Governing economic life

“(4) Following Michael Foucault, by governmentality I mean a `mentality' formed by an ensemble of `̀ institutions, procedures, analyses and reflections, the calculations and tactics, that allow the exercise of [government]'' (quoted in Miller and Rose, 1990, page 2).”

“Policy-makers seek to encourage citizens to become self-regulating (Miller and Rose 1990).”

“Political rationalities, most simply, are shifting and always contested “procedures for representing and intervening” (Miller and Rose, 1990, p. 7) - particular ways of seeing that privilege specific vocabularies, styles of truth telling and truth tellers (Foucault, 2003, Rose, 1999; Dean, 1999).”

“…boundaries, conditions of existence, typical economic agents, tendencies and counter-tendencies, and a distinctive overall dynamic (Daly 1994; Miller and Rose 1993).7 These imagined economies can be discursively constituted and materially reproduced at different sites, on different scales,…”

“This is based on the idea that governance aims at rendering coherent action possible (cf. Miller and Rose, 1990).”

“Foucault’s notion of governmentality (1991) has given rise to a historically oriented literature emphasizing the productivity of expertise and the centrality of the ‘self’ in contemporary forms of governance (Miller and Rose, 1990; Burchell et al., 1991; Cruikshank, 1999; Rose, 1999).”

“While these experts are independent (or almost independent) of citizen assessment (Miller and Rose, 1990; Power, 1997), they nonetheless can play a key role in influencing political choices without being subject to democratic debate (Everett, 2003).”

“While governmentality is characterised by a belief that ever-new strategies, techniques and technologies can ameliorate society and set problematic conduct in desired directions, government is a “congenitally failing operation” (Miller and Rose, 1990, p. 18).”

“In either case, though, credit scores and other fintech applications are often treated as forms of hyper-individualized and responsibilizing governmentality—as (neo)liberal modes of governing economic activity through the ‘self-regulating capacities of subjects’ (Miller & Rose, 1990).”

“They suggest that through “humble and mundane mechanisms” such as “techniques of notation, computation and calculation” political rationalities become realities (Miller and Rose, 1990).”

“They exercise power over our thought by governing what we see as the truth and how we understand the world, and hence our acting and doing; as such, discourse provides the mechanism for rendering reality amenable to certain kinds of actions (Miller and Rose, 1993).”

“Numbers circulate easily and make possible “government at a distance” (Miller & Rose 1990, p. 9).”

“From this broad perspective governing is a dispersed form of rule that takes place through a wide variety of mechanisms and entities, and which entails a range of diverse logics (Miller and Rose 1990; Paterson and Stripple, 2010).”

“We sought to critically consider where accounting fits into the picture outlined by Crotty: specifically, accounting and its related techniques of notation, computation, calculation, and evaluation as elements of the operation of power and rule in society (Miller and Rose, 1990).”

“…itself felt and visible, the governmentality literature that has emerged in recent years can provide some useful instruments for analysing the connections between ‘local centres’ for power– knowledge and programmes of government (Dean, 1999; Miller & Rose, 1990; Rose, 1999; Rose & Miller, 1992).”

“The subsequent sections scrutinise these neoliberal “dreams and schemes” (Miller & Rose, 1990), and examine how market and audit ideals came to be shifted, translated and reworked.”

“In this case and in others, the examples also illustrate how accounting functions as a technology of surveillance returning information to the centres of calculation (Miller and Rose, 1990; Rose, 1991) and thereby serving as the pre-condition for subsequent interventions.”

“Coupled with the literature on imperialism and colonialism (Fanon, 1963; Said, 1994; Williams and Chrisman, 1994), Neu used the Foucauldian notion of governmentality (Foucault, 1991; Miller and Rose, 1990) to illustrate how accounting operated under the logic of imperialism and enmeshed with colonial administration (N…”

“…understood as governing practices that seek to make visible, governable and thinkable the risks and uncertainties (Miller and O’Leary, 1993; Miller and Rose, 1990; Rose, 1991; Power, 2007) associated with the sustainability programmatic in organisations (DEFRA, 2005; Frame and Cavanagh,…”

“…scholars to better understand the factors that affect the diffusion of IFRS; and, as well, it will help them to understand how accounting can be used to shape, normalize and instrumentalize the conduct, thought, decisions and aspirations of companies (Neu, 2001, quoting Miller & Rose, 1990).”

