Articles by kaspar villadsen
Foucault Studies, 2024
Michel Foucault's essay 'The Subject and Power' has seen four decades. It is the most quoted of F... more Michel Foucault's essay 'The Subject and Power' has seen four decades. It is the most quoted of Foucault's shorter texts and exerts a persistent influence across the social sciences and humanities. The essay merges two main trajectories of Foucault's research in the 1970s: his genealogies of legal-disciplinary power and his studies of pastoral power and governance. This article connects these two trajectories to Althusser's thesis on the ideological state apparatuses, demonstrating affinities between Althusser's thesis and Foucault's diagnosis of the welfare state as a 'matrix' of individualising and totalising power. The article suggests that Foucault's essay straddles between two different concepts of subjectivation. First, one encounters the citizen 'internally subjugated' by disciplinary and pastoral power, whereas, at the end, we find a 'flat' subject of governance; a form of power which intervenes only in the environment in which individuals make their rational, self-fashioning choices. The implication of Foucault's newfound concept of governance is a weakening of the link between subjectivation and the formation of the state, which also meant that the state's role in reproducing capitalism receded into the background of Foucauldian scholarship. Finally, the article suggests extending Foucault's analytical 'matrix' to current techniques of subjectivation associated with the advent of big data and artificial intelligence, which buttress the expansive technique of predictive profiling.
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Journal of Political Power, 2024
This article compares Heidegger and Foucault on modern technology, taking its clue from Agamben’s... more This article compares Heidegger and Foucault on modern technology, taking its clue from Agamben’s claim that Gestell and dispositifare ‘perfectly corresponding’ concepts. So far, however, the task of a detailed comparison of Gestell and dispositif remains unresolved. Atfirst glance, the two terms appear compatible, designating how wemoderns began objectifying nature as well as ourselves as manipulatable raw material. Significant for the discussion is Heidegger’sand Foucault’s contrasting readings of Nietzsche, i.e. as the ‘lastmetaphysician’ versus ‘the first genealogist’. Schematically, for Heidegger, modern technology figures as humanity’s nearly inescapable condition, whereas Foucault sees it is ‘functionally indeterminant’, evolving in multiple, intersecting, and unexpected ways.
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Sustainability, 2023
At first glance, Michel Foucault might appear as an unexpected companion for a Special Issue on t... more At first glance, Michel Foucault might appear as an unexpected companion for a Special Issue on the themes of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate sustainability. Foucault never considered the concept of CSR or corporate sustainability, and he did not comment on the global, ecological crisis, which was already imminent at the end of his life in the first half of the 1980s, although he did not live to see the current loss of biodiversity or escalation of global warming. Furthermore, while Foucault came close to the theme of humanity’s unsustainable exploitation of nature when he analyzed the historical emergence of biopolitical optimization of individuals and populations, he never considered the possibility of absolute extinction of the human species or the global ecosystem. Yet, despite the lack of fundamental concerns and doomsday proclamations regarding ecological crises in Foucault, this Special Issue will demonstrate how Foucault’s analytical frameworks are useful for the analysis of issues related to CSR and corporate sustainability. Overall, we propose that Foucauldian studies have the potential to conduct complex analyses of structural ecological challenges by exploring the contextual interlinkage of discourses (including metaphysical conceptions of nature), political and economic power (including hierarchical governance structures and exploitation), as well as techniques and institutions in their historical situatedness. More precisely, the contributions to this Special Issue inquiry into diverse elements related to CSR, corporate sustainability, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investment principles. They carry out this work by using Foucault’s work on archaeology, genealogy, economic reasoning (particularly of neoliberalism), self-techniques, and dispositives.
