Studying the Agency of Being Governed

Description

This edited volume seeks to provide guidance on how we can approach questions of governing and agency—particularly those who endeavour to embark on grounded empirical research— by rendering explicit some key challenges, tensions, dilemmas, and confluences that such endeavours elicit. Indeed, the contributions in this volume reflect the growing tendency in governmentality studies to shift focus to empirically grounded studies. The volume thus explicitly aims to move from theory to practice, and to step back from the more top-down governmentality studies approach to one that examines how one can/does study how relations of power affect lives, experience and agency. This book offers insight into the intricate relations between the workings of governing and (the possibility for) people’s agency on the one hand, and about the possible effects of our attempts to engage in such studies on the other. In numerous ways, and from different starting points, the contributions to this volume provide thoughtful insights into, and creative suggestions for, how to work with the methodological challenges of studying the agency of being governed. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations, global governance and research methods. Cover......Page 1 Half Title......Page 2 Title Page......Page 8 Copyright Page......Page 9 Table of Contents......Page 10 List of contributors......Page 12 Acknowledgements......Page 15 Why this book?......Page 16 Mixing, matching and moving governmentality studies: methodology in focus......Page 19 Studying governmentality? Floundering and flummoxed with Foucault......Page 22 A gap?......Page 23 Addressing and apprehending agency?......Page 25 Methodology: mechanized, mystical maps?......Page 28 Notes......Page 29 References......Page 30 Part I: Theoretical Explorations......Page 34 Introduction......Page 36 Power......Page 37 Technologies of the self......Page 41 Freedom and ‘the agency of being governed’......Page 43 References......Page 47 Introduction......Page 49 The inexistent......Page 50 Dis-identification......Page 53 (Wo)man of the world, reactive and obscure......Page 55 As not......Page 57 The subject’s Stimmung......Page 63 Notes......Page 64 References......Page 65 Part II: Interviews......Page 68 4. Studying provocations: the researcher’s care for what exists......Page 70 References......Page 78 5. Avoiding the ‘killing’ of lives: representations in academia and fiction......Page 79 References......Page 87 6. Institutional validation and the agency of the researcher......Page 89 References......Page 99 7. How to study power and collective agency: social movements and the politics of international development aid......Page 100 Notes......Page 115 References......Page 116 Part III: Empirical confrontations......Page 118 Introduction......Page 120 Reforming the national armed forces (FARDC) in the DRC......Page 121 Methodology revisited......Page 123 Governing the researcher self/the researcher self as governing......Page 136 Notes......Page 138 References......Page 140 Introduction......Page 145 The analytical framework......Page 146 Making claims about effects of power......Page 155 The interview as a process of becoming......Page 159 Concluding comments......Page 161 References......Page 162 Introduction......Page 165 Background: armed close protection officers......Page 166 Theoretical context: agency and the military......Page 167 Thwarted field research: administrators need not apply!......Page 174 Methodological reflections: studying the embodied agency of the governed......Page 175 Discussion: freedom and the seduction of remilitarization......Page 177 Concluding comments......Page 179 References......Page 180 Introduction......Page 182 Developing a theoretical framework: understanding water management as biopolitical......Page 183 Conducting fieldwork......Page 186 Analysing the stories......Page 194 Concluding comments......Page 198 Notes......Page 199 References......Page 200 12. Conclusion......Page 202 Afterword: the art of not being governed so much......Page 206 References......Page 211 Index......Page 212