Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2007, volume 25, pages 562 ^ 580
DOI:10.1068/d428t
Governmentality, calculation, territory À
Stuart Elden
International Boundaries Research Unit, Department of Geography, Durham University,
Durham DH1 3LE, England; e-mail:
[email protected]
Received 22 December 2005; in revised form 15 February 2006; published online 23 March 2007
Abstract. In this paper I discuss Foucault's two recently published courses, Sëcuritë, Territoire,
Population and Naissance de la Biopolitique. Foucault notes that he has undertaken a genealogy of
the modern state and its different apparatuses from the perspective of a history of governmental
reason, taking into account society, economy, population, security, and liberty. In the ``Governmentality''
lectureöthe fourth of the first courseöFoucault says that the series of the titleö that is, security,
territory, populationöbecomes ``security, population, government''. In other words, territory is
removed and government appended. And, yet, the issue of territory continually emerges only to be
repeatedly marginalised, eclipsed, and underplayed. A key concern of the course is the politics of
calculation which Foucault discusses through the development of political arithmetic, population
statistics, and political economy. Explicitly challenging Foucault's readings of Machiavelli and the
Peace of Westphalia, I argue that territorial strategies should themselves be read as calculative, with
the same kinds of mechanisms brought to bear on populations applied here too. I therefore discuss
how Foucault's discussions of political economy, the police, and calculation are useful in thinking the
history of the concept of territory.
Introduction
In the course summary to his 1977 ^ 78 Colle©ge de France lectures Sëcuritë, Territoire,
Population, published shortly after their completion, Michel Foucault declared that he
had been concerned with ``the genesis of a political knowledge [savoir] that was to
place at the centre of its concerns the notion of population and the mechanisms
capable of ensuring its regulation'' (2004a, page 373; 1997a, page 67). The shift to a
concern with population is thus explicitly noted as the focus of the course (for an
introduction of this issue see also 1997b, pages 218 ^ 219). In the ``Governmentality''
lecture (1991)öthe fourth of this courseöFoucault says that the series of the titleö
that is, security, territory, populationöbecomes ``security, population, government'':
in other words, territory is removed and government inserted (2004a, page 91; 1991,
page 87).(1)
Indeed, in that very lecture he suggests that the title of the course should have been
not ``security, territory, population'' but, rather, the ``history of `governmentality' ''
(2004a, page 111; 1991, page 102). This thematic is continued in the 1978 ^ 79 course
Naissance de la Biopolitique (2004b, see pages 3, 5). Five months after the end of that
course, in October 1979 at Stanford, Foucault talks of his work in broad overview as
``the rudiments of something I've been working at for the last two years. It's the
historical analysis of what we would call, using an obsolete term, the `art of government' ''
(2000, page 324). It is for this reason, then, that the single lecture ``Governmentality'' has
been so important in the reception and development of Foucault's work (see, for example,
À This paper was delivered at the ``Rethinking Governmentality'' Workshop at the University of
Durham, 12 January 2005, and in somewhat different form at the `Rethinking Foucault, Rethinking
Political Economy' Conference at the University of Leicester on 17 March 2005.
(1) Although I reference the English translation of this lecture, I have modified it to accord with the
French, which is based on the tapes. The English translation is of an Italian version published in
1979.
Governmentality, calculation, territory
563
Barry et al, 1996; Burchell et al, 1991); that these two courses have been so eagerly
anticipated; and that the German translation explicitly promotes them as two volumes
of Geschichte der Gouvernementalita«t (2004c; 2004d).(2)
These courses now provide a great deal of context to the single lecture that has
proved so influential, and, although the reading proposed here does present some of
that information, the key aim of this piece is to ask `what happens to territory'? Why
does `territory' remain only in the course title, and why does `government' get inserted?
Why is the object of government explicitly population? As Foucault asks in the course
summary, does this mean that there is ``a transition from a `territorial state' to a
`population state'?'' ``Certainly not'', he counters, ``what occurred was not a substitution but, rather, a shift of accent and the appearance of new objectives, and hence
of new problems and new techniques.'' To follow this, Foucault takes up the ``notion of
government'' as his ``leading thread'' (2004a, page 373; 1997a, page 67). It is this shift
of accentörather than a substitutionöthat I want to look at here. Why is there a
shift from a state of territory to one of population, or one perhaps from a state
primarily concerned with territory to one concerned with population? Is this shift useful
in terms of a historical narrative, or is it, rather, a shift in Foucault's preoccupations
(see Senellart, 2004, pages 394 ^ 395)?
This question of Foucault's preoccupations is important, for, despite the summary
and its `sans doute pas', it seems evident that Foucault's attention does move. The later
lectures of Sëcuritë, Territoire, Population and almost all those of Naissance de la
Biopolitique are without this emphasis on territory, which suggests not a shift of accent,
but, rather, a substitution. We can find an anticipation of this in a 1977 interview on
`La Sëcuritë et l'Eètat', which is largely a discussion of terrorism in the wake of Klaus
Croissant's extradition. Foucault suggests that the role of the state in its contract or
pact of security with the people has shifted. It has moved from a territorial pact where
it is the guarantor of frontiersö``you will be able to live in peace in your frontiers''ö
to a pact of population: ``you will be guaranteed'' (1994, volume 3, page 385). This
guarantee is from uncertainty, accident, damage, risk, illness, lack of work, tidal wave,
and antisocial behaviour (page 385). While, of course, the second list has a number of
key resonances todayöfrom the issue of insurance and the welfare state or the social
model of Europe, to the wake of the Asian Tsunami and the antisocial behaviour
orders of the Blair governmentösuch a shift is highly dependent on the status of a
state: some states definitely do still have to secure their territory, and some manifestly
take little account of their population (see Luke, 1996).
Rather than pursue the contemporary issues, my reading here suggests that it is
profitable to think about what mechanisms mark the development of the notion of
population as the object of political rule. These mechanisms, these modes of governance, these `new techniques' which go under the rubric of an art of government or
the notion of governmentality, are forms of knowledge tied to particular practices,
exercises of power. They are related to the development of the modern state and its
practices, but also to knowledge of the stateöstatistics. How, then, do these ways of
thinking, these forms of knowledge and their attendant practices affect territory?
(2) As is demonstrated by their simultaneous publication in France, and by this German translation, Sëcuritë, Territoire, Population and Naissance de la Biopolitique are really two halves of an
inquiry. These are unlike any other lecture courses published so far, in that they are not merely
related, but a continuation. Les Anormaux (The abnormals) (1999) and ûIl faut dëfendre la sociëtëý
(Society Must Be defended) (1997b) look at similar relations in the treatment of the sexually
anomalous and of races, and are both workings through of parts of the original plan of the History
of Sexuality, but they are not so clearly intertwined as these. While this is equally the case with the
1982 ^ 83 and 1983 ^ 84 courses on the government of the self and others, and there is a definite
progression to Foucault's work throughout his lectures, we have here something different.