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Sustainability, 2023
During the last decade, ESG has become a globally widespread doctrine of good investment principl... more During the last decade, ESG has become a globally widespread doctrine of good investment principles. ESG defines investing for broader, extra-financial goals by the use of “environmental, social and governance” (ESG) factors. While commentators generally agree that ESG has become a crucial arena for defining responsible investment, research is so far scarce on the conceptual development of the ESG discourse as well as how companies articulate it in their public communication. By analysing ESG concepts, this article combines methods derived from corpus linguistics with dispositional analytics, inspired by Michel Foucault. The data material consists of 281 annual reports, which contain the self-representation of 24 Danish large-cap companies, including how they communicated their ESG policies from 2010 to 2021. The analysis displays the proliferation of specific ESG keywords as well as changes over time in their frequency, proportional to each other. We supplement the quantitative analyses with dispositional analytics, considering how the dispositives of law, discipline, and security condition Danish companies’ adoption of ESG. We also discuss how companies use ESG concepts ‘tactically’ to navigate a context, in which the dispositives ‘over-determine’ urgent environmental, social, and governance issues.
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European Journal of Social Theory, 2022
A steady stream of commentary criticizes Foucault's 'agentless position' for its inability to obs... more A steady stream of commentary criticizes Foucault's 'agentless position' for its inability to observe, much less theorize, the ways in which human actors manoeuvre, negotiate, transform or resist the structures within which they are situated. This article does not so much refute this critical consensus but seeks to reconstruct a framework from Foucault's writings, which allows space for 'human agency', including individuals' pursuit of tactics, attempts at solving problems, reactions to unexpected events and their reflexive work on their own subjectivities. The revised analytical framework, 'dispositional analytics', integrates the study of self-techniques with the analysis of dispositifs. Recognizing that Foucault's work eschewed an adequate consideration of individuals' capacity to affect the forces that bear upon them, the article discusses the socio-political conditions for self-formation. Finally, a case study of 'voice-hearers' who use self-techniques to reconstitute themselves in opposition to institutional psychiatry is reinterpreted through the framework of dispositional analysis.
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The Sociological Review, 2022
Pandemic modelling functions as a means of producing evidence of potential events and as an instr... more Pandemic modelling functions as a means of producing evidence of potential events and as an instrument of intervention that Tim Rhodes and colleagues describe as entangling science into social practices, calculations into materializations, abstracts into effects and models into society. This article seeks to show how a model society evinced through mathematical models produces a model not only for society but also for citizens, showing them how to act in a certain model manner that prevents an anticipated pandemic future. To this end, we analyse political speeches by various Norwegian ministers to elucidate how various model-based COVID-19 responses enact a 'model citizen'. Theoretically, we combine Rhodes et al.'s arguments with Foucault's concepts of law, discipline and security, thus showing what a model society might imply for the model citizen. Finally, we conclude that although the model society is largely informed by epidemiological models and liberal biopolitics that typically place responsibility on individual subjects, sovereign state power remains manifestly present in the speeches' rhetoric.
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Qualitative Inquiry, 2022
Although Jane Addams has long been recognized as a pioneer in North American pragmatism, efforts ... more Although Jane Addams has long been recognized as a pioneer in North American pragmatism, efforts to develop her thought into a distinct research program have been limited. This article develops Addams's work as a method of sociological inquiry by focusing on her notions of "perplexity," "moral adjustment," and "sympathetic understanding." Emphasizing the essential role of language in moral conflicts and reconstruction, the article incorporates Charles Wright Mills's concept of "vocabularies of motives." Together, these notions offer a framework for exploring the moral dilemmas that care workers experience when responding to the imposition of standardization of their working practices. A case study demonstrates how care workers, while coping creatively with the effects of a service reform, develop motive vocabularies in defense of their professional ethics. Such situated creativity on "the shop floor" of social services remains relatively under-explored and under-theorized.
