Coombe Governmentality

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Canadian Anthropology Society

The Work of Rights at the Limits of GovernmentalityAuthor(s): Rosemary J. CoombeSource: Anthropologica, Vol. 49, No. 2 (2007), pp. 284-289Published by: Canadian Anthropology SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25605365.

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Elders, Fons1974 Human Nature: Justice Versus Power. In ReflexiveWater: The Basic Concerns ofMankind. Fons Elders,ed. Pp. 135-197.New York: Souvenir Press.Foucault,Michel1983 The Subject and Power. In Michel Foucault: BeyondStructuralism and Hermeneutics, Second Edition.Hubert Dreyfuss and Paul Rabinow, eds. Pp. 208226. Chicago: University ofChicago Press.1997 SocietyMust Be Defended. New York: Picador.2000 The Subject and Power. In Power. JamesFaubion, ed.New York: The New Press.2005 Hermeneutics of the Subject. New York: PalgraveMacMillan.

Geertz, Clifford2004 What Is a State if t Is Not a Sovereign? CurrentAnthropology 45:577-592.Trouillot,Michel-Rolph2001 The Anthropology ofthe State intheAge ofGlobalization.Current Anthropology 42:125-138.

The Work ofRights at the Limits ofGovernmentalityRosemary J. Coombe York UniversityThe concept ofgovernmentality isubiquitous in the socialsciences. A recent review essay begins with the assertionthat 'modernity' and 'governmentality' may be two ofthemost overused terms inanthropology today (Warnov2006:369). Governmentality is a concept that informsanthropological approaches to the state (Ferguson andGupta 2002; Hansen and Stepputat 2001; Sharma andGupta 2006), biological and genetic resources and relatedsubjectivitiesCollier 005;SunderRajan 2005;Taussiget al. 2003), citizenship and sovereignty (Ong 2000), colonialism Redfield005;Scott1999; toler1995), and onflicts (Nuitjen 2004), transnational labour migration(Hairong 2003; Rudnyckyj 2004), and the anthropological study ofmodernity itself (Inda 2005; Stoler 2004).Ethnographic studies ofgovernmentality are now foundinfields as diverse as library science and nursing. Emerging studies of development (Watts 2003; Sivaramakrishnan and Agrawal 2003), international institutions (Bebbington et al. 2005; Goldman 2005; Peet 2003), andenvironmental politics (Agrawal 2005a, 2005b; Jasanoffand Martello 2004) coming from sociology, political science, and geography particularly, have also providedopportunities for fruitful interdisciplinary conversationsinwhich anthropologists have been critical interlocutors(Moore2003;Gupta2003).Tania Li points out that understanding governmental intervention as assemblages helps to break down theimage ofgovernment as the preserve of amonolithic state

operating as a singular source ofpower and enables us torecognize the range ofparties involved inattempts to regulate the conditions under which lives are lived (this volume). Indeed, the concept of assemblages?abstractable,mobile, and dynamic forms thatmove across and reconstitute society, culture, and economy?has become crucial to theways inwhich anthropologists have studiedglobalization (Ong and Collier 2005) as a process underconstruction (Perry and Maurer 2003). It has also figuredsignificantly in the anthropological and historical projectof contesting visions of a stable, universal and placeless

modernity seen to unfold in the shadow of Europe'sEnlightenment Moore 003:169). i bypasses this ieldof ethnographic scholarship on governmentality tomakeamore distinctive argument. She suggests that an awareness ofgovernmentality's limits opens up ways to examine governmentality ethnographically, because the relations and processes with which government is concernedinvolve histories, solidarities, and attachments that cannot be reconfigured according to plan (this volume).Exploring the space of the limit requires a consideration of the particularities of conjunctures (Li, this vol

ume)?the appropriate terrain of ethnography. Itwouldbe wrong, however, to understand this focus on limits asurging anthropologists to study themargins rather thanthe centres of power, because the very concept of governmentality renders those spatial metaphors suspect.The idea of the limit, or limits, does suggest a boundary,but it lso marks the achievement ofa point of exhaustion,the beginning of an ongoing lack of capacity, and a pointof refusal. Governmentality has its limits, but so do people and people's limits are notwholly governmentality'sown. Limits are reached infields ofpower and meaning.A focus upon governmentality's limits also helps tocounteract some difficulties that attend many neo-Foucaultian endeavours especially the tendency toward a topdown analytic optic ingovernmentality studies. Despitethe animating premise that power circulates rather thanbeing held or imposed, the study of governmentalitynonetheless tends to ally itselfwith the omniscient viewpoint of the administrator rather thanwith the position ofthose who are subjected. Consideration of governmentality's limitsmay both invite the subaltern to speak andurge us to attend to the conditions under which thosevoices are heard and the tactics characteristic of the politics of the governed. One way inwhich this can be accomplished is through a consideration of the subjects ofgovernment, the forms of person, self, and identity...presupposed by different practices of government andthe statutes, capacities, attributes, and orientations...assumed of thosewho exercise authority.. .and thosewho

