Colonial Governmentality and the Public Sphere in India

Colonial governmentality in India reconstituted the public sphere. New political rationalities that constituted modern governmental power and the liberal technologies of government effected a new conception of economy and society. Governmentality's governance of colonial conduct in an improving direction socialized native public opinion to question the legitimacy of the colonial covenant. As native opinion against colonial rule sharpened, colonial liberalism had often to make a volte-face of its liberal principle and was forced to suppress public opinion. Gandhi alone sought to overturn colonial governmentality and in doing so, provided a conception of public opinion that could transcend the limits of liberal reason.     

Managing the Living through the Dead

This article investigates how the Japanese colonial state's new governmental rationality was deployed and how these technologies of rule sought to regulate Koreans. Using the theory of colonial governmentality, it examines the 1912 burial rules that transformed Koreans' social norms on death and the dead. In order to achieve efficient state management of burial customs, the Japanese colonial government applied laws pertaining to burials, and the disciplinary technologies of policing and punishment. In so doing, the colonial government disciplined the individual Korean body and enforced conformity to colonial institutions.     

'GOVERN-MENTALITY' TRANSITION: HONG KONG AS IMPERIAL OBJECT AND SUBJECT

This paper attempts to examine the colonial experience of Hong Kong as a function of the historicity of British imperial rule, whose ideology and practice can be contrasted with experiences in other places (India, Oceania, Africa, etc.) as well as other times and where the changing nature of colonial governmentality can be seen to be influenced by the concurrent emergence of the state, modernity and commoditization.     

The “Moment of the Boomerang” Never Came: Resistance and Collaboration in Colonial Korea, 1919–1945

The contradiction between the colonial ideology of universalism and the rule of difference may result in discontentment among the ruled, but it does not always lead to sustainable organized resistance. In many Western colonies during the interwar period, growing anti‐colonial resistance replaced collaboration; however, in Korea that was under Japanese colonial rule, resistance during the 1920s was superseded by collaboration in the 1930s. Adopting two accounts of ideology‐resource pair and structural characteristics of Japanese colonialism, this article analyzes the progression of liberal nationalism in Korea from resistance to collaboration. In colonial Korea, a separatist project led by the liberal nationalism started as a promising anti‐colonial movement, but by the end of the 1920s, it became apparent that the resources engendered by the separatism had validated both anti‐colonial nationalism as well as colonialism, thereby undermining its legitimacy. A more serious crisis occurred in the early 1930s: with the “decline of the West” and its associated intensified Japanese assimilationism, liberal nationalism not only lost its ideological ground but also came to overlap with assimilationism. The Korean elite's political conversion during the 1930s took place in a contradictory situation in which their nationalist practices ironically contributed to the empowerment of the colonial rule.     

The European Democratic Deficit,the Market and the Public Space: A Classical Liberal Critique

This article argues that attempts to utilize a Habermasian conception of the public space as a remedy for the democratic deficit deemed to be inherent within the political institutions of the European Union (EU) are unlikely to prove successful. It is argued that the instrumental goal demanded of the public space is contrary to the communicative rationality intrinsic to the Habermasian model. Moreover, the Habermasian conception of the public space as an arena independent of both the market and the state is non-operational because a public space independent of the market is inconceivable. An alternative conceptualization of the public space, focusing on the role of the market as a communicative process, and an alternative remedy for the European democratic deficit, focusing on liberal representative democracy, are proposed.     

Smooth Machinery: Global Governmentality and Civil Society HIV/AIDS Work in Rwanda

In recent years there has been a massive influx of aid to civil society HIV/AIDS work in Africa. Drawing on fieldwork in Rwanda, this article explores, through a governmentality perspective, the rationalities and technologies of government that accompany the new funding schemes. The paper feeds into contemporary debates on the relevance of governmentality studies in Africa and on the complicated relationship between state, civil society, and international donors in the particular context of Rwanda. Despite the country's known record of authoritarian politics, the paper argues that Rwandan civil society organizations are in fact largely subject to advanced liberal rule, rendering them responsible and active in their own government. This global governmentality, in turn, unfolds through a post-political machinery that effectively blurs boundaries between international donor, state, and civil society institutions. Ultimately, this means that researchers interested in resistance must be prepared to extend their visual field considerably.     