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The Oxford Handbook of Jane Addams, 2022
There is widespread agreement that despite the general scarcity of women among classical sociolog... more There is widespread agreement that despite the general scarcity of women among classical sociologists, Jane Addams was the first and probably most influential of early American sociologists. Apart from being a leading figure in the settlement movement, she carried out early sociological research in the Chicago slums and had close ties to contemporary pragmatist thinkers like William James, John Dewey, and George Hebert Mead. This chapter reconsiders the general designation of Addams as an "early sociologist." It discusses which criteria are adequate to define someone as a sociologist and considers Addams's activities and writings in light of such criteria. Significant in this assessment is Addams's inspiration from the Christian tradition, evident in her invocation of Christian ethics as a regenerative force and her echoing of principles from social gospel theology. The chapter concludes that Addams's work, both as a turn-of-the-century social critic and intellectual, was shaped as much by Christian values as by activities that would merit the term "sociologist." Paying attention to how Addams articulated notions like "Christian renaissance," "social salvation," and "brotherly love" complicates assessments of her as a pioneer in pragmatist, empirical sociology. Addams's blend of Christian ideas and early social science discourse is not unique but resonates with streams of reformist, sociological writing around the turn-of-the-20th-century North America and Europe. This chapter concludes that rather than constituting a stumbling block for the development of modern sociology, Christian inspirations can be an impetus for critical sociological practice in times of fragmentation and instrumentalization of sociological research.
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Biosocieties, 2021
This article explores recent HIV prevention campaigns for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), focusi... more This article explores recent HIV prevention campaigns for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), focusing on how they integrate pleasure and desire in their calls for self-discipline through a continual use of pharmaceuticals. This emerging type of health promotion, here represented by ads promoting the preventive use of pharmaceuticals, no longer simply approaches target groups with demands to abstain from harmful substances or practices and thus control risks, but also includes messages that recognize individuals' habits, values, and their desires for pleasure. Drawing on Foucault's work concerning discipline and security, we suggest that a novel, permissive discipline is emerging in contemporary HIV prevention. Further guided by Barthes's theory of images, we analyse posters used in prevention campaigns, scrutinizing their culture-specific imagery and linguistic messages, i.e. how the words and images interact. We conclude that these campaigns introduce a new temporality of prevention, one centred on pleasure through the pre-emption and planning that PrEP enables.
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Contemporary Christian-cultural Values: Migration Encounters in the Nordic Region, 2021
The chapter tells the story of how Denmark has transformed from a very welcoming and tolerant cou... more The chapter tells the story of how Denmark has transformed from a very welcoming and tolerant country to one whose prime ministers reassure its residents that “We have the strictest Alien Act possible.” The approach is genealogical, following Michel Foucault, and the empirical focal point lies on Danish immigration policies as they evolved from the late 1960s to the present day. This development culminates in the emergence of the concept of “risky immigrants,” which associates immigrants with risks like economic burdens, high unemployment levels, crime, undemocratic attitudes, and the development of ghettos. I analyze the Danish experience from my broader thesis on the welfare state as being caught up between the universality of welfare, industrial-capitalist expansion, and sovereign territoriality. By drawing on Foucault’s work, I study these different logics of statehood as evolving constellations of law, discipline, and security. Danish immigration policy has mutated over time so that policies of security premised on free circulation gradually gave way to discipline and legal sovereignty that blocked, filtered, and segregated immigrants. Together with this movement toward territorial enclosure, the discursive construction of the immigrant changed fundamentally.
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CBS Wire, 2021
The marketization of the university is reflected in the demand that universities constantly compe... more The marketization of the university is reflected in the demand that universities constantly competeon the international market for publications, research funding, scientific labour and students. Today, university researchers have thus become ‘entrepreneurs’ whose most important task is to produce bibliometrically competitive knowledge, generate external funding and offer programmes centred on maximizing candidates ‘employability’. Researchers are increasingly measured and promoted based on their ‘performance’ and ‘innovation’ in these areas rather than their academic skills and knowledge. Research freedom includes not being forced to conduct research aimed at specific journals, selected by politicians or the university management based on bibliometric rankings; a selection that is often a far cry from individual researchers’ and research groups’ academic specialist expertise.
