A New Calculable Global World in the Making: Governing Through Transnational Certification Standards

Governing with quantification rests on preliminary processes of transforming the world to make it quantifiable through conventions of formatting and equivalence-making. This chapter investigates a new globalized mode of governing, operating, away from states, through voluntary certification standards. Considering the case of sustainable palm oil certification, it follows the most vulnerable “stakeholders”, from their daily life in remote rural areas to the governing public roundtables and private confidential negotiations. Fostering the dialogue between the extended convention theory framework and governmentality studies, the chapter shows that in a new kind of “standardizing liberalism” [libéralisme normalisateur], “governing by standards” shifts the political debate about power, legitimacy and the common good onto measurable certifiable characteristics of goods and services to be chosen by autonomous opting individuals.

Hard/heart worker: work intensification in purpose-driven organizations

PurposeThe paper seeks to illuminate the intersection between doing greater good in the world and the self-disciplining that comes along with it. The paper raises a discussion on how purpose-driven organizations with a sustainability focus should be concerned about internal social sustainability in order to maintain consistency between external purpose and internal well-being of employees.Design/methodology/approachThis article investigates the interrelations between purpose-driven organizations' quest for social sustainability and internal work conditions exemplified through experiences with work intensification. A governmentality studies approach is applied to investigate how employees' perceptions of doing greater good in the world also become a productive self-disciplining strategy that potentially increases work intensification and simultaneously result in an instrumentalization of working for greater sustainability.FindingsWorking with an organizational sustainability purpose can, in some situations, create dilemmas that may decrease employee well-being as it demands continuous negotiation of boundaries between paid work and free time, meaningfulness and work devotion, self-management and work intensification.Originality/valueThe paper raises a discussion on how purpose-driven organizations with a sustainability focus should be concerned about internal (social) sustainability in order to maintain consistency between external purpose and internal well-being of employees.

Expertise, legitimacy and subjectivity: Three techniques for a will to govern low carbon energy projects in India

This paper advances the understanding of the politics of governing energy for development projects by non-state actors. Building on Tania Murray Li’s work on trusteeship, and drawing on governmentality studies, along with ethnographic insights from two low carbon energy projects, this paper illuminates two less examined aspects of politics of energy projects. First, the designs of these projects embed particular imagined subjects, and specific techniques, to afford governance. In particular, trustees use techniques of expertise, techniques of legitimacy, and techniques of subjectivity. Second, trusteeship is a contingent phenomenon as a clear line between trustees and subjects is often missing. Many actors, simultaneously trustees and subjects, also carry socio-cultural subjectivities of class, caste and gender, which complicates the conduct of conduct. Some trustees look for benefiting people, some for profits, some to make a political career and, yet others, to support their social groups. By engaging with trusteeship, the paper flags that the governance techniques do not always benefit the ‘beneficiaries’ and are often counterproductive. The article emerges from nine-month ethnographic research done in 2012–13 in five villages in India using participant observations, interviews and group discussion, in addition to analysis of project websites and documentary materials.

Governing impaired jobseekers in neoliberal societies: From sheltered employment to individual placement

This paper accounts for a study of the largest employer in Scandinavia of jobseekers with designated impairments. Like many similar organizations, this organization has undergone a transformation from a provider of ‘sheltered work programs’, which remove this category of jobseekers from the labour market, to a provider of ‘individual placement programs’, which instead integrates them in the labour market. I use Foucauldian governmentality studies to show how this transformation problematizes basic assumptions underlying organizational disability studies. While these studies are variegated, they have generally found that jobseekers with designated impairments are often treated as disabled, as less employable than non-impaired individuals and in need of care and rehabilitation. The study presented below points in another direction. It shows that jobseekers’ designated impairments are treated as signs of their special abilities for particular jobs, rather than as signs of their disabilities. These findings, I argue, are illustrative of how a neoliberal governmentality tends towards replacing the distinction between the able and the disable with a bio-medical structuring of different qualities of human capital. While it leads to that individuals with impairments are integrated in the labour market, I argue that it also leads to that they are treated as having an exclusive, medically designated fit for simple and often dirty labour.