Codes of Contention: Building Regulations in Colonial Bombay, 1870‐1912

This paper investigates the contentious institutionalization of building codes in colonial Bombay. Based on original archival research, the paper demonstrates that building codes were inflected with a discourse of moral regulation that masked the material interests of the state. Resistance to these regulations came from many quarters; conflicts within the state, public opinion expressed in the press, and political strategizing of residents and landowners in the public sphere. The paper argues for greater attention to the historically variable interconnections between power and resistance in specific empirical contexts.     

Public opinion and the privatization of welfare: some theoretical implications

The social policy of the Thatcher government is characterized by an abrupt shift in the direction of the private sector. To what extent does this reflect what people want? The Institute of Economic Affairs conclude from the only suitable national opinion survey that such a move is strongly supported. Our reanalysis of their data shows that this strand in public opinion can coexist with, and need not contradict, an equal public enthusiasm for state welfare. Such results have important implications for our understanding of social policy. We conclude, therefore, with a discussion of contrasting marxist and liberal accounts which seeks to show that the evidence of ambivalence in popular attitudes about the welfare state supports particular developments in theory.     

Governmentalities of Volunteering: A Study of Regional Western Australia

The aim of this article is to investigate the governmentalities of volunteering in regional Western Australia. Drawing on interviews with 25 consenting volunteers and their managers, a thematic analysis revealed the experiences and perceptions of the research participants. Two distinct governmentalities exist: one reflecting neo-liberal governmentality and the other reflective of classic liberalism. Whilst this study is limited to regional Western Australia, the results suggest that there are variations in ‘governmentalities’ of volunteering comprising a mix of sometimes contradictory elements. This article also demonstrates the usefulness of governmentality for expanding the understanding of volunteering that has the potential to illuminate vital elements of the volunteer sector, which are being missed. There are many niches where volunteer groups exist or are emerging that are not visible and out of reach of the control techniques commonly used by governments adopting advanced (neo) liberal governmentalities.     

Civility and Humiliation under the French Flag: The Tensions of Colonial Liberalism in Pondicherry, 1871–86

This article explores the extension of political “liberty” and franchise – as well as the eventual extension of citizenship rights – to Indians during the decades of France's Third Republic (1870s–80s) in French colonial India. Not only does this example stand in stark contrast to the civil position of Indians in British India at the time, but it was also something of a unique situation in the French colonial world. How did the French attempt to apply a colonial policy of liberalism to Indian communities in Pondicherry, India, whose social world was constructed upon caste‐based rituals and rules? I argue that liberal policies that could violate caste rules concerning purity and lead to the loss of communal rights cannot be assessed without understanding how they were received and instrumentalized by the Indian population. Overall, the difficulty of transplanting liberalism in Pondicherry was not due just to the opposition of colonial society, but also due to the resistance of local Indians. Rejections of a more emancipatory agenda meant that the republican “civility” of liberty, equality and fraternity was compromised, and this illustrates one of the fundamental tensions in imperial/liberal discourse at the time.     