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S Elden
The dispositifs of security
Foucault's concern through both Sëcuritë, Territoire, Population and Naissance de la
Biopolitique is the issue of government. The ``Situation de cours'' by the editor Michel
Senellart (2004) provides some indications of the political situation at the time that the
course was written and political campaigns Foucault was involved in. It shows how
the concerns of the lectures were, of course, not simply historical, in the sense of the
past, but contemporary, present, and political (see also Gordon, 1991, page 6; see, more
generally, Lemke, 1997; Senellart, 1995). In Naissance de la Biopolitique he notes that
there are a range of ways in which government can be understood: as the government
of children, of families, of a house, of souls, of communities (2004b, page 3). In these
two courses the treatment of government is as it is exercised in political sovereignty,
political rule. Other concerns are treated in the subsequent courses, such as the as yet
unpublished 1979 ^ 80 course Du Gouvernement du Vivants. Indeed, in the first lecture
of that course Foucault notes that the theme of government is a bit of a shift from
his previous theme of knowledge ^ power, which he considers to be ``rather tired and
worn out''.(3)
Sëcuritë, Territoire, Population begins with a brief analysis of power and rehearses
Foucault's now familiar contrast between the treatment of lepers and plague victims
which had also been analysed in the Rio lectures on medicine; Les Anormaux ; and
Discipline and Punish (2004a, pages 11 ^ 12). The point is to show how mechanisms shift
from exclusion to inclusion, to sending the victims outside the bounds of the polity, to a
mechanism for spatial partition that allows them to be contained within. He then gives
three examples of apparatuses (dispositifs) of securityötown planning, food shortages,
vaccination campaignsöin order to demonstrate four general traits:
1. the spaces of security;
2. the aleatoryöthe chancy, the risky, the contingent;
3. normalisation as mechanism of security, which he argues is not the same as
disciplinary normalisation;
4. the relation between technologies of security and population, as the moment of the
emergence of the issue of population (2004a, page 13).
Town planning
Foucault's first example is of strategies for town planning as an example of issues of
space (2004a, pages 13 ^ 14). Foucault contends that the spatial distribution (rëpartition)
for sovereignty, discipline, and security is equally important but differently organised
(page 14). The question of circulation, for example, emerges as a particular issue of
concern and requires a rethinking of the territorial state and the commercial state
(page 16).
Until sometime around the 17th century, Foucault claims that the town is a juridical
and administrative place, but is still largely separated from the rest of the state ö
the wider spaces of its territory (2004a, pages 14, 66 ^ 67). The town is an enclosed
and segregated space, and this is not just for military reasons. Foucault offers readings
of the geometric plan of towns (page 15), and particularly the utopian schema
proposed by Alexandre Le Ma|ª tre in Le Mëtropolitëe (page 16), where the relation
between sovereignty and territory is one where the aim is ``to connect the political
effectiveness of sovereignty to a spatial distribution'' (page 16). Foucault notes that
a good sovereign is well placed in the interior of the territory, suggesting that a
``well-policed territory in terms of its obedience to the sovereign is a territory which
has a good spatial organisation [disposition]'' (page 16).
(3)
Lecture of 9 January 1980, cited by Colin Gordon in e-mail of 20 March 2004 to foucault@
lists.village.virginia.edu.
Governmentality, calculation, territory
565
The second case of town planning is the construction of artificial towns in Northern
Europe, on the model of the military camp, with geometric figures and architectural
precision (2004a, pages 17 ^ 18). If Le Ma|ª tre was striving to `capitalise' a territory with a
central town, here it is ``a question of structuring [d'architecturer ] a space. Discipline
is of the order of construction (in a large sense)'' (page 19). This is the town familiar
from other better-known texts of Foucault's, such as Discipline and Punish. ``Discipline
concentrates, centres, encloses'' (page 46).
Inevitably, though, there is a tension between the strictly sovereign state and the
maximal development of the economic (2004a, pages 16 ^ 17), which is a theme that
Foucault explores later in the course in relation to the state's role in the promotion
of interstate competition. Alongside the development of capitalism, issues of the
circulation of people and goods raise a challenge to straightforward ideas of
the segregated town. Rather, the concern becomes one of replacing the city in a wider
``space of circulation'' (page 14). Foucault's third case is that of 18th-century models for
the management of towns, drawing on Pierre Lelie©vre's work on Nantes (1988). The key
question here is circulation (Foucault, 2004a, page 19). Circulation is important in
terms of health and hygieneötwo themes that had been pursued in collaborative
work Foucault had led at the Colle©ge de France in previous years (see Elden,
2006)öand in addition to the issues of surveillance and commerce both within and
between states (2004a, pages 19 ^ 20).
Foucault's overall aim here is to show how ``the sovereign of territory became an
architect of a disciplinary space'', but, in turn, how the architect also became the
regulator of a milieu where he or she did not so much fix the limits and frontiers, or
the sites, but allowed circulation (2004a, page 31). These are the three ösomewhat
crudely epochalöspatial strategies at play in the town. Sovereignty; discipline; security
which find their spatial form in territory and the capital; architecture, hierarchy,
distribution; circulation, events, and the aleatory (2004a, page 22). Foucault had
regularly claimed that discipline was a spatial strategy, but revealingly here he claims
that the way in which these mechanisms of security operate is of a different spatial order.
While discipline operates through the enclosure and circumscription of space, security
requires the opening up and release of spaces, to enable circulation and passage.
Although circulation and passage will require some regulation, this should be minimal.
Discipline is centripetal, while security is centrifugal; discipline seeks to regulate everything while security seeks to regulate as little as possible, and, rather, to enable, as it is,
indeed, laissez faire; discipline is isolating, working on measures of segmentation, while
security seeks to incorporate, and to distribute more widely (2004a, pages 46 ^ 47).
Food scarcity and epidemics
Foucault's next two examples are of food shortages and epidemics, and the strategies
used to deal with them. The first example is not quite the same thing as a famine, and
Foucault uses the term la disette, which is closer to a notion of dearth (2004a, page 32).
It is related to pricing mechanisms, storage, and distribution, but also to the problem of
dealing with the unexpected, the failed harvest. This raises the issue of the aleatory,
something that would be developed in the late work of Louis Althusser as a different
model for materialism (see Holden and Elden, 2005), and what Foucault calls the problem
of the event (2004a, page 32).(4) Foucault contends that the mechanisms utilised to deal
with such issuesöand he spends some time in an analysis of the Physiocratsöconstitute a
dispositif of security rather than a juridico-disciplinary system (page 39).
(4)
This may provide an interesting point of relation to the interest in the notion of the event in
contemporary theory, in particular the work of Alain Badiou. Space precludes a fuller discussion
here.
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S Elden
The second example is also an example of security, rather than of discipline.
Foucault discusses epidemics, particularly that of variola (smallpox) and the mechanism of variolation (inoculation with the virus of smallpox), which has led to more
contemporary vaccination campaigns (2004a, pages 60 ^ 61). In a sense what is taking
place here is a process of normalisation, but Foucault again draws a line between
normalisation in security and disciplinary normalisation. Indeed, one of the key
aspects of his discussion in these opening lectures is to propose an opposition and
draw a distinction between security and discipline, which have both different models
of the management of spatial distributions, and different ways of dealing with the
aleatory and the problem of normalisation (pages 57 ^ 59).
