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agenda

• governmentality

• actor-network-theory

Nasser Alajmi

Political rationalities (1)

• governing a territory of which people are part (Greek/Roman)

• pastoral power

sovereign and ‘his/her’ subjects as analogue of God/people and

shepherd/sheep (Europe before 15th/16th century)

• disciplinary power

- governing people/nation

- politics as government

- statistics as science of the people

(Dean, 2010)

Nasser Alajmi

neo-liberal governmentality

(Munro, 2012, p. 351)

Nasser Alajmi

Political rationalities (2)

• biopolitics

- ‘neo-liberal rationality’

- “... we are everywhere homo oeconomicus and only homo oeconomicus’” (Brown, 2015, p. 33)

- “... neoliberal homo oeconomicus takes its shape as human capital seeking to strengthen its competitive positioning and appreciate its value, rather than a figure

of exchange” (Brown, 2015, p. 33).

Nasser Alajmi

governmentality as conduct of conduct

• political rationalities:

"societies like our own are characterized by a particular way of thinking about the kinds

of problems that can and should be addressed by various authorities" (Miller & Rose,

1990, p. 2)

• technologies of government:

"actual mechanisms through which authorities of various sorts have sought to shape,

normalize and instrumentalize the conduct, thought, decisions and aspirations of others in

order to achieve the objectives they consider desirable" (Miller & Rose, 1990, p. 8)

• expertise:

“the social authority ascribed to particular agents and forms of judgement on the basis of

their claims to possess specialized truths and rare powers” (Miller & Rose, 1990, p. 2).

Nasser Alajmi

Neu et al. (2006): rationalities

• political rationalities:

"societies like our own are characterized by a particular way of thinking about the kinds

of problems that can and should be addressed by various authorities" (Miller & Rose,

1990, p. 2)

• “That is, these vocabularies were used to define the objectives of education (to generate

social returns), to identify the problems with the existing educational systems

(inefficiency), to propose methods to solve the problems, and to recommend solutions

(i.e., increased accountability and better monitoring).” (Neu et al., 2006, p. 645)

• “Thus, ..., children are first postulated as economic units, wage earners. This then allows

the project to be justified in terms of ‘the increase in future earnings of children who will

benefit from the Project‘.“ (Neu et al., 2006, p. 645)

Nasser Alajmi

Neu et al. (2006): technologies

• technologies of government:

"actual mechanisms through which authorities of various sorts have sought to shape, normalize and instrumentalize the conduct, thought, decisions and aspirations of others in order to achieve the

objectives they consider desirable" (Miller & Rose, 1990, p. 8)

• „Informing technologies predicated on accounting and financial expertises are a subset of the

technologies of government that Miller and Rose refer to.“ (Neu et al., 2006, p. 638)

• „The linking activities of informing technologies help to translate the abstract objectives of the

centres of calculation into concrete programs in the peripheries.” (Neu et al., 2006, p. 638)

• e.g.

“Implicit within these NPV calculations is a human capital view of schooling.“ (Neu et al., 2006, p. 645)

Nasser Alajmi

Neu et al. (2006): expertise

• expertise:

“the social authority ascribed to particular agents and forms of

judgement on the basis of their claims to possess specialized truths and

rare powers” (Miller & Rose, 1990, p. 2).

• “This quotation is important not merely because it uses the specific

vocabulary of value-added, but also because it constructs the Bank as an

expert in the design and implementation of rural education projects.”

(Neu et al., 2006, p. 644)

Nasser Alajmi

Neu et al. (2006)

“In these examples, we observe how financial technologies and vocabularies helped to construct for World Bank bureaucrats a particular vision of education in distant locales and how, through these same technologies, the World Bank has constructed an image of its own expertise. These constructions were not limited to lending agreement documents however. In the country where we conducted the interviews, the Bank representative and the consultants to the Bank used these same vocabularies and re-presentations when speaking about the education projects they were involved in.”