Etzioni’s new theory: a synthesis of liberal and communitarian views

There has always been a rather strong contrast between liberal and communitarian views. The liberal doctrine of “irreversible plurality of philosophical and moral ideas” for instance does not only mean that consensus about social values is difficult. “A public consensus about the necessary conception of the good cannot be obtained,” says Rawls. On the other hand, communitarians such as MacIntyre, Sandel, and Walzer, are deeply convinced by the idea of an “immanent telos” of societies, which in their opinion have the utmost influence on the development of individuals. A similar strong contrast exists between the liberal universalism of values and the communitarian particularism. Etzioni’s New Theory now tries to overcome these unsatisfactory “tyrannies of dualism” (A. Gutmann) Instead of the traditional and hostile either- or, Etzioni puts a reconciliatory as well as. “As many other dichotomies the dualism between universalism and particularism stands in the way of the development of a social Paradigm,” he regrets. Therefore Etzioni wants to combine instead of dividing. For example, social order (communitarian value) and personal autonomy (liberal value). So he proposes to install more personal autonomy in states with strong social order, as for instance Japan, and he demands more social order in traditional individualistic states like the United States (“Inverse Symbiosis”). Such “combining and balancing solutions” coincide with the theory of a “Flexible System of Private Rights” created and proposed by the famous Austrian Legal Scholar Walter Wilburg. On the level of “value principles” in the sense of Ronald Dworkin (instead of “rules” of law), Wilburg combines the differing “weights and strengths” of values (elements). An example of this is negligence, dangerous behavior, and economic capacity of risk spreading to more or less far reaching compensations of private damages, instead of the traditional either-or. The underlying idea is that of proportion. In terms of Etzioni, “The more social order within a state or society—the more individual autonomy has to be promoted.”     

The Habermasian public sphere: Taking difference seriously?

The public sphere conception continues to hold center stage in debates and visions of radical democratic society, and Jürgen Habermas work continues to be the most popular starting point for developing this conception. However, the Habermasian public sphere has also come under powerful and sustained criticism from many quarters. Here I concentrate upon the critiques of a group of theorists to whom I refer as difference democrats. I examine the three key arguments of these critics:that the public sphere conception involves the exclusion of aesthetic-affective modes of communication and hence the voices of certain groups; that it assumes that power can be separated from public discourse, which masks exclusion and domination; and that it promotes consensus as the purpose of deliberation, which marginalizes voices that do not readily agree. Against these claims I show that the Habermasian public sphere can be read as maximizing the inclusion of difference in deliberative exchange. I demonstrate how the conception extensively accommodates aesthetic-affective modes of discourse, how it accounts for both negative and positive forms of power in discourse, and how it promotes the process over the end-point of rational discourse in public opinion formation.     

Changing place names in post-apartheid South Africa: accounting for the unevenness

This paper examines the renaming of South Africa’s public places, following the country’s democratic breakthrough in 1994. The process has unfolded unevenly throughout the country’s nine provinces. The paper explains this unevenness. Fundamentally, it contends that the act of renaming has unfolded largely as a restoration of indigenous memory, which, in turn, is mediated by a number of factors. The lopsided nature of renaming is indicative of the similarly uneven manner in which South Africa’s black population recalls indigenous memory. How black people relate to colonial memory also determines whether or not they would want to change it: some came to identify with colonial memory, while others were offended by it. This contrasting symbolism of colonial memory is a result of the varying ‘native policies’ pursued by the Boer republics, on the one hand, and the British colonial states, on the other. In other instances, indigenous memory simply vanished due to the absence of reminders, while some descendants evolved a new identity that to some extent erased the memory of their ancestry.     

Explaining the Gender Gap in British Public Opinion

The gender gap in British public opinion is explored using data from the 1983 British Election Study. Differences in opinions between men and women are examined in light of three explanations frequently offered to explain gender differences in political behavior: socialization, situational factors such as employment and marital status, and structural factors. Findings indicate that there appears to be no major gender gap on basic ideology, but that women are more liberal than men on issues relating to force, the environment, and women's issues and more conservative on morality issues.     

Silent dark: the orders of silence

ABSTRACT

This article examines anxiety, arguing that it is a systemic feature of neoliberalism which regenerates the economy and acts in a conservative manner, thereby effectively preventing social change. Anxiety is explored using psychoanalytic theory to extend Foucault’s conception of neoliberal governmentality as proposed in his lectures on neoliberalism at the Collège de France. Relying on Foucault’s notion of governmentality as an analytic perspective, this article does not present the economy or the state as the origin of power in neoliberalism. Rather, these are seen as mediums of power, whereas the anchorage point of power relations is understood to be a particular form of governmentality. In neoliberalism, this anchorage point of power is largely supported and strongly characterised by anxiety. While examining the psychic life of power in neoliberalism, I avoid positioning and thus analysing anxiety either on the individual or the macro level of society. Rather, showing that anxiety exposes the weakness of such clean divisions, it is argued that neoliberal subjects are nowadays governed through anxiety.     