Foucault's three examples of town planning, food scarcity, and epidemics öor ``the
road, grain, contagion'' (2004a, page 65)öare thus outlined, interesting in themselves,
but intended to be illustrative of his four themes (for earlier remarks see 1997b,
pages 216 ^ 218): the spaces of security; the aleatory; normalisation; and the emergence
of issue of population (2004a, page 13). It is clear that whatever Foucault says about
territory he is not suggesting that security is aspatial. Rather, it operates on a different
strategy that requires a sociospatial ordering of resources and the means for their
distribution and circulation. Nonetheless, Foucault contends that the emergence of a
notion of government shows that a new problematic has emerged: ``No longer the
surety of the prince and of his territory, but the security of the population'' (page 67).
Population
The notion of population is important in this period, not only in political thought, but
also in the procedures of government. Foucault argues that population moved from
being the negative of depopulationöthat is, repopulation following an epidemic, a
war, or famine (la disette), where the aim is to ``repopulate a territory that had become
barren [dësert ]'' (2004a, page 69)öto a term in itself. Population is key to other issues,
such as agriculture, manufacture, and the productive force and other forces of the state
(pages 70 ^ 71; on agriculture see also 2004b, pages 145 ^ 146). This is a shift to a new
political technology: the `government of populations'. Populations are not simply the
``sum of individuals inhabiting a territory'' (2004a, page 72), but subject to variance on
a number of factors including climate, materials, commerce and circulation of wealth,
marriage laws, the treatment of girls, rights of primogeniture, the way children are
brought up (pages 72 ^ 73), nature and geography (2004b, page 59). Foucault, therefore,
suggests that his object of analysis is ``the series: mechanisms of securityöpopulationögovernment and the opening of the field that is called politics'' (2004a, page 78).
Three models of governmentality
It is at this point in the course that Foucault delivers the famous lecture on ``Governmentality'': an overture of where his researches are going, rather than a culmination of
analyses already undertaken. In part, Machiavelli is the focus, or more particularly the
focus is on the way in which Machiavelli was received (for a fuller analysis see Holden
and Elden, 2005). For Foucault, Machiavelli trades on a Middle Ages, 16th-century
model, where ``sovereignty is not exercised on things, but above all on a territory and
consequently on the subjects who inhabit it'' (Foucault, 2004a, page 99; 1991, page 93).
In contrast, he then reads Guillaume de la Perrie©re's Miroir Politique, where he notes
that ``you will notice that the definition of government in no way refers to territory.
One governs things'' (2004a, page 99; 1991, page 93). This is a complex of men and
things, of which the qualities of territory might be important, but not in themselves
(2004a, page 99; 1991, page 93). The issue of the qualities of territory will be returned
to below, but the key issue for Foucault is population and its various attributes.
Governmentality, calculation, territory
567
De la Perrie©re is but one of Foucault's examples of the way in which governmental
strategies develop in the second half of the 16th century. This is tied to the progressive
development of the administrative apparatuses of the territorial monarchies, but also to
the invention and refinement of `statistics', ``meaning the science of the state'' (2004a,
pages 104, 107; 1991, pages 96, 99). The calculative mechanisms between statistics are
also crucial to the emergence of the new science of political economy which ``arises out
of the perception of new networks of continuous and multiple relations between
population, territory and wealth'' (2004a, page 109; 1991, page 101). Over time this
can be traced as the transition from an art of government to political science and
from sovereignty to techniques of government, both of which hinge on population
and the birth of political economy (2004a, page 109; 1991, page 101).
Foucault is, however, careful to note that this is not a straightforward linear
development, such as might be assumed from the passage from a society of sovereignty
to a disciplinary society to a society of government. Rather, he proposes a triangle
of sovereignty ^ discipline ^ government (governmental management), whose primary
target is population, whose principle form of knowledge is political economy, and
whose essential mechanism or technical means of operating are apparatuses of security
(2004a, page 111; 1991, page 102). Conceiving of these three `societies' not on a linear
model, but, rather, as a space of political action, allows us to inject historical and
geographical specificity into Foucault's narrative. As geographers have long realised,
Foucault's work needs to be continually contextualised, particularly if we wish his
ideas to travel.(5) Different places and different times might be closer to one node or
another, while we can recognise that this is a generally useful and transferable model of
analysis. Indeed, this is precisely the reason why Foucault suggests that the course title
``security, territory, population'' is replaced with ``history of `governmentality' '' (2004a,
page 111; 1991, page 102).
At the very close of the ``Governmentality'' lecture, Foucault sketches out the
transitions between ``the great forms, the great economies of power in the West'' that
he is concerned with analysing in more historical detail.
``First of all, the state of justice, born in the feudal type of territorial regime which
broadly corresponds to the society of laws öeither customs or written lawsö
involving a whole reciprocal play of obligation and litigation; second, the administrative state, born in the frontier [de type frontalier ] (and no longer feudal)
territoriality of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and corresponding to a society
of regulation and discipline; and finally a governmental state, essentially defined
no longer in terms of its territoriality, of its surface area, but in terms of the mass:
the mass of its population with its volume and density, and indeed also with the
territory over which it is extended, although this figures here only as one among its
component elements. This state of government which bears essentially on population and both refers itself to and makes use of the instrumentation of economic
savoir could be seen as corresponding to a type of society controlled by dispositifs
of security'' (2004a, page 113; 1991, page 104).
This passage bears some close examination. Foucault is interested principally in the
development between the second and third forms of these `economies of power', but
there is an important shift between the first and second forms which is seemingly
underplayed. Foucault recognises that there are two types of state that accord a
privilege to territorialityöthe feudal and the frontier. This is a peculiarly French
(5)
As one of the anonymous referees notes, this was central to some of the more critical concerns
in Philo (1992), and to the engagement with the geographers of Hërodote in the 1970s. The original
interview, Foucault's questions back to the journal, and a range of responses are now collected in
Crampton and Elden (2007).
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S Elden
conception, in that the French state or kingdom was better organised and internally
ordered than most others in Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries. But even here
it was only really in the second half of the 17th century, in the wake of the Peace of
Westphalia and particularly the Treaty of the Pyrenees of 1659, that France started to
fully order its putatively `natural boundaries', in the phrase of Cardinal Richelieu (1961;
see Sahlins, 1989). It is also important to note the language referring to the issue of
populationömass, volume, densityöwhich hints at a mathematical, calculative sense,
but also the way in which this is extended over the territory, raising issues of spatial
distribution as well as hinting at the mathematical determination of space as extension
found in Descartes.
In undertaking this historical analysis, Foucault offers three models of governmentality,
which he also calls the ``governmentalisation of the state'':
1. the archaic model of the Christian pastoral,
2. diplomatic military techniquesöperfected on a European scale after the Treaties of
Westphalia,
3. the police (Foucault, 2004a, pages 111 ^ 112; 1991, page 104).
