1. Exploring governmentality: The politics and rationalities of global mental health policy.
- Author
-
Edquist, Kristin
- Subjects
- *
SOCIOLOGY , *INTERNATIONAL relations , *POWER (Social sciences) , *MENTAL health , *MENTAL health laws , *EATING disorders , *DIAGNOSIS - Abstract
Literature on governance recently has come under critique in both sociology and international relations, with governmentality proposed as an alternative. The argument is that governmentality reflects more aptly the power and "rationalities" involved in governing processes. This article argues that while the governmentality approach does access better the content and "mentalities" of governing processes, including global-level processes, it needs to acknowledge and theorize the gradations of eligibility for objectifying (achieving and enacting) government. Some types of "civil society" members and nonstate actors are better positioned to achieve the status of simultaneous object and subject of government-others, largely, remain subjects, depending on their positions within professional hierarchies and locations within inter-state power dynamics. Some nonstate actors are positioned better to define governmentality's content, and even manage the terms under which they themselves, as well as others, are produced as citizen-subjects. In our examinations of the mechanisms of power in governing processes, we need to consider nonstate actors' positions in global social contexts. The paper examines the global governance of mental health as a heuristic case-study, with special attention to processes of diagnosing eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, in which the standard diagnostic code is spreading globally even though its recommended treatments are not working. The case illustrates that within governmentality processes, some actors remain decidedly more subjects than objects. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2007