(Neu et al., 2006, pp. 646-7)

Nasser Alajmi

dynamic nominalism

• The claim of dynamic nominalism is not that there was a kind of person who came increasingly to

be recognized by bureaucrats or by students of human nature but rather that a kind of person came into being at the same time as the kind itself was being invented. In some cases, that is, our

classifications and our classes conspire to emerge hand in hand, each egging the other on.“ (Hacking, 1986, p. 228)

• “Making up people changes the space for possibilities for personhood.” (Hacking, 1986, p. 229)

• “... that intentional human actions are ‘actions under a description’ [Elizabeth Anscombe]. (...) But if

a description is not there, then intentional actions under that description cannot be there either” (Hacking, 1986, p. 230)

• “What is curious about human action is that by and large what I am deliberately doing depends on the possibilities of description.” (Hacking, 1986, p. 231)

Nasser Alajmi

ontology of governmentality

nominalism ontology in governmentality social reality is created by subjects through their interactions and interpretations

• social reality is an accomplishment of various sorts of actors, human and nonhuman

• science/theories play a major role in the social construction of reality as ‘representing is intervening’ (Hacking) and theories contribute to ‘making up’ phenomena (performativity)

facts are constructed through categorizations

actors influence structures and regularities • people as actors are ‘made up’ through governing,

discourse and knowledge

Nasser Alajmi

epistemology of governmentality

constructivism epistemology in governmentality

scientific knowledge is an interpretation of interpretations and thus created by the researcher

• research traces how discourses (rationalities), technologies, and expertise are involved in the constitution of the social world (performativity)

concepts are grounded in the field’s perspectives

• describing the discursive field (rationalities of government) allows describing the systems of thought and systems of action in an empirical domain which produce truth (power/knowledge)

scientific ‘explanations’ aim at understanding the field’s reality constructions (‘Verstehen’)

• a theory describes the conditions of possibility under which the observed social phenomena could develop

Nasser Alajmi

actor-network-theory

Nasser Alajmi

‘the social’ in ANT

“The argument ... can be stated very simply: when social scientists add the adjective ‘social’ to some phenomenon, they designate a stabilized state of affairs, a bundle of ties that, later, may be mobilized to account for some other phenomenon. (...) What I want to do ... is to show why the social cannot be construed as a kind of material or domain and to dispute the project of providing a ‘social explanation’ to some other state of affairs” (Latour, 2005, p. 1)

Nasser Alajmi

‘the social’ in ANT

“The argument ... can be stated very simply: when social scientists add the adjective ‘social’ to some phenomenon, the designate a stabilized state of affairs, a bundle of ties that, later, may be mobilized to account for some other phenomenon. (...) What I want to do ... is to show why the social cannot be construed as a kind of material or domain and to dispute the project of providing a ‘social explanation’ to some other state of affairs” (Latour, 2005, p. 1)

sociologists “simply confused what they should explain with the explanation” (Latour, 2005, p. 8)

Nasser Alajmi

three principles of the sociology of translation

• principle of agnosticism • no a priori privileged point of view/interpretation

• no a priori determination of identity of actors

• principle of generalised symmetry • treating all kinds of actors – human and non-human – as actors

• using the same vocabulary and analytical methods

• principle of free association • no a priori ascription of (categories of) relationships

• ‘follow the actor’

(Callon, 1986, pp. 200-1)

Nasser Alajmi

translation

• “the mechanism by which the social and natural worlds

progressively take form” (Callon, 1986, p. 224)

• ‘moments of translation’

• problematisation

• interessement

• enrolment

• mobilisation of allies

Nasser Alajmi

problematisation & interessement

Some elements ofa sociology of translation

The Three Entities Researchers

Pecten Maximus

The Fishermen

Scientific Colleagues

I I I

Obstacle-problem total lack of information about Pecten Maximus

I I I I I I I

Obstacle- problem short-term profit

I I I I I

I Obstacle- problem predators

I I I I I

'+' OPP

Goa/so' entities

Advance knowledge Perpetuate and repopulate the themselves bay to the profit of the fishermen

Assure a long-term profit

Increase knowledge about Pecten Maximus without calling previous knowledge into question

Figure 2

tion. On paper, or more exactly, in the reports and articles presented by the three researchers, the identified groups have a real existence. But reality is a process. Like a chemical body it passes through successive states.?" At this point in our story. the entities identified and the relationships envisaged have not yet been tested. The scene is set for a series of trials of strength whose outcome will determine the solidity of our researchers problema- tization. Each entity enlisted by the problematization can submit to being

integrated into the initial plan, or inversely, refuse the transaction by definingits identity, its goals, projects, orientations, motivations. or interests in another manner. In fact the situation is never so clear cut. As the phase of problematization has shown, it would be absurd for the observer to describe entities as formulating their identity and goals in a totally independent manner. They are formed and are adjusted only during action.?" Interessement is the group of actions by which an entity (here