It is, therefore, at the beginning of the lecture following ``Governmentality'' that the
true historical analysis promised begins: starting here in Sëcuritë, Territoire, Population
but continuing in Naissance de la Biopolitique, and presumably in subsequent, and as
yet unpublished, courses. Before I discuss these three models, it is worth noting two
further things. First, the notion of governmentalisation implies a process, a mode of
transition and becoming rather than a state of being. This allows us to recognise the
further temporal aspect to Foucault's analysis. Second, Foucault's analysis is largely
confined to Western Europe, and often just to France. The geographical specificity is,
therefore, almost entirely lacking.
Pastoral power
Although it will have profound implications for the Western model, the notion of the
pastoral has Eastern origins in Egypt, Assyria, and Mesopotamia, but especially in
Hebrew understandings of the relation between god and man, where the power is over
the flock rather than over the land (Foucault, 2004a, pages 128 ^ 129; 2000, page 300).
The power of the shepherd ``is exercised not so much over a fixed territory as over a
multitude in movement toward a goal'' (2004a, page 373, see also pages 129, 133; 1997a,
page 68). Cruciallyöand this is the point of Foucault's lecture Omnes et Singulatim
from October 1979öthis power is exercised over each individual as much as over the
flock as a whole (2000, page 298). Omnes et Singulatim öall and eachöa mechanism
that is at once totalising and individualising (see Gordon, 1991, page 3).
In distinction to the Greek god who is a ``territorial god; a god intra muros'', within
the walls of the polis, tied to Greek myths of autochthony, the ``Hebrew god is a god
who marches, displaces, wanders'' (Foucault, 2004a, page 129). Foucault contends that
the Hebrew model is almost entirely separate from the Greek polis or Roman imperium
as a model for political power (2004a, page 133), although elements of the pastoral
model can be found in some Greek texts, notably Plato's Statesman and some minor
references in the Critias, Republic, and the Laws (pages 133, 142f ). Although these
analyses anticipate Foucault's later return to Greek and Roman texts with considerably
more nuance, and though there are some interesting asides on the range of other
literature, including Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and Beowulf (2004a, pages 140 ^ 141;
2000, page 304), he suggests there is something quite different in the idea of the
pastor ^ sovereign or shepherd ^ magistrate in Greek texts and the model imported
from the East.
Governmentality, calculation, territory
569
Foucault notes that Paul Veyne's work is important here (Foucault, 2004a,
page 245; Veyne, 1976), as he contends that the pastoral model was introduced into
the West via Christianity, particularly the Christian Church, and through the way
that the Western Roman Empire becomes Christian.(6) Foucault notes that the paradox
is that these `religious' civilisations are both the most creative, conquering, arrogant,
and bloody (2004a, pages 133 ^ 134). More interesting, it seems to me, is why Foucault
is so concerned with the Christian model, and particularly with the transitions in
models of government in the 15th and 16th centuries. The answer is, in part, biographical: the second volume of the History of Sexuality was intended to be on confession
and on the Christian distinction between the body and the flesh, and, indeed, Foucault
had been reading much literature on this topic in anticipation of such a study. The
figures he would have treated thereösuch as Gregory the Great, John Chrysostom,
Saint Cyprian, Jean Cassian, Saint Jerome, Saint Benedict öare analysed here (2004a,
pages 169 ^ 170), and are returned to in the 1979 ^ 80 course Du Gouvernement du Vivants.
As Daniel Defert notes in his chronology in Dits et Eècrits (in Foucault, 1994, volume 1,
page 53), in January 1978 (at the beginning of Sëcuritë, Territoire, Population) Foucault
was working on this second volume. Confession becomes important because of its aim
of the government of souls, what Gregory of Nazianzus called the oikonomia psuchon,
the economy or household of souls (2004a, page 196). The pastorate thus forges the link
to new ways to govern children, family, the domain, and the principality.
And yet, just as in the initial sketches presented in Les Anormaux lectures from
1974 (1999, pages 155 ^ 180), his claims here are sometimes rather vague and general
(for a fuller discussion, see Elden, 2005a). Part of the problem is that he tries to cover a
huge range of time: from the 2nd and 3rd centuries after Christ through to the 18th. He
recognises the changes over this millennia and a half, and explicitly claims that they do
not rest on the same invariant and fixed structural basis (Foucault, 2004a, page 152).
Indeed, he notes that it is ``not a question here, of course, of doing the history of this
pastorate'' (page 153), although he suggests that this is a story that has not adequately
been told. While there are histories of ``ecclesiastical institutions, doctrines, beliefs,
religious representations _ religious practices such as how people confess and take
communion'' (pages 153 ^ 154), there has been much less attention to the techniques
employed, the history of their development, application, successive refining, and so on.
The pastorate is described as the art of arts, the science of sciences ö``techne
technon, episteme epistemon'' (2004a, page 154)öan ``ensemble of techniques and procedures'' (page 196). Foucault uses this to trace a schism in the Church that goes
beyond theology: the ``Western sovereign is Caesar and not Christ; the Eastern Pasteur
is not Caesar, but Christ'' (page 159). The shift from the ``pastoral of souls to political
government of men'' (page 231) is thus a complicated story in political thought, related
to the English Glorious Revolution, and to the Counter-Reformation in Europe more
generally. Governmental practices build on the conduct of the self, of children, and of
the family, and we can see clearly here how this relates to the later work on technologies of self. ``With the sixteenth century we enter into the age of conducts, the age of
direction, the age of governments'' (page 236).
In summary, then, Foucault contends that we a have shift in political rationalities
from ratio pastoralis to ratio gubernatorial to ratio status (2004a, pages 238, 243):
pastoral reason, governmental reason, reason of state (raison d'Eètat). And yet this is
not the only story to be told about the transitions in models of rationality. In a
tantalising digression, Foucault links the French notions of raison and rationalitë to
the Latin ratio (page 293), and hints at the wider transformation of the scientific
(6)
For a valuable note from Senellart on the Foucault ^ Veyne relation see Foucault (2004a,
page 256, note 22), and Defert in Foucault (1994, volume 1, page 53).
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revolution in relation to Kepler, Galileo, and Descartes. There are, therefore, two
principle referential savoirs and techniques of this period: principia naturae and ratio
status öprinciples of nature and reason of state (page 243). Although Foucault
is unsure this divide between nature and the state is entirely tenable, the linkage is
important, for reasons that will be discussed below. But it is important for reasons
other than those Foucault draws from a reading of Giovanni Botero's The Reason of
State, from 1589 (1956). Foucault contends that Botero's work defines ``the state as
strong [ ferme ] domination over people.'' Foucault adds that there is ``no territorial
definition of the state, it is not a territory, it is not a province or a kingdom, it is only
people and a strong domination'' (2004a, page 243). The reason that I think we can
draw a somewhat different conclusion to Foucault is precisely through a reading of
what he suggests this leads to: the Peace of Westphalia. The reason Foucault is so
important to that conclusion is in the potential he opens up for a comparative analysis
of the late-16th-century shifts in two main domainsöpolitics and science.
