What is governmentality? How are individuals and cultures organized in modern society? Foucault’s work placed the subject of governmentality back on the social science agenda. Foucault’s discussion of knowledge and power revealed the micro-politics of governmentality. His work extended our understanding of the principles of governmentality to the bio-politics, the police, the state, welfarism, liberalism and proposed new areas of study such as authoritarian rule and reflexive government. But his work also obscured the history of the concept of governmentality and blunted the heritage of work in sociology and political science on the subject. This book aims to reclaim governmentality as a central concept in sociology. Author Mitchell Dean seeks to learn from Foucault, but also to draw on wider analytical frameworks and traditions to provide the first complete overview of the concept. He argues that governmentality encapsulates a fundamentally new orientation to the study of power and authority. It allows for a new, more relevant understanding of how the individual is connected to the state and vice versa.

Lucid, timely and shrewd, the book makes a major contribution to understanding a concept that is belatedly being recognized as a core concept in the social sciences.