Bringing together empirical papers on the government of economic, social and personal life, the volume demonstrates clearly the importance of analysing these as conjoint phenomena rather than separate domains, and questions some cherished boundaries between disciplines and topic areas. Linking programmes and strategies for the administration of these different domains with the formation of subjectivities and the transformation of ethics, the papers cast a new light on some of the leading issues in contemporary social science modernity, democracy, reflexivity and individualisation.
This volume will be indispensable for all those, from whatever discipline in the social sciences, who have an interest in the concepts and methods necessary for critical empirical analysis of power relations in our present.
Acknowledgements vi
1 Introduction: Governing Economic and Social Life 1
2 Governing Economic Life 26
3 Political Power beyond the State: Problematics of Government 53
4 The Death of the Social? Re-figuring the Territory of Government 84
5 Mobilizing the Consumer: Assembling the Subject of Consumption 114
6 On Therapeutic Authority: Psychoanalytical Expertise under Advanced Liberalism 142
7 Production, Identity and Democracy 173
8 Governing Advanced Liberal Democracies 199
Bibliography 219
Index 239
Peter Miller Professor of Management Accounting, LSE.