The Peace of Westphalia and the advent of the police
Why does the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, which ended the Thirty Years War, hold
such a pivotal place in the discussion of Western political history? For the story
international relations likes to tell, this was the moment that states emerged, or, at
least, that the state system came into being. The principle of noninterference in the
internal affairs of the state is also dated from the two treaties that made up the peace.
If the reality of the settlement is, of course, somewhat more complicated, and its
importance is dramatically overstated, it is undoubtedly an important event (see Elden,
2005b; Osiander, 2001; Teschke, 2003). For Foucault the treaties are important not
merely as a result of the notion of reason of state, but also because of to whom reason
of state was applied as a result of the religious break. The power of the Pope in
European affairs was much reduced, and, as Foucault notes, Pius V declared ratio
status as ratio diaboli (Foucault, 2004a, page 247).
In Foucault's analysis the crucial issue is that of the relations between states and
their commercial interrelation (2004a, page 299). He particularly draws on the text
from Bogislav Philipp von Chemnitz, who under the pseudonym of Hippolite a Lapide
wrote a text for the negotiations at Westphalia (von Chemnitz, 1646). The key issue in
the text is the relation between the Empire as a whole and the individual principalities
and free cities that constituted it. In other words, it is an issue of the administration of
the Empire (Foucault, 2004a, page 245). This text, Dissertatio de ratione status in
Imperio nostro Romano-Germanico, was translated into French as ``The interests of
the German princes'' in 1712. What is interesting, contends Foucault, is that the interests of the princes were reasons of stateöthe principalities took on the characteristics
of states, with various clauses in the treaties allowing them to have standing armies,
raise taxes, and enter into alliances without the consent of the Emperor. Von Chemnitz
explicitly drew parallels between the shift in political thought and the shift in mathematics, such as in the work of Galileo. Reason of state is the mechanism by which
states function (2004a, page 246), the means to ``establish, conserve, and augment
a republic'' (page 296). This was the rationale of Cardinal Richelieu and later of
Cardinal Mazarin in France (page 247), and can be seen throughout a period which
stretches from Westphalia to the Seven Years War in the middle of the 18th century,
or even to the Revolutionary Wars (2004b, page 8).
The legacy of Westphalia can thus be seen in two related domains. The first is the
domain of diplomatic strategies, resting upon alliances and armed apparatus, which
seek to preserve a European balance of power, one of the guiding principles of
the treaties of Westphalia (Foucault, 2004a, page 375; 1997a, page 69). This political
Governmentality, calculation, territory
571
technology Foucault describes as a diplomatico-military dispositif (2004a, page 304;
2004b, pages 8, 54). The second domain is the dispositif of the police ``in the use of the
term in this era'' (2004a, pages 304, 320). This is, as is well known, much more than
the uniformed form for the prevention and detection of crime; it is rather, ``the set of
means necessary to make the forces of the State increase from within'' (2004a,
page 375; 1997a, page 69); ``an apparatus which is put in place to make reason of state
function'' (2004a, page 284).
Sustaining the balance of power in Europe, which Foucault suggests was central to
the instructions given to diplomats and ambassadors at Westphalia (2004a, pages 272,
300 ^ 301, 305, 306 ^ 307), led to a number of necessary changes in Europe, including
new marking of frontiers, new division of states, regulating the relations between
Germanic states and the empire, and the demarcation of zones of influence for France,
Sweden, and Austria (page 305). Foucault argues that there was an attendant shift in
strategic priorities, which were no longer tied to accumulation of territory but tied to a
growth of state forces, not to matrimonial alliances or dynasties but to the state's
forces in political and provisional alliances (2004a, page 303; see 2004b, page 11). In
this we can see a transformation in the modality of rule as well as in its object, what
Foucault calls a new theoretical stratum (strate), a new element of political reason, the
force, or strength, of states. The principal object of this new politics is the utilisation
and calculation of forces. Foucault suggests this is when ``politics, political science
encounters the problem of the dynamic'', a term we should think in relation to the
Greek sense of power, or capacity (2004a, page 303).
As Foucault puts it in the course summary:
``And more than the problems of a sovereign's legitimacy over a territory, what will
appear important is the knowledge [connaissance ] and development of the forces of
a State: in a space (European and worldwide [mondial ] at once) of competition
between states, very different from that in which dynastic rivals confront each
other, the major problem is that of a dynamic of the forces and the rational
techniques which enable one to intervene there'' (2004a, pages 374 ^ 375; 1997b,
page 69).
Although Foucault does no more than hint of the importance of Leibniz here, he
recognises that his contribution is more than merely as a philosopher or scientist.
Leibniz is a ``general theoretician of force as much from the historical-political point
of view as from that of physical science'' (Foucault, 2004a, page 304). What is interesting, as a reading of Leibniz's philosophical and political writings (1988; 1989)
together reveals, is that he is concerned with the problematic of balance, not as a
problem of stasis but as one of dynamics (see Senellart's note in Foucault, 2004a,
page 315, note 14; see also Costabel, 1973; Robinet, 1993). As his work for the Duke
of Hanover shows, calculation is not merely a means to address a physical property,
but a political strategy (see Elden, 2005b, page 14).
In the first half of the 17th century the idea of Europe at this stage does not include
Russia, and only fairly ambiguously includes England, which is related to neither
having a role at Westphalia. Indeed, Foucault claims that ``Europe is the means of
forgetting (Germany) the Empire'' (2004a, page 312), a formulation which has parallels
to the 20th-century European project after the Second World War. While not suggesting that there are no distinctions between states, Foucault notes that the transition
following Westphalia is there is no longer a hierarchical system, with the different
states more or less subordinate with the empire at the top, but now, in crude terms,
each sovereign is emperor in his own kingdom (2004a, pages 305 ^ 306). Indeed, one
of the most important texts of Leibniz on this issue, entitled De Jure Suprematus
ac Legationis Principum Germaniae , was published under the satirical pseudonym of
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`Caesarinus Fu«rstenerius', `Prince as emperor', stressing the equivalence of the emperor
and the prince. More generally, the aspiration of a universal peace following the
treaties is reinforced by three instruments: war, diplomacy, and permanent armies.
War is intended to be used judiciously, with a clear sense of why it is being fought,
and used strategically to reinforce the balance of power. Diplomacy is to become an
instrument or tool, with the negotiations in Westphalia as a model, with a congress of
all states involved, and with a system of permanent ambassadors. Europe is seen as a
juridico-political entity in itself, with a system of diplomatic and political security; but
this is underpinned by the third instrument, each state having a permanent military
apparatus of professional soldiers with an infrastructure of fortresses and transport,
and sustained tactical reflection (pages 308 ^ 313).
The other great mechanism of security is the ``political dispositif of the police''
(2004a, page 314). These are the mechanisms or techniques by which a community or
association is regulated by public authority. Republics and polices go together, and
families and monasteries are not police because they lack that public aspect. The police
is a public thing, a res publica, the ensemble of means by which the forces of the state
can grow in maintaining the good order of the state, reliant on calculation and
technique. As is familiar from his other writings, Foucault draws on Turquet de
Mayerne's La monarchie aristodëmocratique from 1611 and Hohenthal's Liber de politia
of 1776. ``Police is what assures the splendour of the state'', it is ``all that gives
ornament, form and splendour to the city'' (page 326). Essentially ``the art of governing and using the police, for Turquet de Mayerne, is the same thing'' (page 326).
