Call for chapters: New Perspectives on Discourse & Governmentality

[Paul McIlvenny]

CALL FOR CHAPTERS – BOOK PROJECT

TITLE
"New Perspectives on Discourse and Governmentality"

EDITORIAL TEAM
Paul McIlvenny
Julia Zhukova Klausen
Laura Bang Lindegaard
at the Centre for Discourses in Transition (C-DiT), Aalborg University

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS
We seek contributions for an edited book of empirical studies that illustrate 
new perspectives on governmentality from the point of view of discourse 
studies.

Studies of governmentality inspired by Foucault's lectures and writings have 
slowly accumulated a body of work across a number of disciplines, including 
political science, policy studies, economics and history (Dean 2010, Miller & 
Rose 2008, Rose 1999). As a result of the recent publication in English for the 
first time of some of Foucault's annual lecture series at the Collège De France 
from 1977-1984 (Foucault 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011), recent debates on 
governmentality attempt to critically rethink Foucault's ideas, both in 
relation to new areas of application (e.g. climate change, health, mobility and 
transnationality) and in relation to developing new theories and methods 
appropriate to tracking the transformations in governance, self, control, 
power, democracy, body, conduct, space, security, environment and citizenship 
taking place in contemporary societies and polities across the world (Binkley & 
Capetillo 2009, Bröckling et al. 2011, Nadesan 2008, Walters 2012).

It is becoming apparent that the concept of governmentality has overgrown its 
status as a minor element of the Foucauldian heritage and has become an 
interdisciplinary inquiry in its own right. However, while the body of work on 
governmentality crosses multiple disciplinary boundaries, it is held together 
by a common tendency to constantly return to Foucault's works as a sort of 
'final destination' for those theorising the conduct of conduct. It is in 
response to this inclination to treat governmentality as a set of arguments, as 
a social and political theory which can only be understood and articulated 
through a re-reading of Foucault's references to governmentality, that some 
scholars are proposing that a productive direction lies in viewing 
governmentality as a set of analytical tools rather than a theory per se, and 
in producing new writings of today's governmentality rather than new readings 
of it (Walters 2012). This entails that studies of new territories of power and 
new 'technes' of governance should be, first and foremost, empirical and 
analytical examinations of the ways that the rationalities and apparatus of 
governmentality are at work both at the level of everyday practices, rather 
than just institutions of governance (Lemke 2007), and through assemblages of 
materialities, social arrangements, discursivities and textualities, rather 
than through the distinct and segregated realms of the technological and 
ideational (Latour 2005).

Within discourse studies, there have been only a few attempts to connect up the 
notion of discourse and the later work of Foucault and even fewer have 
attempted to connect discourse and governmentality. In the broader domain of 
discourse studies, a number of scholars from different fields have touched upon 
or pointed towards the potential of Foucault's work. Most notably, McHoul 
(1986, 1996) has suggested an ethnogenealogy, Laurier & Philo (2004) have 
proposed an ethnoarchaeology, and Iedema (2003) has done 
governmentality-inspired work on discourses of post-bureaucratic organisation, 
but others should be mentioned as well, namely Anderson (2003), Bührmann et al. 
(2007), Diaz-Bone et al. (2007), Fairclough (1993, 1996, 2003), Hearn (2008), 
Hodges (2002, 2003), Iedema & Scheeres (2003), Miller (1997), Powers (2007), 
Prior (1997), Ransom (1994), Salskov-Iversen et al. (2000, 2008), Tate (2007) 
and Wickham & Kendall (2007). However, whereas all of these studies, to varying 
degrees, are concerned with the relationship between the conception of 
discourse and Foucault's thought, none of them in any detail discusses and 
demonstrates the methodological and analytical consequences of the confluence 
of discourse studies with studies of governmentality, and, as a consequence, 
there is still an important gap to be filled if discourse studies are to take 
full advantage of the opportunities of current and future work within studies 
of governmentality.

