GOVERNMENTALITY AND GEOGRAPHY: REVIEW AND PROSPECT
WANG Feng-long1, LIU Yun-gang2
1. Institute of Urban Development and Research, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China;
2. School of Geography Sciences and Planning, Guangdong Key Laboratory for Urbanization and;Geo-simulation, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China
Abstract Governmentality is a concept devised by the French thinker Michel Foucault to describe the power relations in Europe in the modern period. As an important concept in Foucault's later academic career, governmentality has rich connotations and is widely applied in western human sciences. Foucault's work on governmentality has also been widely taken up across human geography. This paper proposes four major perspectives to interpret governmentality. This paper also summarizes three major analytical perspectives and typical applications of this concept: biopolitics, calculation and politics of truth. Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose (2006) define biopower as a discursive-practical "field comprised of more or less rationalized attempts to intervene upon the vital characteristics of human existence". The focus of biopolitics is population rather than individual body, the latter of which is the focus of disciplinary power. The issue of biopolitics is tied to the development of measures and statistical techniques: a population must be measured and monitored in order to be governed. The calculability suggested by the term ‘mathesis’ is fundamentally related to rationality and art of governing. Subjectivity and truth are another group of key words in Foucault's studies. To conclude, this paper reminds the geographers to be more critical and careful of the hidden power relations behind geographical knowledge in order to enhance the theorization and knowledge production in Chinese human geographical research.
2015, Vol. 30 
