Lecture: Governing societies after governmentality - Prof. Mitchell Dean

Prof. Mitchell Dean gave a public lecture on 27th November 2023 at King’s College London on the topic “Governing societies after governmentality order, glory and sovereignty”.

About the talk

This lecture recounts my (Prof. Mitchell Dean) long-term engagement with the framework of governmentality. In it, I found that the classical governmentality framework of Foucault and his immediate followers left open key questions of its characterization of liberalism, its relevance to authoritarian practices and rule, the persistence of sovereignty, and the genealogy of contemporary government. Needless to say, such questions are fundamental to political challenges today thematised around populism and the hollowing out of liberal-democracy. Eschewing the impulse to add another diagnosis of this present, I argue that we should return to the basic task of developing an analytical framework to understand the exercise of power in our societies that emphasizes the fundamental relation between economic-managerial forms of governance and juridical-institutional forms of sovereignty. What emerges are questions not only of conduct but also of order, glory, and the practical capacities of states, themes emphasized by often disavowed thinkers such as Hayek, Agamben, and Schmitt, and the frequently misapprehended disciplines of political-economic theology.

About the speaker

Mitchell Dean (PhD, UNSW, 1988) is a political and historical sociologist with an international research reputation and management and teaching experience across the humanities and social sciences in university and business school contexts. He has held Professorships in Sociology at Macquarie University (Sydney) and the University of Newcastle, and has been Professor of Public Governance since December 2012, and Head of the Department since March 2019, at the Copenhagen Business School. He was Dean of the Division of Society, Culture, Media and Philosophy at Macquarie University in Sydney for seven years (2002-2009).

About CSGS:
The Centre for the Study of Governance and Society (CSGS) examines how both formal and informal rules of governance operate and evolve, and how these rules facilitate or imperil peaceful, prosperous, and ecologically secure societies.

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