Contemporary Self-Help Literature: An Analysis from the Perspective of Governementality Studies

In this paper we will be analyzing contemporary self-help literature through the lens of what is usually called “governmentality studies”. These studies originate in the thought of Michel Foucault therefore we will begin our paper by presenting his theoretical framework for analyzing governmentality. The concept of the “dispositif” will be explained as a network of power relations aimed at governing individuals. “Subjection” is a concept we wil be using and it will be explained as a process of making individuals a part of a dispositif. Also the concept of “subjectivity” will be used, defined as a relation that an individual has with himself through which he governs himself and the concept of “technologies of the self” defined as a set of discourses through which subjectivity is formed. Our idea is to research contemporary self-help literature as a technology of the self through which an individual governs himself according to the rules of a certain dispositif therefore. In the next part of our paper we will present the context of our research which will be described as a change in governmentality regimes in the second half of the twentieth century. We will present that change as a transition from a disciplinary regime of governemntality to the neoliberal regime. In the next part of our paper we will define self-help literature as a discursive technology of the self that aims at getting its readers to see themselves as having a problem that requires them to transform themselves and therefore achieve happiness. Next we will present a short history oh self-help literature dividing it into three phases that differ in the relation authors have to their readers and in the figure of the big other whose ideas the authors claim to represent. We will claim that our object of research is the third period of the development of self-help literature beginning in the eighties. Next we will present our research that will be conducted by using Foucaults’s theoretical discourse developed in the second volume of his History of Sexuality. We will conclude that contemporary self-help literature can be seen as a technology of the self that transforms the reader’s subjectivity in order to make them govern themselves as autonomous subjects that seek to fulfill their innermost desires. Therefore we will claim that contemporary self-help literature can bee seen as a technology of the self of the neoliberal governmentality regime.

FROM EDUCATIONAL POLICIES TO ACTUAL PRACTICES: YOUNG NEETS IN ROMANIA

According to Eurostat data, the young NEETs (Not in education, employment or training) rate in Romania is one of the highest in Europe. It ranks 4th in Europe in 2019 (after Italy, Greece, and Slovenia) (Eurostat, 2020), with 11.5% for men, and 27.8% for women (while the EU average is 12.2% for men, and 20.8% for women). In addition, Romania has one of the highest rates of ’other NEETs’, not registered by public employment agencies: only 4.8% were registered in 2018, and received the NEETs benefits (CE, 2018). Recent data show the low performance of Romania in monitoring the school to work transition of youths, in accessing the European funds to support young people entering the labor market, or for offering the Youth Guarantee (Beadle et al., 2020). Even so, Romania, like all other member states, cannot afford to lose the youth capital, while it faces sharp population ageing and outgoing migration. During the last decade, we saw emerging a strong know-how for understanding and addressing the NEETs issue. Reflecting on the research data from different reports and studies, from various findings in large scale H2020 research and innovation projects on NEETs, the paper elaborates on proactive or remedial integrative solutions for improving the situation of young NEETs in Romania, building up on the good practices in atracting NEETs, at national and European level, while using the theoretical framework of the governmentality studies applied to the youth field (Besley, 2010).

Extractive Governmentality at Work: Native Appropriations of Oil Labor in the Amazon