“The Politics of the HealthCare Reform Debate: Public Support of Including Undocumented Immigrants and Their Children in Reform Efforts in the U.S.”

Although U.S. immigration and health care policies appear to be highly correlated, scholarship has yet to gauge the public's views toward providing undocumented immigrants with health coverage at the state level. We analyze support for including undocumented immigrants in health care reform in New Mexico. Utilizing an original public opinion survey of New Mexico adults, we find that individuals are more supportive of the state providing health care to the children of undocumented immigrant than to their parents. Multivariate logistic regression analyses suggest that factors such as liberal ideology and perceptions of commonalities with Latinos increase support levels. Despite a lack of support among a majority of respondents, the influence of perceived commonalities with immigrants suggests that reform advocates and political elites who mobilize along ethnic or human solidarity may be successful in creating conditions for the inclusion of undocumented immigrants in the public provision of health care at the state level.     

Generic distinctiveness and the entrepreneurial self: a case study of English Higher Education

Young people are increasingly called upon to invest in educational qualifications, experience opportunities and other character forming activities in order to stand out from the crowd. This fetishising of generic distinctiveness is promoted throughout education in England, and particularly Higher Education. This paper considers the policy and theoretical implications of the quest to enfranchise distinctiveness in English HE. From a policy perspective the universal promotion of distinction reflects how recent neoliberal reforms in HE have been moderated by a commitment to a liberal ethos of equality of opportunity. Theoretically the mantra of standing out from the crowd is emblematic of the entrepreneurial self as a tool of governmentality. The expectation of compulsory distinction encapsulates the duality of individualisation and regulation that is central to the project of governmentality. This duality is also implicit in the activity of enterprise and how it is calibrated by competition. Being entrepreneurial stimulates innovation but the uncertainty of competition may simultaneously stimulate isomorphic behaviours. The paper concludes by reviewing what the promotion of generic distinctiveness infers for young people and how the promotion of distinction is also bound up with the mantra of confidence.     

Making and Shaping Poor Malawians: Citizenship Below the Poverty Line

This article explores a series of events in the global discourse on development and governance: the emergence of ‘the poor’ as a class of identifiable individuals rather than an abstract category; the preference for targeted development interventions; the organisation of beneficiaries into groups which are then used as sites for application of ‘governmentality’; and the Millennium Development Goals, which have necessitated national and local poverty lines corresponding to the global poverty line. One implication is that those below the poverty line may constitute a particular type of citizens: more subject to attempts to reform their rationality and conduct, and less the autonomous individuals that are presupposed by liberal democracy.     

Carceral Kinship: Future Families of the Late Leviathan

This essay examines the monstrous first as a figure haunting Western legal history, stripped of rights and often merging with the animal, and second, as a divergent sociality borne of emergencies, crises, and faultlines of late liberal governmentality. In particular I ask how the figure of the pathological and violent gang member structures debates about the US‐Mexico border crosser, and the limits of humanity before the law. The essay moves from a genealogy of the gang member in Honduras, to the refugee asylum seeker of 2018, to ask what forms of difference‐making, in the form of new monstrosities, might inform new notions of kinship and solidarity amid anthropocenic futures.     

The uneven patterning of welfare benefits at the twilight of AFDC: assessing the influence of institutions, race, and citizen preferences

Scholars have been slow to test welfare state theories on the extensive subnational variation in the United States during the recent period of retrenchment. We assess institutional politics theories, literature on race and social policy, and public opinion arguments relative to levels of support in states' Aid to Families Dependent Children programs from 1982 until its elimination in 1996. Pooled time-series results demonstrate that the determinants of spending during retrenchment are mostly similar to those driving development and expansion. Pro-spending actors and professionalized state institutions limit benefit curtailment, while jurisdictions with larger African- American populations have lower benefits. Additionally, liberal citizens positively impact support and strengthen the effects of state institutions, but this effect is attenuated in states with larger African-American populations.