Governmentality, Biopower, and Everyday Life (Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought)

Governmentality, Biopower, and Everyday Life synthesizes and extends the disparate strands of scholarship on Foucault's notions of governmentality and biopower and grounds them in familiar social contexts including the private realm, the market, and the state/military. Topics include public health, genomics, behavioral genetics, neoliberal market logics and technologies, philanthropy, and the war on terror.

This book is designed for readers interested in a rigorous, comprehensive introduction to the wide array of interdisciplinary work focusing on Foucault, biopower and governmentality. However, Nadesan does not merely reproduce existing literatures but also responds to implicit critiques made by Cultural Studies and Marxist scholarship concerning identity politics, political economy, and sovereign force and disciplinary control. Using concrete examples and detailed illustrations throughout, this book extends the extant literature on governmentality and biopower and helps shape our understanding of everyday life under neoliberalism.

Majia Holmer Nadesan is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Arizona State University at the West Campus. She authored Constructing Autism: Unravelling the 'Truth' and Understanding the Social (Routledge, 2005). Her Foucauldian-inspired work bridges cultural studies and political economy while addressing everyday concerns and practices specific to the workplace, child-rearing, and education.