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are tobe governed (Dean 1999:32). While governmentalpractices may seek to attach individuals toparticular identities and to encourage particular kinds of experience,they do not necessarily succeed in so doing. As JonathanInda reminds us, for governmentality scholars, then, itis important to look not just at the forms of collective andindividual identity promoted by practices ofgovernment,but also at how particular agents negotiate these forms?at how they embrace, adapt, or refuse them (2005:11).An ethnographic exploration of this dimension of governmentality's limits thus requires an understanding ofthe cultural resources and political tactics available tosocial agents inpractices of articulation.The concept of articulation relies upon processes ofdiscursive mobilization and contingent identification.Anthropologists have found it useful for understandingglobal formations and assemblages of institutions, practices, appartatuses and discourses (Choy 2005). Indeed,Tania Li has provided us with extremely nuanced ethnographic portraits of some instances inwhich indigenousidentities were and were not successfully articulated inIndonesia (Li 2000), exploring the various practical andpolitical factors at work inmaking such claims persuasive. The exploration of such conjunctures, however, alsoneeds to attend to the diversity of scales atwhich suchidentityclaims aremade and the forms ofpolitical scrutinyand persuasion they enable. This is not, emphatically, toseek a field of resistance to a field of power but toconsider how differentforms of struggle take up resourcesafforded by different regimes and discourses of powerand the characteristic subject positions they offer, thecognitive orientations and psychic inclinations they engender, and the new capacities and forms of empowermentthey enable.

Governmentality studies risk becoming rather staticpictures ofparticular regimes ofpower unless they attendto issues ofhistorical sedimentation and historical emergence. This involves a diachronic understanding of theemergence ofnew forms ofknowledge, technics and subjects as well as their encounter with habitual forms ofpractice and historical identification which may restricttheir realms of encompassment. As Li puts it, no space,person, or social configuration is a tabula rasa, a cleanslate awaiting inscription (thisvolume). Despite the general wariness around questions of culture ingovernmentality studies, Iwould suggest that the deployment ofavailable discursive resources such as local understandings of tradition,moral economies of customary practiceand specific beliefs about the nature ofhuman dignity arecrucial to articulate situated senses of injustice, convictions about governmentality's appropriate limits (Edel

man 2005; Sivaramakrishnan 2005), and to express alternative forms ofpolitical aspiration (Appadurai 2004).Li asks us to consider the tense frontier betweengovernmental rationality and the practice of critique (thisvolume). Foucault defined critique in terms of a concernwith not being governed, or at least with not being governed somuch or inparticular ways and as finding pointsof difference or exit from the present? contemporarylimits to present ways of thinking and acting in order togo beyond them (Patton 2005:268). He recognized thehistorical importance of appeals to natural law as settinglimits on government but he never universalized or naturalized the principles appealed to; rather he appears tohave recognized these as historically specific rhetoricalstrategies using available discursive resources inparticular struggles. The vocabulary of right and practices ofrights claims continue to affordnew resources and opportunities for articulations at and of governmentality'slimit(s) and thus spaces ofpolitics, critical insight and possible transformation.

A Foucaultian theory of critique is compatible withappeals to rights once rights are understood not as inherent inuniversal features of human nature or the humancondition but as historical and contingent features ofparticular forms of social life inwhich bodies possess rightsbased upon legitimating social conditions. Anthropologists studying human rights have moved beyond issuesof universalism and relativism to understand rights asever-emergent articulations inwhich locally significantaswell as transnationally validated cultural resources areused to interpret putatively universal entitlements so asto expand the scope ofwhat justice entails and injusticedemands (Merry 2001, 2006; Cowan et al. 2001; Wilson2004). Rights claims are normatively forceful rhetoricalassertions that knit historically available discourses ofrightwith locallymeaningful content in order to have thecapacities ofparticular agents recognized and legitimatedat diverse scales.

