REGULACIÓN ESPECÍFICA:

The concept of specific governmentality applies to two ideas: Foucault’s explorations through a genealogical review of the emergence of the state as the main focus of

governance activities and the analysis of the emergence of liberalism in modern governance. Summaries and elaborations of these approaches to governmentality can be found elsewhere (see Rose and Miller, 1992; Darrier, 1999; Dean, 1999; Walker 2012). The important feature of these debates for this thesis is that they have contributed much of the vocabulary and conceptualisation that is used in general governmentality studies (Walters, 2012). For example sovereign, disciplinary, bio, and liberal power all feature in analyses of governmentality and so each of these concepts requires further elaboration.

According to Foucault, governmentality began to emerge at the end of the 18th Century when sovereignty as a divine “right to decide life and death” was replaced with the goal of “fostering life or death” (Foucault in Rainbow: 1984: 261). At that time the population began to be seen as social beings rather than subjects, and power became less about protection of territory and more about the security of a collective entity of people. The move from sovereign power to more diverse concepts of political power is central to Foucault’s genealogical work; as sovereignty became less concerned with divine rights, so it became more closely linked with laws (Dean, 1999). As sovereignty became problematised as a form of governance, so emerged the idea of ‘the art of governance’ where the goal became to consider new techniques of governing that moved beyond “the imposition of laws” (Dean, 1999:107).

These new techniques initially formed in what Foucault described as ‘technologies of self’. The concept of technologies has been widely used in governmentality, often interchangeably with techniques. In this thesis the latter is taken to mean a practical action driven by a particular aim. Technologies are envisaged as groups of techniques. Foucault claimed that technologies of self were:

“techniques which permit individuals, by their own means, a certain number of operations on their own bodies, their own souls, their own thoughts, their own conduct and this in a manner to transform themselves, modify themselves, and so attain a certain state of perfection, happiness, purity and supernatural power” (Foucault in Callinicos: 2007:284).

These were more subversive techniques of governance than traditional legal constraints where individuals were trained through a system of penalties and rewards to exhibit certain behaviours, which manifested in social norms and were reinforced through surveillance. Foucault characterised this approach as ‘disciplinary power’ which he described as a “modest suspicious power” (Foucault in Hunt and Wickham, 1994:20). The focus of disciplinary power is on the individual. In contrast, as governance began to focus on the population as a group for collective advancement, so the forms of knowledge required for such an approach became shaped and ‘biopower’ emerged. Ettinger (2011:546) describes biopower as the “mechanisms that are directed to population in the aggregate”. The security of the population became important and statistical analysis that could be extrapolated to larger groups became a prominent feature of the art of governance. As a consequence, in contrast to ‘sovereign power’ that emerges through laws, biopower is found in societal norms, internalised by individuals. Taylor (2011:44) suggests that the links to societal norms as a technology of governance has led to some confusion in Foucault’s work on the distinction between

biopower and disciplinary power. Debates on this issue are not material to understanding this thesis, and what should be taken from these concepts is the reinforcement of the idea that governance studies should focus on technologies of governance, as well as the institutions of government themselves.

The most recent development in governmentality of the state has emerged through the concept of liberal governmentality, which is also the particular construction to which Foucault devotes most of his energy. Liberal governmentality emerges with the development of “political economy” as the “major form of knowledge” used in governance (Foucault in Walters, 2012:29). It takes as its problematisation of governance - the idea that we could be “governing too much” (ibid:30) and so it focuses closely on governing for freedom. The advent of liberal governmentality and the spirit of openness moves governance beyond the state and introduced new forms of natural laws including the market economy. Policing and security is no longer linked solely to disciplinary power, but instead is used to prevent deviation from this “self-balancing system” (Walters, 2012:34).

Walters argues that Foucault draws a distinction between liberal governmentality and neo-liberalism, with the latter concept disregarding the naturalism of more traditional liberal political economic thought, suggesting active choice in the promotion of advanced-liberal ideas in economic governance. Advanced-liberalism has been typified widely as the dominant rationale of today’s governance practices. This approach sees a problem with limits to the idea of a free individual and so utilises the technique of marketisation to expand into new territories of governance. Advanced-liberalism is promoted throughout the “technologies of citizenship” (new spaces for governance); “technologies of agency” (the setting of measurable objectives rather than prescribed processes); and “technologies of performance” (benchmarking, comparison and best practices) (Russell and Frame, 2013:96). As a consequence, advanced-liberalism has often been taken to have as its goal ‘governance at a distance’.

Whilst some authors note that advanced-liberalism presents as a “spectrum” of governmentalities which manifest differently “depending on context” (Keskitalo et al. 2012:437), others have become increasingly critical of the focus on this understanding of governmentality. Dowling (2010:493) suggests that within geography literature there is increasing “scepticism towards the coherence of neoliberalism as a programme of rule”. Rose et al. (2006:97) also argue that it has become a “cookie-cutter typification”. As such, some authors have suggested that governmentality literature now artificially underplays the role of the state, law and the explicitly political (McKee, 2008; Golder and Fitzpatrick, 2009; Walters, 2012).

These restrictions on conceptualisations of governmentality have been attributed to ill- considered expansion of Foucault’s genealogical method which has focused research on the very recent history of political thought (Walters, 2012) as well as the avoidance of empirical realities of governance in an effort to avoid focusing on “systems of rule” (McKee, 2009:473). This is seen as problematic because it presents governmentality as a “completed project” (Rutherford, 2007:300) that limits opportunities for human agency and resistance (McKee, 2009). These critiques have led to an increased volume of work which focuses not on whether governmentality is specific or general but how governmentality studies should be conducted.

McKee (2009:481) believes a poorly constructed study of governmentality: “inadequately theorises resistance and sanitises politics out of the policy process”. She argues that a “realist governmentality” which examines rationales of governance in empirical context can show opportunities for “critical space” and identify critical voices (ibid). She suggests that studies should look beyond key government documents to ask “how these political ambitions have been realised in practice” (p474). As a consequence she promotes the idea of “complementing discursive analysis” with “localised empirical accounts of actual governing practices” (p478) arguing that focus on text as evidence does not represent real life.

Rutherford (2007:302) also suggests that messier governmentality analyses are needed to allow us to “disturb common sense notions about power and resistance and initiate a process of rethinking of how one might take up environmental issues” and Dowling (2010:493) argues that taking a sceptical approach to advanced-liberal governmentalities can “offer intriguing signposts for those interested in creating alternative futures”. As a consequence, this thesis not only adopts a general

governmentality perspective but does so in a reflective, empirical and sceptical way. Section 3.4 (p91) will explore the methodology of governmentality used in this thesis in more detail. However, first attention is paid to how governmentality has been conceptualised, applied and critiqued in relation to understanding governance of the environment.

The next section explores governmentality as it has been used to identify rationales in environmental governance. The delineations of specific (Ecogovernmentality) and

general (Environmentalities) are used but with the underlying perspective that what is important in this thesis is not what type of governmentality is identified or promoted but rather how governmentality can be used to understand the governance of the environmental issue of ZW in Scotland. In this sense a focus is also placed upon how the governmentality studies of the environment have been conducted.