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Global Discourse, 2021
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has spurred extensive governmental reactions worldwide, such as th... more The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has spurred extensive governmental reactions worldwide, such as the closure of borders, the lockdown of entire countries, unprecedented economic stimulus packages, and the invention of digital tracking devices that enable authorities to monitor infection rates and the movements of infected individuals. An important question is to what extent the more detailed surveillance of citizens established by health authorities and governments in many countries will outlive the COVID-19 crisis. What does the pandemic tell us about the ease by which governments have revived the timeworn instruments of state sovereignty, such as territorial closure, restrictions of access to public spaces, and the privileging of national populations as the ultimate object of government? Do we witness a certain convergence between countries considered liberal-democratic and authoritarian regimes in terms of the parallel enhancements of citizen surveillance, rule by appeals to fear, and restrictions of our freedom in terms of governments’ use of personal data? In their article, ‘Obedience in times of COVID-19 pandemics: a renewed governmentality of unease?’, Didier Bigo, Elspeth Guild and Elif Mendos Kuşkonmaz (2021) offer a series of timely reflections on the above questions.
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Routledge Handbook of Economic Theology, 2020
The theme of this chapter is the relationship between the practice of confession and the constitu... more The theme of this chapter is the relationship between the practice of confession and the constitution of economically rational subjects. We emphasize three key components in this economic subjectivity: guilt, desire and moderation, which have been highlighted by Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault and Mauricio Lazzarato. These thinkers have traced these components historically to Christian morality, hereby problematizing and complicating the commonly accepted demarcation between modern, economistic rationality and pre-modern religious belief. In doing so, they have indicated an intimate historical relationship between what are ostensibly distinct and separate social arenas. In this context, we wish to foreground how the intertwinement between the constitution of subjectivity and the expansion of economic rationality is achieved through the technique of confession. More specifically, the inculcation of guilt, the virtue of responsibility and the control of desire can all be associated with the practice of confession in its broadest sense.
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New Technology, Work and Employment, 2020
This article explores the adoption of new technology in organisations that provide senior citizen... more This article explores the adoption of new technology in organisations that provide senior citizen care. Inspired by Niklas Luhmann's systems theory, we study how technology reduces complexity by identifying client needs and ensuring predictability in service delivery. However, how technologies are adopted in practice is not determined by technology since it is also structured by care-workers' continuous decision-making. Against this backdrop, we explore how technologies alter the conditions for decision-making in two settings of elderly care, and we describe how care workers seek to adapt technologies to their practical needs as well as conception of care ethics. Developing a systems theory approach, the article eschews a priori assumptions of technological constraint on care-work-ers' professional autonomy, offering a more open-ended exploration of diversified strategies for coping with new technology. Our case studies show that employees develop diversified strategies for technology adoption, including both non-usage, heated resistance, excessive embrace, and creative adaption.
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Organization Studies, 2019
Foucault's notion 'the dispositive' has been introduced in organization studies as a highly promi... more Foucault's notion 'the dispositive' has been introduced in organization studies as a highly promising concept. However, its analytical and empirical potentials remain to be fully explored. This article develops dispositional analytics which conceives of organizations as pervaded by multiple dispositives that interact, reinforce or contradict one another. In this reconstruction, particular emphasis is given to the visibility produced by dispositives, through which subjects and object emerge in a particular prescriptive light. Furthermore, analytical privilege is given to relations over substance. This means foregrounding the interrelations between dispositives as well as the dispositive's 'internal relationality', that is, the relations established by each dispositive out of which organizational problems arise and transform. The framework's potentials are explored in a study of care workers' responses to a management reform that disciplined and depersonalized care-giving. The difficulties that care workers faced in straddling legal demands, service standardization and care ethics are understood as a situation of heterogeneous dispositions. In this context, care workers and their managers tactically reconstructed their subjectivities, relating to the dispositives in diverse and unexpected ways.