Foucault finds similar claims in von Justi's work Grundsa«tze der Policey-Wissenschaft
from 1756, of which he claims that ``the good use of the forces of the state, that is
the object of the police'' (page 321). The first task is to assess the landed property
(territory) of the state, how it is inhabited and who inhabits it, and then goods and
chattels, and the conduct of individuals (Foucault, 2000, page 322). ``Von Justi combines
`statistics' (the description of states) with the art of government. Polizeiwissenschaft is
at once an art of government and a method for the analysis of population living on a
territory'' (page 323).
There are many objectives for the police in maintaining the functioning of a polity.
Foucault outlines the various divisions proposed in the texts under consideration, and,
while there are numerous variations, common themes include: the number of citizens
and how these reflect as a measure of a country's power; enabling the people to live
(issues such as food, agriculture, and markets); the question of health, in terms of both
medicine and also public health, and the administration of a healthy city; overseeing
the activity of people, including religion, mores, public order, and providing mechanisms for the deserving poor; the general upkeep of the city including buildings, public
squares, and roads; and circulation, in the broad sense of the circulation of goods,
people, roads, rivers, and canals (2004a, pages 330 ^ 333, 342). The three apparatuses of
security discussed at the beginning of the course thus are all clearly related to the
problematic of the police. Indeed, at various places in the analysis Foucault explicitly
relates these, suggesting that the problem of grain is a matter for the police, and a
matter of political economy (pages 346f ), and that ``the space of circulation is therefore
a privileged object for the police'' (page 333).
The use of the police to the balance of power is not unrelated. One of the aims of the
police is how it can enable the forces of the state to grow and maintain good order. Within
the new interstate competition, the police helps to make the state competitive, and,
because commerce and monetary circulation between states becomes so important, the
coupling of population ^ wealth is a ``privileged object of the new government _ one
of the conditions of formation of political economy'' (2004a, page 375; 1997a, page 69).
Governmentality, calculation, territory
573
The key objective of concern, therefore, is both population and the continuation of the
population. The police, therefore, ``is the ensemble of interventions and the means
which assure living'' that can be useful to the constitution of the state and the increase
of its forces (2004a, page 334). The key word, the key concern, is political economy
(page 335; see 2004b, pages 15f ). In addition the state system gave the collection of
states the right to watch over the use of the police in each of these states, precisely in
order to preserve the balance of power.
Foucault argues that statistics is a common instrument to both the balance of
power and the police, because both are concerned with the forces and resources
of states, and all the measures of population. ``Statistics is made necessary by the
police; but it is also equally made possible by the police''; ``statistics is the knowledge
of the state over the state, understood as knowledge of the self [savoir de soi ] of
the state, but equally knowledge of other states'' (2004a, page 323; 2004b, page 16).
Statistics is thus the hinge between the two technological ensembles, although this
obviously takes different forms in different states.
The mechanisms of calculation and the problem of territory
In the final lecture of Sëcuritë, Territoire, Population, Foucault suggests that population
is to be understood not as an absolute value but as a relative value (2004a, page 353).
His concern from here is how the notion of police develops into a more modern
political economy, which will be the central theme of the Naissance de la Biopolitique
course. The issue of biopoliticsöfirst explored in the 1974 lectures given in Rio as well
as the last lecture of ûIl faut dëfendre la sociëtëý (1997b) and the first volume of the
History of Sexuality öis tied to the development of measures and statistical techniques.
Biopolitics is the means by which the group of living beings understood as a population is measured in order to be governed, and tied to the political rationality of
liberalism (2004b, page 323; 1997a, page 73; see also 2004a, page 73; on biopower
generally see Lazzarato, 2002). It is calculation (calcul ) rather than an earlier notion
of `wisdom' (sagesse) which is the model for these rationalities: ``calculation of forces,
relations, wealth, elements of force'' (2004b, page 315). These calculative modes are tied
explicitly to advances in rationality more generally, as modes of rationalising and
regulating the art of governing (2004, pages 316 ^ 317, see page 5). He explicitly links
these new developments back to the dispositifs of security outlined at the beginning of
the 1977 ^ 78 course (2004a, page 361). The theme throughout the 1978 ^ 79 course is
thus the use made of the mechanisms of calculation, suggesting, for example, that the
new principle for the ``fabrication of liberty'' is calculation (2004b, pages 66 ^ 67).
Naissance de la Biopolitique, however, contains little on territory, and like Sëcuritë,
Territoire, Population the key theme is population. Aside from the discussions above,
territorial issues are raised in the study of the police in different countries (2004a,
pages 324 ^ 326), but these are rather brief and crude generalisations, examining the
distinction between the fragmented territory of Germany and unified territory of
France. Similarly, Foucault hints at the procedure of the urbanisation of territory
as a model for the police, with the aim to make the territory as a whole a sort of
great city, to order it like a city. The administration conducted by the police is over
space, territory, and population. To police and to urbanise, to town planöpolicer
et urbaniser öare ``the same thing'' (2004a, page 344, see page 354). The point here
though is not that contemporary neoliberalism needs to be understood in terms of
its spaces, although it undoubtedly benefits from such an analysis (see Brenner and
Theodore, 2002). Rather, it is that the period Foucault is analysing as the emergent
moment for population simultaneously sees the appearance of the category of territory
in its modern sense.
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This is not the shift Foucault sees. In his analysis Machiavelli is one of the last
examples of the earlier territorial model, where the relation between the prince and his
territory was key, with the people inhabiting that territory a secondary concern. In the
state of security, however, the governed, the population, become key, with the procedures for their governance the mechanisms under discussion. On this reading the Peace
of Westphalia is not territorial, but is, rather, symptomatic of the shift to what goes on
within the interior of the territory concerning the ``general mass [mass] constituted by
individuals'' (2004a, page 364). Polizeiwissenschaft öthe police sciencesöis developed
as a governmental response to this problem. In these terms civil society, population,
and the nation should not be seen in opposition to the state, because they are the
elements from which the state is born. Foucault, therefore, contends that the modern
state, the ``history of reason of state, the history of governmental ratio, the history of
governmental reason and history of counter-conducts'', cannot be straightforwardly
disassociated (page 365).(7)
Foucault admits that he has not done ``the genealogy of the state itself or the
history of the state'', but, rather, looked at a certain number of issues that can be
brought to bear on particular problems (2004a, page 282). The state, for Foucault, is a
practice, which cannot be disassociated from the ensemble of practices and becomes
a manner of governing (2004a, page 282). Foucault claims that he has undertaken a
genealogy of the modern state and its different apparatuses from the perspective of
a history of governmental reason: society, economy, population, security, liberty
(page 362). This has led him to look at the ``economy, management of the population,
law with the judicial apparatus, respect for liberties, police apparatus, diplomatic
apparatus, military apparatus'' (page 362).