The anthropological study of human rights is still inits nfancyWilson 004;Goodale 2006a). Ithas had littleengagement with the concerns of political anthropologygenerally, and less stillwith questions ofgovernmentality.Human rights have international, state, regional, and localprovenance. Enunciated inperformative iterations atmultiple scales, their normative content is continually reinterpreted to express new forms ofgrievance, aspiration,and entitlement. They may be called upon inmovementsof self-determination that demand greater autonomy fromthemodern state and theymay be deployed to subjectthe state itself to new forms of scrutiny, judgment anddiscipline. Rights vocabularies are spread transnation

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ally by so-called non-governmental organizations (NGOs),development institutions, social movements and activistsrepresenting diverse minorities and global causes?interpreted across rhizomatic transnational networks. Theyafford forms of identity andmeans of identification, invitenew forms of coalition building, andmay provide vehiclesto express alternative forms of development and visionsof human improvement at odds with international institutions and developmental states.

Rights are always dialogically engaged with residual,dominant, and emergent fields of power. New programsof government provide the opportunities to assert newkinds of right; given its emphasis upon autonomy andresponsibility, neoliberalism, for example, functionsthrough new forms of empowerment and freedom. Thesespaces of autonomy, however,may also enable older formsof attachment and obligation to assume a new legitimacywhen linked touniversalizing discourses ofmorality. Thiswould accord with Foucault's insight that appeals to newrights or new forms of rightwill always rely upon concepts derived from existing discourses ofmoral or political ight nd

will always be incrementaland experimental. In termsof Foucault's definitionof critique...they will alwaysinvolveworking on the limitsofwhat ispossible to sayand todowithin a givenmilieu, inorder to identifyndassistways inwhich itmight be possible and desirabletogo beyond those limits. [Patton 2005:284]Intersections of neoliberal governmentality and

rights-based struggles suggest promising avenues ofinquiry for ethnographies 'of the limit' that explore thecontinuing tactical polyvalence of discourses of right.The concept of governmentality demands that we gobeyond asking whether neoliberal rationality adequatelyrepresents society, to consider how itoperates as a politics of truth that produces new forms ofknowledge andexpertise togovern new domains of regulation and intervention such as the environmental politics of sustainable development (Harvey 2001; Watts 2002). Asnature and life itself are drawn into the economicdiscourse of efficient resource management, (Lemke2002:56) ecosystem or genetic resources are tapped asforms of information that can yield rents under intellectual property laws that enable new forms of capitalaccumulation.

New environmental regimes, such as those put intoplace to meet state obligations under the Convention onBiological Diversity, affordnew subject positions for thosepositioned to embrace the positions of environmental stewardship they offer.They also attract new investments in

communities that adopt the disciplines of ecosystem management while cultivating traditional environmentalknowledge as a new source of development expertise.These activities may originally have been designed toincorporate so-called local communities embodying traditional lifestylesmore completely into regimes ofmarketcitizenship (Harvey 2001). However, to the extent thatthese subject-positions have been encoded as indigenous and traditional they also invite local communitiesthus subjected to reflect upon their historical practicesand to express their appeals in themoral discourses ofright that global indigenous movements afford them. Ifthe effects of governmental interventions, and theirreception by target populations need to be situated inrelation to themultiple forces configuring the sets ofrelations inwhich government is engaged (Li this volume)then it is necessary to recognize that all forms of government are engaged with discourses, practices and institutions of rights. Rights practices engage one of the fewmoral injunctions the legitimacy ofwhich is still acknowledged internationally (Hristov 2005:89), to justify practices of everyday resistance or outright refusal (Li thisvolume). They are used to target state governments, international economic institutions, and transnational corporations (and to a lesser degree NGOs and communities)as subjects bearing obligations that must be continuallyreinterpreted and reiterated.

Indigenous rights-based movements link identitarian claims to territory and resources inan innovative fashion that often deploys themodern vocabulary of humanrights tomilitate against modern tendencies to divide thehuman world into social, political, economic and culturalrealms (Coombe 2003, 2005). If some scholars celebratethis movement as an innovative form of resistance toneoliberal governmentality (Eudaily 2004; Jung 2004),others criticize it as an ethnicisation of politics dictatedby the needs of neoliberal state economic policies (Gledhill 1997;Watts 2003). More nuanced readings considerthe opportunities afforded bywhat Iwill call indigenousrights places in the spaces ofneoliberal environmental

regimes to articulate distinctive forms of belonging andobligation Escobar 1996,1998,2001,2004;Hale 2005;Perreault 2001,2003a, 2003b; Laurie et al. 2005; McAfee1999). If indigenous rightsmovements encourage peoplesin Southern Africa to represent themselves as isolated,pristine, primitives and to express primordial identitiesand essentialised cultures (forexample see Sylvain 2005),contemporary Latin American indigenous movementshave been described as a new formof cosmopolitanism: away of reclaiming modernity, a way of redefining whatmodernity as a cultural category means andwhat itmeans




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to be modern (Goodale 2006b:646; see also Clark 2005).Not every assertion or activity couched in the vocabularyofrights articulates the space ofgovernmentality's limit;we must be continually attentive to theways inwhichrights achieved entrench their own regimes of governable spaces and subjects.

