Variations of governmentality across the globe

This contribution explores the different options for governmentality and how it differs across the globe. To demonstrate this, the chapter looks at the spread of resilience-building policies across different European countries as well as how resilience forms part of the system of global governance (or global governmentality). It explores how governmentality takes different forms in different places, but remains dominated by an Anglo-Saxon form that emphasizes the role of the market, the individual, and the importance of adaptive behavior. The argument presented below differs from most poststructuralist approaches to governmentality which tend to emphasize governmentality as a rationality and set of practices while avoiding questions of its material conditions of possibility and the dominance of particular liberal forms of governmentality. This is explored here through the combination of the concept of governmentality and a Gramscian theory of hegemony. An examination of how resilience-building is promoted is used to illustrate variations in governmentality and to show that, despite these differences, global governance (or governmentality) still takes a hegemonic Anglo-Saxon form.