“Rather than material technologies, what was being scrutinized was the “intellectual technologies” of environmental economics (cf. Miller and Rose, 1990).”

“See, for instance, Rose (1990); Rose & Miller (1992); Cruikshank (1993); Miller & Rose (1990, 1995, 1997); Dean (1992, 1995), O’Malley (1992, 1996), Tait (1995) and the contributions in Burchell et al. (1991).”

“As stressed by Miller and Rose (1990), governmentality studies”

“These function by making the self visible through access to certain forms of self-knowledge and self-mastery, under the imprimatur of experts advocating a happier, more fulfilling life through the application of scientific knowledge and professional skill (Rose, 1996 ; Rose & Miller, 1990 ; Rouse, 2003 ).”

“Miller and Rose (1993) wrote,”

“The study of ‘enterprise culture’ has focused primarily on its effects in promoting a cultural reconstruction of work-based identities (Cameron, 2000a, 2000b; Du Gay, 1996; Fairclough, 1995; Miller and Rose, 1990).”

“This involves capillary networks of power: ‘y an assemblage of networks, authorities, groups, individuals, and institutions [are] enlisted, brought to identify their own desires and aspirations with those of others’ (Miller and Rose, 1990).”

“Miller & Rose (1990) write that experts work at ‘shaping conduct not through compulsion but through the power of truth, the potency of rationality, and the alluring promises of effectivity’ (p. 3).”

“Alternatively, Miller and Rose (1990), from a Foucauldian perspective, talk of a multiplicity of networks through which agents interact, sustained by a shared set of understandings and objectives established through a series of common discourses.”

“When deployed in a workplace setting, data-driven wellbeing technologies, in particular, may also risk lending themselves to heightened surveillance and privacy concerns from increasing workers’ digital visibility, issues about social desirability [75], amplified worker burdens around power asymmetries [89, 125], coer…”

“Theoretically, the “London governmentalists” moved beyond Foucault in their synthesis of ideas drawn from the social studies of science ( Miller and Rose, 1990”

“Liberal governance is understood as a set of rationalities and technologies for governing conduct through practices of subjectification as self-regulation (Miller and Rose 1990).”

“Phenomena need to be translated into information that is stable, mobile, combinable and comparable (Miller and Rose 1990, 7).”

“This was then followed by the introduction of technologies of government such as accounting and information systems that sought to simultaneously return information to imperial centres and to change the habitus of inhabitants in the territories (Miller and Rose, 1990; Neu, 1999; Neu, 2000).”

“This much conventional theories of the state convey (Miller and Rose, 1990; Jessop, 2007; Mann, 2012).”

“They seek to reconfigure and reform specific locales and relations in ways that are thought desirable from a governmental point of view (Miller and Rose 1990).”

“To date, ANT has been applied within accounting research to the understanding of how accounting systems enable “government at a distance” (Miller & Rose, 1990; Miller & Rose, 2008) and “action at a distance” (Robson, 1992; Preston, 2006), the adoption (or otherwise) of a new accounting system in…”

“…might have something to learn about the conduct of political contestation by taking seriously the form of these arguments, and their challenge to the common sense of ‘the left’ (Miller & Rose, 1990; Rose & Miller, 1992; some of the early empirical papers are now collected in Miller & Rose, 2008).”

“…institutional association of specific commercial forms (ventures, markets) with human qualities (risk taking, boldness, selfreliance) (du Gay, 1996; Keat and Abercrombie, 1990; Miller and Rose, 1990; 1992) to create certain largely unquestioned effects (innovation, profit, acquisition, ownership).”

“The concept of governmentality operates on a discursive level and mechanisms of control are internalized by those who are its subjects (Miller & Rose, 1990; Fournier, 1999; Evetts & Dingwall, 2002).”

“At the level of individual professional actors professionalism can be seen as a powerful motivating force of control “at a distance” (Miller and Rose, 1990; Burchell et al., 1991).”

“Whereas in the first part of the twentieth century, individual rights and responsibilities – that become marks of citizenship – were couched in the language of social responsibilities and solidarity with the collective, citizenship in the latter part of the century and on to the present reflects the growing dominance…”