Abstract
The chapter applies Foucauldian thinking to social movement research. Foucault’s ideas on the limits of thinking and discourse as well as his arguments on governmentality are fruitful contributions. In the current literature on social movements, crucial aspects of the discursive opportunity structure are by and large undefined. Foucault’s theory can be used to specify crucial aspects such as resonance or actors’ discursive constraints. Foucault’s thoughts on governmentality help us to understand the likelihood of protest. On the one hand, governmentality may prevent protest by undermining the legitimacy of social critique. On the other hand, governmentality itself can become a target of protest. The idea of extensive self-control, which is a core part of governmentality, is even part of some movements’ concept of change by individual changes of lifestyles.
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Notes
- 1.
This article was submitted and reviewed in September 2011; more current literature could only be inserted selectively.
- 2.
The first substantive parliamentary debate on women’s suffrage in England took place in May 1867, when women supported by John Stuart Mill insisted that women’s suffrage should become part of the electoral reform agenda (Offen 2000, p. 142). But only in 1919 were British women (over the age of 30) granted the vote (Offen 2000: xxvi).
- 3.
In some cases social movements are able to alter what can be imagined: E.P. Thompson, for instance, although he did not work in a Foucauldian tradition, showed how the concept of the working class was created by the worker’s movement. The idea of such a collective had not previously existed. It was spawned by the expression of common interests (Thompson 1968).
- 4.
Following Ullrich and Keller (2014) we prefer the term “discursive context” over “opportunity structure,” because the latter has a strong strategic bias and is mainly interested in analyzing movement success, while the former notion neutrally covers formative conditions in the discourse movements are embedded in and it allows us to ask all kinds of questions about movement culture, discourse and effects—outcomes and “success” only being two aspects among many.
- 5.
Approaches of this kind limit the context to some selected factors favorable to mobilization. Benford and Snow, for example, list the following aspects as important contextual factors for social movements: “counter framing by movements’ opponents, bystanders, and the media; frame disputes within movements; and the dialectic between frames and events” (Benford and Snow 2000, p. 625). McCammon et al. (2007) speak about legal and traditional gendered discursive opportunity structures to describe aspects of the discursive opportunity structure that were important for the success of the US women’s movement.
- 6.
Some researchers in the field of radical movements, however, stress that radical movements are successful because of their radicalism (Fitzgerald and Rodgers 2000). The degree of radicalism of action and rhetoric versus resonance necessary for success and the definition of success differ in the literature.
- 7.
- 8.
Discourse according to Foucault is a macrostructure in its own right. This contrasts with the concept of ideology, which is basically (though in a dialectic relationship) understood as an expression of an underlying (e.g. economic) structure, which it conceals or interprets from a particularistic perspective. Discourse does not conceal reality—it is reality.
- 9.
It is important to note that Foucault’s analyses concentrated on the governing aspects, while the (post-)Foucauldian governmentality studies increasingly valued the subjectivity aspects, which were part of Foucault’s thinking, but not so much of his thorough analysis.
- 10.
- 11.
To mark the difference from the classic neo-liberalism of the Chicago school and to make clear that the societal changes observed are not a withdrawal of the (welfare) state but an enormous restructuring of state activities, we follow Lessenich’s (2008) recommendation for calling this “neo-social”, although “neo-liberal” is a common attribute in this discourse.
- 12.
We will not focus on governmentality within movements. In our view this runs the risk of overstretching the meaning of the term and weakening its inherent relation to government.
- 13.
Own translation (PU).
- 14.
Governmentality studies’ scope of interest reaches much farther back in history. Foucault analyzed political thought from ancient times and government back to feudal regimes to specify its modern form. Within this field he was particularly interested in the development of liberalism, the development of the policy, the emergence of the reason of state and the newly discovered problem of population. Here we rely more on the post-Foucauldian shape that governmentality studies took from the early nineties, focusing on techniques of governing at a distance and governing the self (Rose et al. 2006, p. 89).
- 15.
- 16.
Foucault describes this liberal rationality as “the inversion of the relationships of the social to the economic” (Foucault 2008, p. 240).
- 17.
Typical examples are the British and German unemployment regulation and healthcare reforms following the activating “rights and responsibilities” paradigm of the Blair/Schröder Manifesto of 1999. Many measures contain disciplinary measures (= negative incentives): cuts and restrictions of services in general and all the more in the case of non-compliance, as well as extensive control mechanisms on the one hand, and activating strategies like rewards for good behavior (= positive incentives), expanding rights of information access, co-determination, further education, training programs, etc. on the other.
- 18.
See, for example, Ullrich (2010) for a more detailed account of the subjectification effects of medical preventionism or Bröckling (2003) on contemporary feedback techniques and how these discourses undermine social critique. See Bröckling (2005) for the general perspective of the enterprising self.
- 19.
- 20.
The same applies for Tullney’s (2010) analysis of the individualizing and protest-hindering effects of workplace surveillance.
- 21.
Such a hypothesis turns our attention to a possible counter-development to Rucht’s and Neidhardt’s (2002) analysis of the “movement society.” While they have strong conceptual and empirical evidence that social movement activities are structurally stabilized on a high level, tendencies that may weaken movements must be taken into consideration, too.
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Baumgarten, B., Ullrich, P. (2016). Discourse, Power, and Governmentality. Social Movement Research with and beyond Foucault. In: Roose, J., Dietz, H. (eds) Social Theory and Social Movements. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-13381-8_2
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