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Organization, 2019
Critics lament that corporate social responsibility has failed to significantly change business p... more Critics lament that corporate social responsibility has failed to significantly change business practices and that it became 'de-radicalized' once embraced by corporate business management. Using historical analysis, this article reevaluates this de-radicalization thesis, questioning whether corporate social responsibility ever was as inherently radical as the thesis assumes. The article demonstrates that early corporate social responsibility was already invested with a strategy of pragmatism, an investment that traces back to a group of late 19th and early 20th century American Christian reformists, also known as the social gospel movement. They promised that industrialism would unify Christian ethics and capitalist production, thereby reconciling the conflict between profitseeking and social solidarity. The discourse they advanced already contained what would later become key corporate social responsibility components, including (1) the notion of ethical businessmen, (2) the corporation as a morally conscious being and (3) collaboration as the pathway to 'industrial peace'. Theoretically, the analysis finds inspiration in Luc Boltanski's and Eve Chiapello's thesis on modern capitalism's capacity to assimilate the critiques it faces, supplemented by Michel Foucault's fine-grained analyses of the transformation and 'tactical polyvalence' of discourse. The two positions complement each other in their assumptions regarding the dialectical relationship between capitalism/critique (Boltanski and Chiapello) and power/resistance (Foucault). Tracing the origins of corporate social responsibility's pragmatism further back in time than the conventional starting point in the 1950s casts new light on the de-radicalization thesis. In particular, corporate social responsibility emphasizes personal ethics as the key to industrial peace, a social gospel legacy that has steered corporate social responsibility away from demands that fundamentally challenge corporate capitalism.
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Borderland Religion: Ambiguous Practices of Difference, Hope and Beyond , 2018
This chapter is about borders, images, and counter-conduct. It traces an event that took place in... more This chapter is about borders, images, and counter-conduct. It traces an event that took place in what this book terms the borderlands, not merely because it happend at the borders between the EU and the Middle East, but also because it puts fundamentally at stake a number of borders. This includes the borders between life and death, between individual sorrow and collective outrage, and the border between regulated domestic policy and international anarchy. We are particularly interested in how the event, by arising from the borderlands, and by way of its photographic connotations, spurred movements of counter-conduct. It is an event that radically brought the "inexistent" into existence.
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The American Sociologist , 2018
Designated an early pragmatist, Jane Addams has significantly inspired contemporary pragmatist re... more Designated an early pragmatist, Jane Addams has significantly inspired contemporary pragmatist research. However, Addams also consistently articulated ideas harking to primordial Christianity and sought inspiration in the social gospel of her time. This article explores how Addams’ writing resonated with key tenets of social gospel theology, which imbued her texts with an overarching vision of humanity’s progressive history. It is suggested that Addams’ vision of a major transition in industrial society, one involving a “Christian renaissance” and individuals’ transformation into “socialized selves”, constitutes a political eschatology. Of particular interest is how Addams conceived the relationship between the individual and society, inventing the term “new social ethics” to reconcile the difficult balance between individual autonomy and social solidarity. The article suggests some ways in which Addams’ writings relate to contemporary issues such as individualism, neo-conservatism, and militarism. Her social thought constitutes a thus far under-examined source of sociological critique in regard to such issues of public concern.
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Human Relations , 2018
This article explores the drama performed around a self-proclaimed 'anti-establishment' executive... more This article explores the drama performed around a self-proclaimed 'anti-establishment' executive at a Danish film company, Zentropa. The company prides itself on being against the existing 'elitist' and commercialized Danish film industry. Inspired by the thesis that modern capitalism develops by incorporating the critiques directed against it, the article analyses how Zentropa's Chief Executive Officer invests a 'progressive', counter-cultural spirit in his management practices. We describe how a 'freethinking' a nd 'subversive' CEO uses his dramatized performances to exercise an authority that violates employees' privacy and involves public displays of disrespect. We further examine how employees use impression management to cope with norm-violating management practices, including sexual provocations and the dramatic, unjustified dismissal of an employee. In the context of these disruptions, we analyse how order is reestablis hed through dramaturgical cycles of symbolic events, including sacrifice. In particular, the study provides insights into how theatrically staged, norm-defying performances both disrupt the organization and allow managerial power to be reinstituted. It also demonstrates that anti-establishment management involves and rests upon the occasional exercise of traditional managerial hierarchy and control. Theoretically, the article develops a dramatist perspective, combining Goffman's symbolic interactionism and Burke's dramatism to offer a framework for understanding norm-transgressive management in modern organizations.
