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The South African government monitors and tracks the health of newborns and the growth of children. The Department of Health (DoH) does this monitoring using the Road to Health Booklet (RtHB). In this dissertation I analyse the use of the booklet in the township of Masiphumelele in Cape Town. The state produced booklet is intended for the child and mother as a patient-held medical health record. Liaw (1993) defines a patient-held record as notes or space provided on a document for the recording of follow up appointments for further investigation by medical doctors. The RtHB is used to record the child’s development, immunisations and HIV related information from birth to the age of twelve years. The dissertation results from ethnographic research with eight black Xhosa1 mothers and caregivers with children under the age of five years old. Mosley, and Chen, (1984), argue that in developing countries where standard child healthcare has been made available, children should survive the first five years of life. In my research, during the period of six weeks between July, August and September 2017, I followed the booklet in to Masiphumelele. From my observation and semi-structured interviews, looking at the state’s role of ‘pastoral’ care, child wellbeing and living in a township, and recording, under the theme of child wellbeing, certain concepts emerged. These concepts were state power, mothering, caring for children, responsibilisation, gender, kinship, fatherhood, child wellbeing knowledge production, social networking. In this dissertation I use ethnographic findings, accompanied by my own personal narratives. I argue that tracking child wellbeing through this booklet, the state exercises what Foucault (1982) referred to as ‘pastoral power’ in ensuring the wellbeing of the populations.

Debatten kring vaccin och dess vara eller icke-vara har under årtionden brunnit med en stabil låga men tycks ha blossat upp under den rådande pandemin. Debatten i svensk dagspress utförs på olika plattformar men tycks ändå skapa två läger, ett läger som anser att vaccin är självklart och ett läger som anser att det inte är det. I relation till dessa två läger strävar denna uppsats efter att undersöka hur individer som inte anser att vaccin är självklart framställs i svensk dagspress och hur dessa individer inom ramen för denna framställning hanteras.   Detta har undersökts med en foucauldiansk diskursanalys där ett 50-tal artiklar från svensk dagspress har bearbetats. Empirin har lokaliserats från Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Dalademokraten, Expressen och Svenska Dagbladet inriktat på perioden 2017–2021. Analysen visar att media samspelar med den samhällsbärande vaccindiskursen som konstruerar vaccin som samhällets räddning. Inom denna diskurs konstrueras tre olika subjektspositioner som tilldelas vaccinkritiker - samhällsfaran, naiv fanatiker och dålig förälder. Genom denna framställning blir det tydligt hur media kan utöva makt och styrning riktad dels mot populationen genom den normativa styrningens makt, dels mot andra samhälleliga maktapparater till följd av styrningen genom opinionsbildning.

This text offers an analysis of the power apparatuses (dispositifs) employed in the management of the early 21st century Covid-19 pandemic. The paper is divided into two sections. The first part is oriented both towards a charac- terization of the mode of government that preceded the onset of the viral disease and towards an exposition of the power apparatuses it instrumentalized. This mode of go- vernment is referred to in the text as «capitalistic gover- mentality», a practice combining regimes of knowledge, economically encoded materialities, subjective formations and power apparatuses in order to maintain the valorization of private capital. The second part exposes the ways in which the apparatuses of capitalistic governmentality are modified and articulated in the context of the pandemic, through a phenomen given the provisional name of «viropolitics».

There has been a rising concern surrounding risk within society. This increasing concern has dominated almost all aspects of human life and more specifically the way in which citizens are governed. How risk is addressed in general has shifted significantly; given this, the criminal justice system has also seen an escalation in concerns surrounding risk. Subsequently, there has been a push towards evaluating said risks through the use of actuarial assessment tools. Research has shown that with the rising reliance on actuarial assessment tools came the decrease in practitioner’s ability to rely on their professional judgement when conducting their work. However, there has been a gap identified in the literature. This gap pertains to how practitioners, particularly, probation officers perceive the impact of these actuarial tools on their work. This study aims to analyse how probation officers, within the province of Ontario, view the impact of actuarial assessment tools on their work. This study is guided by the theory of governmentality, as coined by Michel Foucault. In order to explore the impact of actuarial assessment tools on the practice of probation, seven semi-structured interviews were conducted with former probation officers. The perceptions varied and participants did not provide a unique and monolithic response; rather, the voices of all participants were shared to create a larger picture of how actuarial assessment tools impact the work of practitioners in the practice of probation.

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Syftet med studien har varit att analysera valda delar av SOU:er för att undersöka hur fritidshemmets kompletterande uppdrag i relation till skolan konstrueras över tid samt för att urskilja governmentality i styrningen av fritidshemmet. Analysmetoden som använts i studien är en diskursanalys inspirerad av Foucault. Resultatet visar att diskursen kring det kompletterande uppdraget har förändrats genom åren och att uppdraget har gått från att vara omsorg och erbjuda fritidssysselsättningar för barn och ungdomar efter skoltid, till att bli ett komplement till lärandet inom skolan, och ge eleverna en meningsfull fritid med en kombination av lustfullhet och lärande. Resultatet av studien visar att talet om fritidshemmets kompletterande uppdrag har förändrats över tid, att diskursen ständigt har omvandlats. Fritidsdiskursens gränser har vidgats och intagit en ny sorts hybriddiskurs som inbegriper både utbildning/lärande och omsorg/fritid.

