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Space and Government: Governmentality and Geography
Author(s) -
Huxley Margo
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
geography compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.587
H-Index - 65
ISSN - 1749-8198
DOI - 10.1111/j.1749-8198.2008.00133.x
Subject(s) - governmentality , sociology , discipline , subject (documents) , government (linguistics) , michel foucault , space (punctuation) , human geography , focus (optics) , power (physics) , epistemology , action (physics) , field (mathematics) , social science , environmental ethics , politics , political science , law , philosophy , linguistics , physics , mathematics , optics , quantum mechanics , library science , computer science , pure mathematics
This essay outlines the main aspects of Foucault's notion of governmentality as a historically contingent and dispersed form of power seeking to act on the action of others and on the self. It explores conceptual dimensions of governmentality and its connections to Foucault's historical philosophical investigations of truths, rationalities and the subject. As a focus of geographical analysis, Foucauldian approaches first appear in historical geographies of disciplinary institutions, but this focus on the enclosed spaces of discipline also raises questions about the management of populations beyond the institutional walls. Governmentality approaches are now found in nearly every sub‐field of human geography, forming the basis of much innovative work exploring the significance of space in projects of government.