Governmentality: Critical Encounters

by William Walters

First developed by Michel Foucault more than thirty years ago, "governmentality" has become an essential set of tools for many researchers in the social and political sciences today. What is "governmentality"? How does this perspective challenge the way we understand political power and its contestation? This new introduction offers advanced undergraduate and graduate students both a highly accessible guide and an original contribution to debates about power and governmentality.
The book aims to serve four main















This book offers a set of conceptual and methodological observations intended to keep research in governmentality a living, critical thought project. Above all, it argues that the challenge of understanding the world calls for the addition of new thinking equipment to the governmentality toolbox. Critical Encounters will prove useful for students of social and political theory, international relations, political sociology, anthropology and geography.

201 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 24, 2011