In these lectures he therefore offers a theory not so much of the state as
of governmental reason (2004b, page 93): the macroanalysis after the microphysics of
power he had pursued in earlier works (Senellart, 2004, pages 397 ^ 398; see Foucault,
2004b, page 192; Gordon, 1991, page 4). Foucault suggests that the issue of whether
there is a theory of the state in Marx is for Marxists to decide. But what is lacking, he
contends, is a theory of government. Similarly, Locke was offering not a theory of the
state, but a theory of government, and therefore he claims that the last theory of
the state can be found in Hobbes (Foucault, 2004b, pages 92 ^ 93). Even the Panopticon
was a form of government (page 69). But this analysis is valuable in that we can
understand different types of states öadministrative states, welfare states, bureaucratic
states, fascist states, totalitarian states öthrough their governmental practices (pages
193; 196 ^ 197), an analysis that is broadened beyond the state in the subsequent course
on the government of souls, conscience, and confession and the final two courses on
``The government of self and others''.
Foucault's reading could, of course, be challenged in a number of ways. In a
broadly conceived sketch such as we find in a lecture course, there will inevitably be
points of historical inaccuracy. But my concerns are with the periodisation itself.
Indeed, it is notable that Machiavelli actually does not really talk about territory,
but, instead, relies on an unproblematic sense of terrain or land in a quasi-military
sense. Foucault's reading of Machiavelli's concern as territory (Foucault, 2004a,
page 67) relies on a narrow, statist sense of territory, as do remarks elsewhere in the
course. A careful reading of what Foucault says in the ``Governmentality'' lecture
concerning Machiavelli and de la Perrie©re is, however, instructive. Foucault declares
that ``territory is the fundamental element both in Machiavellian principality and in the
(7)
In the course summary of Naissance de la Biopolitique, Foucault suggests that the state ^ civilsociety couplet is not a historical universal but a ``form of schematisation characteristic of a
particular technology of government'' (2004b, page 325; 1997a, page 75).
Governmentality, calculation, territory
575
juridical sovereignty of the sovereign as defined by the theoreticians and philosophers
of right.'' The fertility of the land, the population density, average wealth, and diligence of
the inhabitants are important, ``but all these elements are mere variables by comparison with territory itself, which is the very foundation of principality and sovereignty.''
In distinction, the tradition of which de la Perrie©re is the exemplar is concerned with
men, the population, but ``in their relations, their links'' with other things. These other
things include measures of the population such as ``wealth, resources, means of
subsistence'', but also, crucially for the argument here, ``the territory of course, within
its frontiers, with its specific qualities, climate, irrigation, fertility, etc'' (2004a, pages
99 ^ 100; 1991, page 93).
In the first case the key element is, Foucault contends, the territory itself. The other
elements of the territory and the relation between it and the population are `mere
variables'. It is the territory which is the ground, the foundation. In the second case,
it is the relations that the population has that are central: not the population in itself
but the population in its relations, by which things can be ordered and controlled. In
this case the `mere variables' take on a central role. Indeed, as Matthew Hannah (2000)
has shown, most forms of statistical knowledge of population require distribution,
which shows territory as a fundamental base. If Foucault is thus overdrawing this
comparison, it does seem that he is onto something quite important in understanding
what precisely the development in the political technique around the 17th century was.
This is that the variables, the measures, become part of the means of political rule,
a central theme within the mechanisms of government. The relational approach takes
territory not as some static terrain but as a vibrant entity, with `its specific qualities'
which too can be measured, and the territory itself isöin a phrase omitted from the
original publication of this lectureö``within its frontiers''.
These two pointsöqualities and frontiersöare worthy of a little more detail. In
terms of the qualities it is notable that a number of the mechanisms and techniques
Foucault outlines in relation to population are simultaneously applied to the territory
itself. Foucault usefully outlines the way in which the necessary knowledge of the
sovereign became the ``connaissance of things more than connaissance of the law'';
hence, this is the era of statistics, because statistics is ``etymologically, the knowledge
[connaissance] of the state, the knowledge of forces and resources which characterise a
state at a given moment'' (2004a, page 280). Although Foucault notes that `statistics' as
a term was first coined in 1749 (page 291, note 61) he makes reference to earlier models
in Francis Baconöwho is explicitly contrasted with Machiavelliöon the ``calculation
of government'' (page 278), and discusses William Petty of the late 17th century as the
founder of political arithmetic (pages 280, 291, note 60; see Petty, 1690). In the work of
other writers, including the Physiocrats, Adam Smith, and Kant, we find a ``new form
of political calculation on an international scale'' (2004b, page 60).
For the Physiocrats, as Foucault declared in the course summary, ``the population is
not simply the sum of subjects who inhabit a territory, a sum that would be the result
of each person's desire to have children or of laws that would promote or discourage
births öit is a variable dependent on a number of factors'' (2004a, page 375; 1997a,
pages 69 ^ 70). These factors include the ``tax system; activity of circulation; and the
distribution of profit.'' But this goes beyond merely a cataloguing, since ``this dependence can be rationally analysed, in such a way that the population appears as
`naturally' dependent on multiple factors that may be artificially alterable'' (pages
375 ^ 376; 1997a, page 70) Indeed, the Physiocrats believe that the sovereign must
derive the axioms of the market in the same way that the geometer does his concerns.
The sovereign must become ``the geometer of the economic domain'' (2004b, page 297).
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S Elden
Foucault argues that this was often developed in smaller states as a means of
understanding their relative situation ösuch as Ireland occupied by England, and the
smaller Germanic states (2004a, page 280). Statistics was initially seen as arcane
imperii, the secrets of power which were not to be divulged (page 281), although they
moved to a more normal and widespread state practice. Measures they were concerned
with include economic measures, taxes, and imports, which constitute an ``ensemble of
technical knowledges which characterise the reality of the state itself '' (page 280).
Alongside ``knowledge of the population, measures of its quantity, mortality and
birth-rate, estimation of different categories of individuals in the state and their
wealth'', there are ``estimates of the virtual resources available to a state; mines, forests
etc'' (page 280). Qualities become something that can be quantified, with the extension
of techniques in how to measure, which was part of the wider scientific development of
this period.(8)
The notion of the qualities of territory provides an important opening toward
future work, which some writers on governmentality have already begun (for example,
Braun, 2000; Hannah, 2000). As Braun notes,
``Few commentators, however, have taken up Foucault's suggestion that one of the
unique aspects of modern forms of political rationality was that the problem of
population and its improvement necessarily brought the state directly into contact
with its territory öand more precisely, with the qualities of this territory'' (2000,
page 12).
