Government’s role is to maximize

the welfare of its people—to manage

the right disposition of things.

...the monarch, who ruled

by divine right and

maintained the security

and peace of his lands.

...the Church, which

“governed” people’s souls.

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Governmentality

KEY DATES

1513 In The Prince, Florentine

political theorist Niccolò

Machiavelli offers advice

on how to maintain power.

1567 French writer Guillaume

de la Perrière argues in Le

Miroir Politique that the word

“governor” can apply to a broad

array of people and groups.

1979 Michel Foucault

publishes an article entitled

“On Governmentality.”

1996 British sociologist

Nikolas Rose examines how

institutions such as prisons

and schools shape the

behavior of citizens.

2002 German sociologist

Thomas Lemke applies

Foucault’s concept of

governmentality to modern

day neo-liberal societies.

T

hroughout history, people
have been concerned with
the nature of government,
where and how it is needed, and
the question of who has the right
to govern other people. French
philosopher Michel Foucault
focused his study on the workings
of power, and became particularly
interested in the processes and
legitimacy of government in
Western Europe from the 16th
to 20th centuries.
As a professor at the prestigious
Collège de France in Paris between
1970 and 1975, Foucault delivered

a series of lectures that became

a prominent feature of intellectual

life in the city. One of these

lectures was later published in

the influential journal Ideology

and Consciousness in 1979, under

the title “On Governmentality.” In

this work, Foucault argues that it

is impossible to study the formation

of power without also looking at

the practices—the techniques

and rationality—through which

people are governed. This

rationality is not an absolute that

can be reached by pure reason, as

most philosophers have suggested,

but a changing thing that depends

on both time and place. What

is “rational” in one space and

time may be thought irrational

in others. To summarize this

concept, Foucault joined the French

words governeur (governor) and

mentalité (mentality) to create

a new term—governmentality—

to describe the way that a

government thinks about itself

and its role (its “rationality”).

Foucault’s approach to

philosophical analysis focuses

on the “genealogy of the subject.”

So rather than relying on the