THE SIGNATURE OF POWER: TOWARDS AN ANALYTICS OF POWER FOR THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

Dansk Sociologforening præsenterer foredrag ved Mitchell Dean.

The Signature of Power expands the analysis of power beyond its current widespread limitation, within sociology and the social sciences, to diverse and localized social relations, found in governance, networks or civil society, and its exclusion or diminution of law, sovereignty, state, and their rituals and symbols. Contrary to this, the idea of a ‘signature of power’ stresses a reversibility between two changing poles: power to and power over, power as capacity and power as right, juridical-sovereignty and economic management, reign and government.  It explores this signature through three perspectives: that of Michel Foucault’s genealogy of power and government, Carl Schmitt’s political theology, and Giorgio Agamben’s theological genealogy of economy and government. It argues that each of them tries and fails to escape the signature of power, but in the process that we learn about the renewal of both the study of power and the social sciences.  This renewal includes a focus, inter alia, on public-ness and publicity, legitimacy, ceremony, acclamation and symbols, and the theological elements of the most rationalized of political and economic forms.

Om Mitchell Dean

Mitchell Dean is Professor of Public Governance at Copenhagen Business School and Professor of Sociology, University of Newcastle, Australia.  He is the author of Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society (Sage, 1999, 2nd revised edition, 2010) and has recently published The Signature of Power (Sage, 2013). He has held the Chair of Sociology at Macquarie University, Sydney, and was Dean of the Division of Society, Culture, Media and Philosophy there between 2002 and 2008. Among his many works is the first national application of governmentality studies, Governing Australia: Studies in Contemporary Rationalities of Government (Cambridge University Press, 1998), co-edited with Barry Hindess, and the monographs Governing Societies (Open University Press, 2007), Critical and Effective Histories (Routledge, 1994) and The Constitution of Poverty (Routledge, 1991).  A new book, State Phobia and Civil Society: the Political Legacy of Michel Foucault, co-authored with Kaspar Villadsen, will be shortly published with Stanford University Press.

Tid: Onsdag d. 17. september 2014, 17-19.

Sted: Center for Sundhed og Samfund, Øster Farimagsgade 5,1014 København K, lokale 2.0.63

På dette link ses adressen og lokalet, som er i bygning 2.

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Gå ind på kortet (3. linie under billedet), bygning 2 er ved indgang “D”. Gå til højre i porten og ind til lokale 63, som ligger i stuen.

Foredraget er gratis og alle er velkomne!