the three researchers) attempts to impose and stabilize the identity

207

Michel Callon

The Three Researchers e(

Figure 4

Collected larvae e

/ Currents

Fishermen

ation and the alliance it implies. In this particular case study, the problematization is eventually refuted. Although the collectors are necessary for the interessement of

the scallops and their larvae, this type of 'machination' proves to be superfluous for the interessement of the fishermen and the scientific colleagues. In addition, the three researchers do not intend to convince the first group as a whole. It is rather the representatives of professional organizations who are the targets of the researchers' solicitation. The three researchers multiply their meetings and debates in order to explain to the fishermen the reasons behind the extinction of the scallops. The researchers draw up and comment upon curves which 'indisputably' show the incredible decline of the stock of scallops in St. Brieuc Bay. They also emphatically present the 'spectacular' results of the Japanese. The scientific colleagues are solicited during conferences and through publications. The argumentation is always the same: an exhaustive review of the literature shows that nothing is known about scallops. This lack of knowledge is regrettable because the

210

(Callon, 1986, pp. 207, 210)

Nasser Alajmi

enrolment & mobilisation

Some elements ofa sociology of translation

Pecten Uaximus

j Larvae

! Counting

! Unes(lO graph

Pecten Maxifnus

Figure 5

Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay

1 Election

1 Counting ot votes

1 Designation of

delegates

1 The three researchers who

speak in the name of

1 Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay

The community of specialists

j Colleagues who

read and discuss

The community of specialists

actually all dispersed and not easily accessible. At the end, three researchers at Brest said what these entities are and want. Through the designation of the successive spokesmen and the settlement of a series of equivalencies, all these actors are first displaced and then reassembled at a certain place at a particular time. This mobilization or concentration has a definite physical reality which is materialized through a series of displacements (Law, 1985b). The scallops are transformed into larvae, the larvae into

numbers, the numbers into tables and curves which represent easily transportable, reproducible, and diffusable sheets of paper

217

“The result which is obtained is striking. A handful of researchers discuss a few diagrams and a few tables with numbers in a closed room. But these discussions commit uncountable populations of silent actors: scallops, fisher- men, and specialists who are all represented at Brest by a few spokesmen. These diverse populations have been mobilized. That is, they have been displaced from their homes to a conference room. They participate, through interposed representatives, in the negotiations over the anchorage of Pecten maximus and over the interests of the fishermen. The enrolment is trans- formed into active support. The scallops and the fishermen are on the side of the three researchers in an amphitheatre at the Oceanographic Centre of Brest one day in November 1974” (Callon, 1986, p. 218)

(Callon, 1986, p. 217)

Nasser Alajmi

ontology of ANT

nominalism ontology of ANT

social reality is created by subjects through their interactions and interpretations

• social reality is an effect of heterogeneous networks of humans and non-humans

• human actors are themselves effects of heterogeneous networks

knowledge about social reality is always dependent on subjects and social relations

• there is nothing outside relations; the ‘macro’ is inside the ‘micro’

facts are constructed through categorizations • facts do not exist independently of the observer and

the observed

actors influence structures and regularities • society (structure) is an effect of the heterogeneous

network of relations/associations

Nasser Alajmi

epistemology of ANT

constructivism epistemology of ANT

scientific knowledge is an interpretation of interpretations and thus created by the researcher • follow the actors

• there is nothing outside relations/associations • actors know what they do

concepts are grounded in the field’s perspectives

scientific ‘explanations’ aim at understanding the field’s reality constructions (‘Verstehen’)

• explanation uncovers chains of translations • social structures, society etc. are not the explanans, but

the explanandum

Nasser Alajmi

References

Brown, W. (2015). Undoing the demos: Neoliberalism's stealth revolution. New York: Zone Books.

Callon, M. (1986). Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay.

In J. Law (Ed.), Power, action and belief: a new sociology of knowledge (pp. 196-223). London: Routledge.

Dean, M. (2010). Governmentality: Power and rule in modern society (2nd ed.). Los Angeles: Sage.

Foucault, M. (2009). Security, territory, population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977-1978. Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hacking, I. (1986). Making up people. In T. C. Heller, M. Sosna, & D. E. Wellbery (Eds.), Reconstructing individualism: Autonomy,

individuality, and the self in Western thought (pp. 222-236). Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: an introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Miller, P., & Rose, N. (1990). Governing economic life. Economy and Society, 19(1), 1-31. doi:10.1080/03085149000000001

Munro, I. (2012). The management of circulations: Biopolitical variations after Foucault. International Journal of Management

Reviews, 14, 345-362.

Nasser Alajmi