TOPICS
Contributions to the book are expected to centre on the 'intersection' of 
discourse and governmentality. Other phenomena identified with Foucault's later 
work, e.g. biopolitics, securitisation, technologies of the self, etc. are also 
welcomed. Contributions may focus on a broad range of areas, including but not 
limited to health, sport and leisure, the environment, education and schooling, 
family, mass media, new media, international politics, transnationality, 
migration, non-governmental organisations, transportation, mobilities, and 
social movements. Further, they could engage with the following important 
issues:
- Governmentalities beyond the national. For example, the discursive 
strategies, technologies and routines by which the conduct of an individual is 
increasingly governed across and beyond national territories.
- Governmentalities outside advanced liberalism. For example, anti-politics and 
non-governmental politics, or studies in countries or regions in the Global 
South.
- Various forms of resistance, protest or counter-conduct within current forms 
of advanced liberalism. This could include, for example, the Occupy-movement, 
protests in the Middle East, and studies of children who renegotiate the rules 
set up by caregivers or teachers.
- Various forms of securitisation within current forms of advanced liberalism.
- Relationships between different technologies (techne) and rationalities 
(episteme) of government (or, in other words, of regimes of practices). For 
example, forms of multimodal analysis of different practices and their 
rationalities – for instance, of the regime of automobility in everyday 
practices.
- Relationships between the attempt to conduct the conduct of others and the 
attempt to conduct the conduct of oneself. For instance, the accomplishment of 
governmentalities at the intersection of politicians and citizens.
- The role of computer-mediated technologies, communication infrastructures and 
digital media – for example, social media and individual/collective resistance 
to the attempts to regulate the actors' conduct, or the new arts of 
governmentality (securitization, transnational governmentality, ethnification, 
etc.) that employ internet and digital technologies.

CHAPTER CONTRIBUTIONS
Given our concern with interdisciplinarity, we are looking forward to 
contributions that satisfy the following criteria:
- Contributions must engage with Foucault's work on governmentality and the 
studies of governmentality that have emerged in fields such as international 
studies, environmental studies, political science, public policy and 
organisation studies.
- Contributions must have a substantial component of empirical analysis using 
approaches, old and new, that come under the broad umbrella of discourse 
studies, including critical discourse analysis, membership categorisation 
analysis, conversation analysis, mediated discourse analysis, nexus analysis, 
prefigurative discourse studies, genre analysis, social semiotics, critical 
applied linguistics and positive discourse analysis.
- Contributions should engage with issues of scale and the interconnectedness 
of, on the one hand, the rationalities, technologies, programmes and 
materialities of governmentality and, on the other, the textualities, 
interactionalities and discursivities that circulate in practices of the 
conduct of conduct.
- Contributions may present a new or invigorated perspective on governmentality 
or go beyond established governmentality debates.
- Contributions may show how the conceptual innovations of intellectual thought 
and the subtleties of thinking about governmentality (eg. genealogy, historical 
ontology, powers of freedom, etc.) have an impact on the development of 
innovative approaches in discourse studies.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
- Potential authors are invited to submit a title and extended abstract (no 
more than 750 words) by April 15th 2013 to <discgov[AT]lists.hum.aau.dk>. 
Please also send a brief bio statement.
- The proposals should outline their perspective on Foucault and 
governmentality, the methodology used, the nature and extent of the empirical 
data, and preliminary explanations of interests, phenomena, analytic 
directions, and possible value and implications (see advice above).
- The co-editors will decide on a selection of abstracts and invite those 
authors to submit a full paper (8-10 000 words) for consideration to be 
included in the collection. The full papers will be peer reviewed and revised 
before submission of a draft volume to the publisher. Further revisions may be 
necessary in order to secure acceptance by the publisher.
- It is planned that after submission of the full paper, authors will be 
invited to a seminar in Autumn 2013 dedicated to presentations, sharing data 
and improving the coherence and quality of the volume. Funding for the local 
arrangements and accommodation are being pursued.
- Any enquires can be addressed to the co-editors at the address: 
<discgov[AT]lists.hum.aau.dk>.

SCHEDULE
- Abstract (750 words): 15th April 2013
- Full paper (8-10 000 words): 1st September 2013
- Revised paper: 1st January 2014
- Submission of manuscript to publisher: 1st March 2014
- Publication date: late 2014/early 2015

Centre for Discourses in Transition (C-DiT)
http://www.cdit.aau.dk
http://blog.cdit.aau.dk

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