Exploring the intersection ofrights practices withregimes of governmentality is a promising way foranthropologists to ethnographically explore amulti-sited,multi-scale and intercultural conversation about the conduct of conduct. This conversation is amoral as well as apolitical and legal one. Our ethnographic explorationsneed to remain attentive to the productive capacities ofregimes of power and the distinct forms of subjectivitythey provide as well as the capacities afforded forpeoplethus subjected to engage available resources frommultiple traditions to enable new articulations ofright at governmentality's limits.Rosemary J. Coombe, Canada Research Chair inLaw, Communication, and Culture,Division of ocial Science, YorkUniversity, TEL Building #8007, 88 The Pond Road, Toronto,Ontario,MS J IPS. E-mail: rcoombe@yorkuxa

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Commentaire sur la notion de ?gouvernementalite?proposee par Tania Murray LiMarie-Andree Couillard Universite LavalLe terme tel qu'il est entendu ici renvoie a ce que Meyet(2005:26) appelle la ?governmentality school?, qui s'organise au debut des annees 1990 au Royaume-Uni, notamment autour des travaux de Nicolas Rose. Cette ?ecole?s'interroge sur lesmentalites, les strategies et les techniques par lesquelles nous sommes gouvernes et nous nousgouvernons nous-memes, tout en poursuivant l'engagement politique. La question de la conduite des conduites,la ?droite disposition? des choses et des hommes dansleur rapport a ces choses, est done une occasion de s'adresser au present de maniere critique. Li resume ainsi ce programme: ?to shape human conduct by calculated means?.Cela suppose qu'il faut ?eduquer? a la fois les desirs, leshabitudes, les aspirations, et cetera, visant la population

dans son ensemble, afin d'ameliorer son bien-etre par desmesures correctives. Le texte est stimulant,mais appellequelques commentaires que je resume en trois points :1) la gouvernementalite vise bien la population, mais ellevise aussi les individus; 2) elle permet de montrer comment des sujets sont produits dans des rapports de domination qui impliquent les normes decoulant des savoirsscientifiques; et 3) le potentiel critique de cette approcheest dans l'etude de conjonctures precises, mais etant donnele rapport savoir-pouvoir, 1'analyse des pratiques d'accommodation et de resistance pose probleme.

1)La complexity de la notion de gouvernementalite estbien campee dans l'expose et les citations selectionnees,mais l'auteure ne semble pas en tirer toutes les consequences lorsqu'elle discute de ses limites et explique sonpositionnement. Les effets de la gouvernementalite sontde deux ordres :d'une part, ils entrainent un travail surla population en tant qu'etre vivant dont on doit r6gulerla croissance, la productivity et le bien-etre (le biopouvoir) et, d'autre part, ils supposent une administrationdes corps, des desirs, des habitudes, et cetera, vehiculespar des individus qui sont, de ce fait, les produits et lesrelais du pouvoir (Foucault 1994a: 180). Eauteure privilegie lapopulation; cela se traduit notamment dans leglissement vers la notion de dispositif. Ce positionnement,tout en etant parfaitement legitime, colore sa presentationde la notion de gouvernementalite et les axes d'analysequ'elle privilegie.La population, dans la perspective foucaldienne, c'estd'abord un probleme qui nait dans la conjoncture duXVIIIe siecle et qui permet le ?deblocage? d'un art nouveau du gouvernement qui fera de l'economie une spherepropre, separee de la famille ou elle etait jusque-la cantonnee. La statistique est la technique qui permet ce?deblocage? car grace a elle se constitue l'objet ?population?, qui devient la fin et l'instrument du gouvernement(Foucault 1994b:652). Ceci etant, ?gerer lapopulation veutdire gerer egalement en profondeur, en finesse et dans ledetail? (Foucault 1994b:654), car lesmutations historiquesqui font advenir cet objet exigent aussi que les effets dupouvoir ?circulent? par ?des canaux de plus en plus fins,jusqu'aux individus eux-memes, jusqu'a leur corps, jusqu'a leurs gestes, jusqu'a chacune de leurs performancesquotidiennes? (Foucault 1994c:195). C'est a ce prix quepeuvent etre ?eduques? les desirs, les habitudes et lesaspirations. Presenter la notion de gouvernementalitesans faire reference a la fois a ses effets individualisantset a ses effets totalisants me semble incomplet. Einteretde l'approche foucaldienne, a mon avis, est de faire voircomment on est gouverne dans le faitmeme d'etre individualise et constitue en sujets.


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