There is not the space here to pursue this in detail, but it is worth noting that
Foucault's own analysis in the lecture courses under discussion here provides only
some minor indications toward this work. Foucault says little, for instance, about the
numerous governmental practices of colonial empires but there are some interesting
remarks on the discovery of America, and brief comments on the American Revolution and on the constitution of colonial empires (see 2004a, pages 303f; 2004b,
page 44, pages 57 ^ 58). America provides an excellent example of the mechanisms of
calculation brought to bear on the discovery, demarcation, and mapping of the continent, exemplified by the rectangular land survey of the grid lines of latitude and
longitude used to divide the individual states of the United States by Thomas Jefferson
and others (see Cohen, 1999; Johnston, 1975; Pattison, 1970; Sack, 1986, pages 127 ^ 168).
Edward Gunter's writings and technical instruments that made much of this possible
have been explored in an important recent work (Linklater, 2003). Jefferson's work,
more broadly, from the plans for weights and measures, through a new currency, to the
attempt to derive issues of race mathematically, provides much material for analysis
(see Ellis, 1997; Wills, 2002).
Even in his own native France, Foucault ignores the way in which the legacy of
Westphalia was related to a series of practices of mapping and regulating the French
state within its newly defined boundaries öespecially after the Treaty of Pyrenees noted
above. The work of the engineer Sëbastien le Prestre de Vauban in fortifying the
northeast frontier, alongside his work on a range of topics using statistics, is one aspect
worth studying (see Duffy, 1985; Le Prestre de Vauban, 1933); the four-generational
project of Jean-Dominique Cassini and his son, grandson, and great-grandson on the
measuring and mapping of France through astronomy and surveying at the Paris
Observatory is another (see Cassini, 1693; Godlewska, 1999).(9) Generally there is
much to be said about how the political economy and developments in cartography
(8)
As one of the referees of this paper usefully points out, this relates to claims made by Cosgrove
(1985) about the related developments of humanism and science in the Renaissance. My own claims
about this are developed in other writings. On the territorial aspect, see particularly Elden (2005b).
(9) Foucault briefly mentions Le Prestre de Vauban (Foucault, 1997b, page 152).
Governmentality, calculation, territory
577
were mutually reinforcing disciplines, both dependent on advances in geometry and
mathematics more generally (see, for example, Dockës, 1969; Hadden, 1994; Swetz,
1987).
Towards the beginning of the 18th century, John Harrison was constructing his
series of marine chronometers for the accurate measurement of longitude at sea, which
was, of course, a direct challenge to the use of astronomy. Although Foucault does not
discuss Harrison, he does note the development of a `Law of the Sea' alongside
advances in maritime navigation (2004b, page 58). This ``new form of planetary rationalism, this appearance of a new calculation of the dimensions of the world'' (page 58,
see page 57) is tied to the advances of the worldwide market and the importance of free
maritime circulation'. What is interesting here is how the issue of circulation ösupposedly so important in the supercession of the territorial model within states öbecomes
the reason behind the ordering of the ``seas as a space of free competition'' (2004b,
page 58; on this issue generally see Steinberg, 2001). Indeed, in an anticipation of some
analyses of globalisationöbut which is actually very close to some of Marx's remarks
in the Grundrisse (1973)öFoucault suggests that:
``The analysis of the market proves that on the entire surface of the globe, ultimately,
the multiplication of profits will be done by the spontaneous synthesis of individual
selfishness [la synthe©se spontanëe des ëgo|« smes]. There is no localization, no territoriality, there is no singular amalgamation [regroupement singulier] in the total space
of the market'' (2004b, page 305).(10)
Foucault's thinking of space has been rightly powerful for geographers, for reasons
including his developed sense of a spatial imaginary and his analysis of concrete spatial
practices (for longer discussions see Crampton and Elden, 2007; Elden, 2001; Legg,
2005; Philo, 1992). It is, however, possible to note a shift in his emphasis between the
first and subsequent volumes of the History of Sexuality in terms of his interest in
spatial issues. While there has been much interest in governmentality from geographers, some of whom have taken up Foucault's ideas in revealing and important
ways, what is striking is how territory itself is marginalised in Foucault's own telling
of the story. The analysis and reading here have attempted to show how that is the case.
And yet, in the opening up of this issue of the qualities of territory and the importance
of frontiersönot, I would contend, in themselves, but again in terms of their qualitiesöFoucault is providing an important way to understand the relation between
governmental practices and territory.
Foucault made a valuable link between raison, rationalitë, ratio as political practices
(2004a, page 293) and the rationality of the natural sciences in, for example, Kepler,
Galileo, and Descartes. The emergence of `governmental reason' is related to a ``certain
way of thinking, reasoning, calculating ... what is called, in that era, politics'' (pages
293 ^ 294) and to ``reflecting, reasoning, calculating'' (2004b, page 6) more generally.
This is obviously a longer story than is possible to tell here, but it is revealing to trace
the way in which they interrelate. As Foucault claims, politics in this sense was to ``the
art of governing as mathesis was, in the same epoch, to science and nature'' (2004a,
page 294). Politics can be understood as mathesis öwhat is learnable, what is perceivable, the basis for later understanding of the mathematicalöas the ``rational form of
the art of governing'' (page 295; see Elden, 2002, pages 135 ^ 138).
(10) Of Marx's remarks, see especially the claim that ``capital must on one side strive to tear down
every spatial barrier to intercourse, i.e. to exchange, and conquer the whole earth for its market,
it strives on the other side to annihilate this space with time, i.e. to reduce to a minimum the time
spent in motion from one place to another'' (1973, page 539).
578
S Elden
Speaking of the end of the Thirty Years War, Foucault's colleague Pasquale Pasquino
suggested that the Holy Roman Empireöthe formless `monster' in the eyes of police
theoristsöbegins to have regulation applied to it.
``This no man's land is beginning to be perceived as an open space traversed by men
and things. Squares, markets, roads, bridges, rivers: these are the critical points in
the territory which police will mark out and control'' (1991, page 111, see also
page 113).
We can therefore read the strategies applied to territoryöin terms of its mapping,
ordering, measuring, and demarcation, and the way it is normalised, circulation
allowed, and internally regulatedöas themselves calculative. The same kinds of mechanisms that Foucault looks at in relation to population are used to understand and
control territory. Foucault's discussions of political economy, the police, and calculation are therefore useful in thinking the history of the concept of territory. To return to
the formulations at the outset of Sëcuritë, Territoire, Population, there is neither a shift
of accent nor a substitution, but, rather, in the era of security both territory and
population are understood in a transformed sense. Indeed, we could make the claim
that the categories of `population' and `territory' themselves only really emerge at this
political juncture. Just as the people become understood as both discrete individuals
and their aggregated whole, the land they inhabit is also something that is understood
in terms of its geometric, rational properties, or `qualities'. Territory is more than
merely land, but a rendering of the emergent concept of `space' as a political category:
owned, distributed, mapped, calculated, bordered, and controlled. Foucault's notion of
the politics of calculation is therefore crucial, but not as something which only manifests itself in population, but, rather, in territory too. The same kinds of mechanisms
can be found in both, at root grounded in the relation between governmentality and
calculation.
Acknowledgements. I am grateful to audiences in Durham and Leicester for their responses, and to
Steve Legg, Jeremy Crampton, and Matthew Hannah for their comments on the written paper.
Three critically generous referees for this journal helped with fine-tuning the paper to its current
form.
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