This paper analyzes the transformations induced by Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the extractive sector, through an ethnographic study of villages neighboring an oil-drilling site in the Peruvian Amazon. It examines the materialization of a specific CSR device—the communal enterprise—which involves the majority of village members in the extractive industry as workers, owners, and managers of a subcontractor that provides services to the oil company. The paper highlights the importance of work and socialization to assess the transformative power of this original CSR device. After an opening section on how to study extractive governmentality “at work,” the paper presents a genealogy of the communal enterprise. It then examines how communal enterprises tend to transform indigenous inhabitants into workers and entrepreneurs and thereby impact the everyday organization of the entire community. By examining the ways residents adopt these social technologies, the paper shows how the partial normalization of individual bodies and collective organization induced by CSR technologies is an ambivalent mix resulting from a process of mutual appropriation between the industrial milieu and the villages. In doing so, it contributes to governmentality studies related to extractive capitalism, corporate strategies for disciplining dissent, and the social transformations they generate locally. Cet article analyse les transformations induites par la Responsabilité sociétale des entreprises (RSE) dans le secteur de l'extraction par le biais d'une étude ethnographique des villages voisins d'un site de forage pétrolier d'Amazonie péruvienne. Il examine la matérialisation d'un dispositif de RSE spécifique : une entreprise communautaire qui implique la majorité des villageois dans l'industrie de l'extraction en tant que travailleurs, propriétaires et gérants d'un sous-traitant fournissant des services à la compagnie pétrolière. Cet article souligne l'importance du travail et de la socialisation pour évaluer le pouvoir de transformation de ce dispositif de RSE original. Après une section introductive portant sur la façon d’étudier la gouvernementalité de l'extraction « au travail », cet article présente une généalogie de l'entreprise communautaire. Il examine ensuite la manière dont les entreprises communautaires tendent à transformer les habitants indigènes en travailleurs et en entrepreneurs et ainsi à impacter l'organisation quotidienne de l'ensemble de la communauté. Cet article montre en quoi la normalisation partielle des corps individuels et de l'organisation collective induite par les techniques de RSE est un mélange ambivalent résultant d'un processus d'appropriation mutuelle entre le milieu industriel et les villages en examinant la façon dont les habitants adoptent ces techniques sociales. Ce faisant, il contribue aux études de gouvernementalité liées au capitalisme de l'extraction, aux stratégies mises en œuvre par les entreprises pour discipliner la dissidence et aux transformations sociales qu'elles génèrent localement. En este artículo se analizan las transformaciones impulsadas por la responsabilidad social corporativa (RSC) en el sector de la extracción mediante un estudio etnográfico de las aldeas que se encuentran cerca de un sitio de extracción de petróleo en la Amazonía peruana. También se examina la materialización de un método específico de RSC, la empresa comunal, en la que la mayoría de los miembros de la aldea participan en la industria como trabajadores, propietarios y administradores de un subcontratista que presta servicios a la compañía petrolera. Además, se destaca la importancia del trabajo y la socialización para evaluar el poder de transformación de este método original de RSC. Después de la primera sección, donde se explica cómo estudiar la gobernabilidad extractiva ``en el trabajo'', en el artículo se presenta una genealogía de la empresa comunal. En esta se explora la forma en la que las empresas comunales suelen transformar a los habitantes autóctonos en trabajadores y emprendedores y, por lo tanto, modifican la organización establecida de toda la comunidad. Al analizar las formas en las que los residentes adoptan estas tecnologías sociales, en el artículo se muestra cómo la normalización parcial de los cuerpos individuales y de la organización colectiva producida por las tecnologías de RSC es una mezcla ambivalente que se produce como consecuencia de un proceso de apropiación mutua entre el entorno industrial y las aldeas. Este análisis contribuye a los estudios de gobernabilidad relacionados con el capitalismo extractivo, las estrategias corporativas para disciplinar la disidencia y las transformaciones sociales que generan a nivel local.

Unemployment in the Affective Economy: Exploring the Affective Governing of Young Unemployed People in the Danish Welfare State

This case study investigates the affective governing of young unemployed people, and it concludes that getting money in the Danish welfare state comes with an “affective price”. In the quest for a job, unemployed people have been increasingly responsibilized in order to live up to the ideal of the active jobseeker. Consequently, when faced with unemployment, they are encouraged to work harder on themselves and their motivation. Based on an interview study with young unemployed people (N=39) and field observations made at employment fund agencies in Denmark (2014–15), I explore how young unemployed people are governed by and through their emotions. By supplementing governmentality studies (Foucault et al. 1988, 2010) with the concept of “affective economy” from Ahmed (2014), I discuss how young unemployed people who receive money from the Danish state are placed in a situation of debt. The paper unfolds how this debt becomes visible as the unemployed people often describe feeling under suspicion for not doing enough, for not being motivated enough. Through an abundance of (pro) activity, they have to prove the suspicion of being lazy wrong, and through managing themselves as active jobseekers, they earn the right to get money from the state. Here motivation, passion and empowerment are key currencies. I discuss the intricate interplay between monetary and affective currencies as well as political implications in the context of the Danish welfare. The article contributes by making visible the importance of taking affective matters into account when investigating the complex relationship between politics and psychology.