This thesis identifies changes in the meaning of “security”—that is, the conditions characterizing “the good life”—among millennials in postrecessional neoliberal states. The Great Recession of 2007–2009 affected everyday life by deepening wealth inequalities and normalizing downward mobility; however, no work has been done on how popular understandings of “the good life” are shifting in the wake of the recession or what conditions are driving such changes in common sense. In response to this gap, this thesis unpacks millennial expressions of security in Ireland, the United States, and Canada to uncover long-standing senses of security eroding among millennials, the ways in which postrecessional neoliberal governmentality is shattering these ideals, and emerging alternative understandings of security. In Ireland, I find that expansionary monetary policy—a regulatory technology of neoliberal governmentality—is preventing millennials from securing themselves through enriching property ownership and giving rise to a sense that security may instead be rooted in minimizing deprivation. In the United States, millennial expressions suggest that a technology of the self that I call “branding with goals” is frustrating the idea that security means making oneself legible as a popularly affirmed kind of subject; in its wake, security emerges with exploration and pleasure. In Canada, popular pedagogies in universities—disciplinary technologies—are shaking a sense that security can be achieved by completing a university degree to become in-demand human capital; this failure makes room for pedagogies that teach students to dwell with conflict and uncertainty. Together, these findings evidence that postrecessional governmentality is corroding senses of “security” rooted in the liberal ideal of self-determination and suggest that “security” may alternatively be caught up with a sense of collective, if differential, vulnerability. Broadly, this thesis contributes to critical theory by offering novel insights on postrecessional regulatory ideals and governmentality in neoliberal polities. / Thesis / Candidate in Philosophy / The Great Recession impacted significant trends, such as the distribution of wealth and fertility rates, especially among the millennial generation. This thesis explores how the meaning of security is changing in and for millennials in English-speaking, Western neoliberal cultures amidst these shifts in everyday life and the forces responsible for these changes. Specifically, the thesis conducts this exploration by performing case studies of postrecessional expressions of “insecurity” in three neoliberal states: Ireland, the United States, and Canada. I argue that understandings of “security” as a state of being that can be realized by acquiring property, being legible to others, and becoming an in-demand worker are faltering as neoliberal norms make it increasingly difficult for younger adults to realize these ideals. Notably, these collapsing conceptions of “security” are rooted in liberalism’s driving ideal of self-determination; accordingly, the study suggests that neoliberalism may be frustrating the viability of liberalism’s historic promise.

During the last decade governments and international organizations have taken multipleactions to combat money laundering. Despite this, anti-money laundering policies have haddubious effects. This paper investigates efforts to combat money laundering from theFoucauldian ideas of governmentality. By investigating Sweden’s efforts to fight moneylaundering the paper sheds light on the different problematizations, rationalities, identityformations, techniques, and mechanisms that can be found in Sweden’s anti-moneylaundering regime. By focusing on the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority, the CountyAdministrative Board and private actors this paper provides insights into how the regimegoverns through knowledge-based technologies of government and risk-based rationality.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how Swedish drug policy is problematized. In order to accomplish that this study investigates the directives to what is said to be the most comprehensive investigation in the field of drugs in several decades. Narcotics, like other policy areas, are based on a problematization of identified problems in society. According to the policy, drugs generate a breeding ground for inequalities in the health of the population and consumption therefore needs to be prevented and treated. Furthermore, it is specifically the problematization that establishes and legitimizes the policy's action and decision-making. This study draws upon Bacchi (2017, 3) who questions the use of the concept of problems as objective in alcohol and drug studies and theory, one should rather focus on problematizations. Further, Bacchi (2017, 5) believes that the traditional understanding of politics as a reaction can be replaced by an understanding that politics establishes and constitutes problems with inherent causes and effects. This Bacchi-approach is used in previous studies to, among other things, question deep-rooted assumptions and display how people-categorizations enables subtle disciplinary mechanisms that govern the categorized. The focus of the analysis is on the 10 central points of the directive, and I conclude that politicians emphasizes that narcotics in themselves are the considered factor in the categorization of people. According to the Committee Directive, it can thus be stated that narcotics is still the most central of the problems. An unproblematized phenomenon I identify is this conceptual use of the umbrella concept of narcotics. That is, the umbrella concept generates a binary categorical aggregation and irresponsible representation that controls the subjects through their categorization. Through the dogmatic moral understanding of narcotics as something self-evidently bad, specific types of handling are both limited and forced. It is not necessarily the substances that are the problem, it could also be people's meaningless existence that leads to abuse and overconsumption. Further the users become excluded from the group “normal” and gets retitled in terms of “addicts”, “criminals” and the “sick”. Specifically, the constitution of narcotics as self-evidently bad produces lived effects for the user such as stigma, exclusion, marginalization among other things. In the study I identify two perspectives, one that frames drug use as a health problem and one that frames it as a criminal act. Further I notice that Swedish drug policy is on a balance scale of these perspectives with its feet on each side in the hope of not tipping over. One side generates a policy of high death rates and the other an irreversible moral shift in a more neutral form.