Security, territory, and population

Building on the biopower question he raised in late 1976, Foucault set out to examine the new technologies of power employed in the 18th century. Unlike disciplinary mechanisms, these technologies targeted the population and managed it based on an understanding of its specific rules. Security technologies are inseparable from liberalism, which rationalizes governance through the principle of "laissez-faire."
Foucault's analysis demonstrates the importance of the concept of governmentality. This is why, starting in the fourth lecture, Foucault chose to shift his problem domain to the framework of the history of governmentality. This was a theoretical coup d'état that suddenly changed the course's outlook: no longer a history of security deployments, but a genealogy of the modern Western state, which governed people through various procedures.

2018-11-01

上海人民出版社

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