Sorry if any of this is a repeating of what has already been said concerning
the Foucault and rational choice project being discussed on the listserv. I
haven't quite had as much time to read all the posts as I would like.
However, I did read the post describing the project and it strikes me that
their may indeed be some merit to pursuing such a project by drawing on
Foucault's works, especially those dealing with bio-power, the emergence of
the welfare state and bio-politics, liberalism, neo-liberalism, and
"governmentality" (the rubric under which Foucault reformulated some of his
ideas concerning power in modern societies, power-relations, processes of
subjectivization, and critique). There are several resources on this
material that you may find of helpful.
Of course there is the relevant primary source material, which I am sure you
are familiar with. As far as secondary material is concerned I think you
will find the following references helpful for seeing how Foucault's works
have already been put to use in examining contemporary forms of government
and how they produce certain kinds of subjectivity and so on.
Andrew Barry (ed.), Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism,
Neo-Liberalism, and Rationalities of Government
Gordon (ed.), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality
Michtell Dean, Governmentality: Power in Modern Society
Michtell Dean, Critical and Effective Histories: Foucault's Methods and
Historical Sociology
Nikolas Rose, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought
Nikolas Rose, Governing the Soul: Shaping the Private Self
There is other material too, but these would be a good place to start and I
think very helpful in pursuing your research.
Best,
Chris Blakley
On 6/19/02 10:59 AM, "Erik" <jehms@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi Richard,
>
> apart from the literary style (as dry as raw oats), I have serious
> problems with your text.
>
> * You say politics is about assuring welfare, well Foucault would
> laugh his head off and explain that it's about power as Nietzsche
> taught us. Power doesn't assure wellfare, allthough it's the
> illusion of the inhabitants off the city of the Spotted Cow (Die
> bunte Kuh) as Nietzsche described in the Zarathustra. Napoleon
> didn't cross the Berezina, nor Ceasar the Rubicon in search for
> wellfare. If they did they were fools, because staying at home
> would be a far better strategy.
> * Theory is a causal relationship, you say. Absurd: a theory is a
> discursive organised set of signs, hinting at relationships that
> can be causal, be also casual, symbolic, nonsensical, clearifying,
> interpreting, etc. You cannot shine your shoes or cook an egg by
> means of a theory.
> * Causes are not the only way to explain an event. Socrates allready
> made a big ussue out of this. Try to explain what you read here by
> an account of the causal chain that made the words appear before
> your eyes! Try to explain why you think the way you do by
> examening the nervecells that make you think! Explanations have
> antecedents and consequents, see Eco's 'A theory of semiotics'.
> * Groups don't experience a thing, only individuals do.
> * Since Hume and certainly Popper we know that induction never
> reveals a causal relationship.
> * The political actor you describe are ahistorical, Foucault's
> archeology and geneology would be impossible if your paper made
> even the slightest bit of sense.
> * Your description of rational choice in the 6th paragraph
> ('Rational choice is of course the label...') is circular.
> * Discipline is not creating wellfare, as all soldiers and sportsmen
> know, but power.
> * Action is not a gesture as you say, but a strategic set of
> initiatives to achieve whatever one wants.
>
> I hope you don't blame me for being this critical. It's only to help you
> improve your theses. Even if I'm totally wrong it might help you, I hope.
> If you go to the publishers, do'nt forget your whip. ;-)
>
> erik
>
> Richard Levesque wrote:
>
>> Hello ali, hello Jani,
>>
>> Thanks for the references. I will look them up. Meanwhile, I would
>> like to briefly explain why and how I transpose Foucault' concept of
>> productive power into a rational choice context.
>>
>> In rational choice theories, the level of welfare that entities
>> experience is almost always represented and measured according to
>> their resource endowment. More precisely, the level of welfare of
>> entities such as individuals or groups of individuals is usually
>> assumed to be positively related to their wealth.
>>
>> This means most notably that when rational choice theorists study
>> policy processes, they always assume that the only way by which the
>> various policies that emanate from them can have an effect on the
>> level of welfare that entities experience is by either supplementing
>> or depleting their resource endowment.
>>
>> I use Foucault to develop a new way -a new dependant variable- to
>> represent and measure the level of welfare that entities experience.
>> More precisely, instead of representing and measuring the level of
>> welfare that entities experience according to the quantity of
>> resources that they own, I rather represent and measure it according
>> to the extent to which they exercise and submit to power.
>>
>> As far as I can tell, it is Foucault that first made the point that
>> the exercise of power is sought and resisted by entities because of
>> its effects on the level of welfare that they experience. For example,
>> Foucault claimed in Discipline and Punish that:
>>
>> Discipline increases the forces of the body (in economic terms of
>> utility). (Foucault (in Rabinow), 1984: 182)
>>
>> According to Foucault, it is to increase the level of utility that
>> they obtain from particular actions that other entities perform that
>> entities seek to exercise some form of power (of discipline) over the
>> way in which these other entities act. As well, it is by fear of
>> seeing the level of utility that they obtain from particular actions
>> that they themselves perform being reduced that entities resist
>> submitting to forms of power (of discipline) that other entities seek
>> to exercise over them.
>>
>> Thus, what I do in my thesis is that I represent and measure the
>> effects that policies produce on the level of welfare that entities
>> experience by making use of the extent to which entities exercise and
>> submit to power rather than by making use of their resource endowment.
>> I think that by doing so, I will be able to throw a new light on the
>> logic that characterizes the way in which policy processes function
>> and work because the logic by which states may modify the extent to
>> which certain entities exercise and submit to power is, as far as I
>> can tell by the means of my researches, quite different from the logic
>> by which states may modify the way in which resources are allocated
>> among entities.
>>
>> In my thesis, I mainly stress the new results that may be obtained
>> concerning the logic that characterizes the way in policy processes
>> function and work by making use of the extent to which entities
>> exercise and submit to power rather that their resource endowment as a
>> dependent variable to record and measure the welfare effects that are
>> caused by the various policies that emanate from them. The reason why
>> I do that is that the main audience that I target is rational choice
>> theorists.
>>
>> Yet, I believe that my work complements as well Foucault's own work
>> since what I basically do in my thesis is that I highlight the various
>> tactics and strategies that entities may use to either put themselves
>> in a position to exercise some form of power over the way in which
>> other entities act as well as, conversely, the tactics and strategies
>> that entities may use to resist submitting to certain form of powers
>> that other entities wish to exercise over them.
>>
>> This, in my opinion, complements Foucault's own work since what
>> Foucault mostly did in his own work is to study various methods,
>> disciplines and techniques that have been used at different time
>> periods to exercise power. Even though Foucault claimed that there
>> exist tactics and strategies by which the exercise of power can be
>> obtained and resisted, he never really identified what those tactics
>> and strategies are. This, in my opinion, can be done with the help of
>> rational choice methodology since choosing to either exercise or
>> submit to power is, after all, a question of choice.
>>
>> I hope that this clarifies a little how Foucault's ideas concerning
>> the productive aspect of power can be transposed and used in a
>> rational choice context.
>>
>> Richard Levesque
>>
>
>