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Rethinking Neoliberalism, 2017
Michel Foucault performed three different decenterings during his influetial governmentality lect... more Michel Foucault performed three different decenterings during his influetial governmentality lectures. First, he dissolved the state into social struggles, suggesting the prism of war and battle to analyse statehood. Second, he decentered the state into administrative technologies, or 'dispositifs' rendering the state and immanent plane of indeterminate problems. Third, Foucualt explored the state, or images of the state, within neoliberal thought and extreme 'political eschatologies'. The chapter reconstructs three frameworks for analysing state formation, and it explores the potentials of these frameworks in regard to the Greek debt crises, EU's reponse to refugees, and the new political movements, Occupy and the Tea Party.
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Articles by kaspar villadsen
SUNDHED OG MAGT
I de senere år er forståelsen af sundhed undergået en række forandringer. Fokus er blevet udvidet fra patienten som biomedicinsk krop til et subjekt, der oplever sundhedsproblemer og lever med dem i interaktion med det omgivende miljø. Sundhed er blevet et langt mere
omfattende anliggende, der potentielt vedrører alle aspekter af vores tilværelse.
Det betyder samtidig, at ideer om sundhed ikke kan dikteres af sundhedsmyndigheder og eksperter. Sundhedsfremmende tiltag må i dag tage målgruppens værdier og rationaler i betragtning, bl.a. i form af kampagner, der ikke kræver absolut overholdelse af sundhedsdoktriner, men forsøger at få folk til at afveje deres usunde vaner i forhold til sundhedsværdier.
Sundhed og magt er en ny bog, der tager bestik af denne udvikling. Den rummer bidrag fra førende danske og internationale forskere, som anlægger perspektiver, der udfordrer traditionel sundhedsforskning, herunder genealogi, systemteori, psykoanalyse og aktørnetværk-teori.
Den henvender sig til studerende og fagfolk på sundheds- og samfundsvidenskabelige uddannelser.
‘This book is not only an examination of highly relevant and applicable theoretical approaches to power and welfare. It also shows the multiple forms and aspects of the play of power in the encounters between the citizen and the professional within the highly ambiguous context of contemporary liberalism. In both these respects, it is a leading example of what is emerging as a distinctive Copenhagen approach to public policy and governance.’ – Mitchell Dean, Professor, University of Newcastle, Australia, and Copenhagen Business School, Denmark.
Debatten er prisværdig, for temaet er afgørende for universitetets eksistens: Det handler om den enkelte forskers såvel som universitetets forskningsfrihed. Det er imidlertid et alvorligt problem, at spørgsmålet om identitetspolitik fylder så meget. Ikke kun, fordi der endnu ikke findes nogen videnskabelig undersøgelse, der viser, at identitetspolitik udgør et presserende problem for forskningsfriheden, men især, fordi spørgsmålet om identitetspolitik er med til at fjerne fokus fra det reelle langt mere grundlæggende og strukturelle problem.
Kapitlet er fra: Andersen, H. & Kaspersen, L. B. (2013) Klassisk og moderne samfundsteori. København: Hans Reitzels Forlag.
recently remarked that the work of Michel
Foucault and that of his intellectual descendants
exhibit a quasi-paranoid fear of political organisation,
especially in its dominant modern form
of the nation state. Mitchell Dean and Kaspar
Villadsen’s outstanding State Phobia and Civil
Society shows that this statement is both largely
accurate and partly mistaken. Whereas
Foucault’s own perspective reveals a mixed
appreciation of the state, the reception of his
work tends to develop its state-phobic elements.
