Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self

Book info: Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self (Hardcover, 352 pages) – Free Association Books, 1999. Language: English.

Governing the Soul is now widely recognized as one of the founding texts in a new approach to analyzing the links between political power, expertise and the self. This governmentality perspective has had important implications for a range of academic disciplines including criminology, political theory, sociology and psychology and has generated much theoretical innovation and empirical investigation. The second edition contains a new introduction, which sets out the methodological and conceptual bases of this approach. Also, a new final chapter has been added that considers some of the implications of recent developments in the government of subjectivity.