Governing the Present (ePub)

The literature on governmentality has had a major impact across the
social sciences over the past decade, and much of this has drawn
upon the pioneering work by Peter Miller and Nikolas Rose. This
volume will bring together key papers from their work for the first
time, including those that set out the basic frameworks, concepts
and ethos of this approach to the analysis of political power and
the state, and others that analyse specific domains of the conduct
of conduct, from marketing to accountancy, and from the
psychological management of organizations to the government of
economic life.

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.