Mitchell Dean and Kaspar Villadsen, Palo Alto, Stanford University Press, 2016, 196, pp., £22.00 (paperback), ISBN: 9780804796972
Michel Foucault introduced and developed the notion of state phobia in his 1978–1979 lectures on biopolitics (Foucault 2008, 75), observing that his contemporaries were critical of the universal presence and power of the state regardless of whether it was socialist, fascist, or even liberal in character. Foucault himself was well known for questioning the role and legitimacy of the modern state, which was perhaps most evident in his calls to ‘cut off the king’s head,’ move beyond the state, and analyze the micro-foundations of power. However, state phobia appears to have become an even more widely discussed theme today. Not only does the state suffer from a poor reputation across the political spectrum, many scholars have addressed how the nation-state is
becoming increasingly hollowed out by globalization, the emergence and promotion of network governance, and the ever greater importance placed upon civil society and community-based politics. State phobia, which has come to question whether the state is the obvious center of control and power, thus now extends well beyond the poststructuralist
and nominalist approach launched by Foucault.
Against this background, the main concern in State Phobia and Civil Society is to problematize Foucault’s legacy by investigating the poststructuralist tradition, which appears to encourage state phobia by virtue of its denunciation of collective public efforts as well as its promotion of local and community-based solutions. Dean and Villadsen refer to the latter as ‘multitude, molecular and minor politics, grassroots movements or vital politics and ethopolitics’ (5). (Quote from the page 1, The Review)
Bogen er redigeret af Mads Peter Karlsen og Kaspar Villadsen. Bogen indeholder artikler af bl.a. Nikolas Rose, Thomas Lemke og Mitchell Dean.
På dansk side bidrager Niels Åkerstrøm, Lars Thorup Larsen, Ayo Wahlberg, Ole Bjerg,Anders La Cour, Justine Grønbæk Pors, Holger Højlund, Kathrine Hofmann Pii, Mads Peter Karlsen og Kaspar Villadsen.
11th September – 14th September, 2023
Registration Deadline
Monday 7 August 2023 at 09:00
Organizer
Copenhagen Business School. PhD School
Nina Iversen
Phone: +45 3815 2475
ni.research@cbs.dk
Michel Foucault’s work continues to offer a major source of inspiration for PhD projects across a wide range of disciplinary domains. This PhD course explores how Foucault’s work speaks to three broad themes in contemporary business school research and beyond: Organization, technology, and subject-formation. The lecturers on the course have all pursued substantive research on these themes, drawing upon different parts of Foucault’s authorship, and they will base their teaching on this research experience. Overall, we will explore how Foucault’s thinking can help to inquire into the organizations, technologies and techniques of self-formation that make up the conditions of possibility for our contemporary experiences. A key aim of the course is that the participants acquire an effective overview of analytical possibilities in Foucault’s work, effective for selecting and deploying such analytics in their own research.
More information and registration: https://phdsupport.nemtilmeld.dk/38/
Course coordinator:
Kaspar Villadsen, Department of Business Humanities and Law (BHL)
Faculty
Professor Sverre Raffnsøe
Department of Business Humanities and Law, CBS
Associate Professor Marius Gudmand-Høyer
Department of Business Humanities and Law, CBS
Professor (mso) Kaspar Villadsen
Department of Business Humanities and Law, CBS
Prerequisites
Only PhD students can participate in the course.
Participation requires submission of a short paper (see more below). Papers must be in English and deadline is 1st September 2023.
It is a precondition for receiving the course diploma that the PhD student attends the whole course.
Aim
The course will provide the participants with:
a) An introduction to key analytical potentials reconstructed from Foucault’s wide-ranging authorship as well as the lecturers’ own research projects.
b) In particular, we will discuss different approaches to themes of organization, technology, and subject-formation as they are deployed in state-of-the-art Foucault-inspired scholarship.
c) The potentials and limits of the particular way Foucauldian analytics can be applied in the participant’s research will be discussed. Hence, a range of analytical resources and potentials will be explored and discussed in relation to the participants’ current research.