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Centre for Research on Social Inclusion
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Professor Mitchell Dean
BA (Hons), PhD NSW
Professor of Sociology
Research Professor, CRSI
Academic Director, Participation
| Email: | Mitchell.Dean@mq.edu.au |
|---|---|
| Phone: | +61 (0)2 9850 8703 |
| Fax: | +61 (0)2 9850 9559 |
| Office: | C5C 375 |
Background
As well as a researcher in CRSI, I am currently engaged in the University-wide academic oversight of Macquarie’s participation programs and its relationship with Australian Volunteers International. I have recently finished two terms as Dean of the Division of Society, Culture, Media and Philosophy at Macquarie (2003-8). During that time, I was founder member and chair of the management board of the CRSI. I have taught sociology at six Australian universities including Macquarie (1991-2001) and at the Copenhagen Business School where I was Research Professor in the Department of Management, Philosophy and Politics (2002-3). I have held Visiting Fellowships at the Australian National University, Birkbeck College, London, and Goldsmiths College, London, and have been a consultant author for the Sociology course for the Open University UK.
My work has been translated into Danish, German, and Finnish. Among the Universities and Institutes to which I have been invited are the Open University, the National University of Ireland, Sciences Po, Paris, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the State University of New York, Buffalo, Monash University, Roskilde University, and the Universities of Auckland, Aarhus, Copenhagen, Jyvaskyla, Leipzig, Linkoping, Queensland, Tampere, and Victoria (Canada).
Research Interests
My areas of speciality are political and historical sociology, critical social and political theory, and governing in liberal democracies. I have written on the history of discourses and government of poverty, and on theory and method in historical sociology. These are represented respectively by my books, The Constitution of Poverty and Critical and Effective Histories both published by Routledge.
My book on Governmentality is probably the standard text in the field. It is now in its fifth reprint after nine years and is very widely cited. I am currently working on a second, updated edition for SAGE publications. It is one of the two English-language works cited in the afterword of the recent publication of Michel Foucault’s lectures on the topic, and has received the benefit of an excellent Danish translation by Kaspar Villadsen.
With Barry Hindess of the Australian National University I have edited the only country-specific application of governmentality studies entitled Governing Australia (Cambridge University Press). I have also edited a special issue of the journal, Alternatives: global, local, political with Paul Henman of the University of Queensland called ‘Governing Society Today’ and contribute as a referee to many journals across the social and political sciences. With Dr Henman, I was a chief investigator on an Australian Research Council Discovery project on e-government, citizenship and public policy.
My more recent research areas include sovereignty, liberalism and government, I have written on states of exception, sovereignty and violence, liberal authoritarianism, international police and problems of the international order. These topics are addressed in my latest book, Governing Societies: political perspectives on domestic and international rule (Open University Press). My work has of course been most influenced by the problematics of Michel Foucault, but more recently I have undertaken critical readings of contemporary thinkers as diverse as Ulrich Beck, Hardt and Negri, and Giorgio Agamben and of contemporary social and political thought on individualisation, cosmopolitanism and globalization.
I am on the Advisory Board of the Journal of Cultural Economy, the Journal of International Political Sociology, the Journal of Power, Scan: Journal of Media Arts and Culture and Macquarie Law Journal. I am on the editorial board of Distinktion: Scandanavian Journal of Social Theory.
I have supervised and examined many research theses. Recent research theses supervised include topics such as governing women on release from prison, the genealogy of child protection, property law and governance in rural Australia, criminality and electoral disqualifications, Malaysian modernization plans, and public policy and remote Indigenous communities.
Current Research Projects
The idea of social inclusion and contemporary liberal rule: this project investigates how certain contemporary liberal forms of rule might seek to govern through inclusion and the activation of individual capacities and the relationship between such inclusive practices of rule and forms of domination and subordination (e.g. in social welfare, Indigenous policy, etc.).
Risk, neoliberalism, and the crisis of governing: this project is concerned with the changing rationalities and technologies of risk and whether and how these might have entailed crises of neoliberal governing whether in the ‘war on terror’ post 9/11 or the credit crisis of 2008-9.
Revising ‘governmentality’ frameworks: project is evidenced by much of the recent work below but specific focus is revising the text on Governmentality to incorporate sections on international governmentality and to reflect on the development of ‘governmentality studies’.
Concepts of power including different concepts of bio-politics or the politics of life project concerns the post-Foucauldian conceptions of different forms of power and the development of concepts and methods which allow us to understand multiple and overlapping forms of power in specific regimes of government.
Frameworks of international government and state sovereignty: following above, this is an attempt to understand the entwinement of the domestic and the international, governmentality and sovereignty, with reference to the post 9/11 world order and discourses of globalization and cosmopolitanism.
Major Publications
Books (single-authored)
2009. Governmentality. 2nd Edition, Sage: London, in preparation.
2007. Governing Societies: Political Perspectives on Domestic and International Rule. Open University Press/McGraw Hill.
1999. Governmentality: power and rule in modern societies. London: Sage.
(Translated into Danish as Governmentality: Magt & Styring i det Moderne Samfund, Forlaget Samfundslitteratur, Frederiksberg DK, pbk, 344 pages, 2006.)
1994. Critical and Effective Histories; Foucault’s methods and historical sociology. London: Routledge.
1991. The Constitution of Poverty; towards a genealogy of liberal governance. London: Routledge.
Books (co-edited)
1998. (ed. with B. Hindess) Governing Australia: studies in rationalities of government. Reshaping Australian Institutions series, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pbk, 275 pages.
Special issue of Journal (co-edited)
2004. 'Governing society today', with P. Henman, Alternatives: global local, political, 29 (5).
Recent journal articles
2009. 'Power are the heart of the present', European Journal of Cultural Studies, forthcoming.
2008. 'Governing Societies: the story of two monsters', Journal of Cultural Economy 1 (1): 25-38.
2006. 'The political mythology of world order', Theory, Culture and Society, 23 (5): 1-21.
2004. (with Paul Henman) 'Governing society today; editors’ introduction', Alternatives: global local, political, 29 (5): 483-494.
2004. 'Four theses on the powers of life and death', Contretemps 5: 16-29
2003. 'Empire and governmentality', Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory, 6: 111-122.
2002. 'Liberal government and authoritarianism', Economy and Society 31 (1): 37-61.
2002. 'Powers of life and death beyond governmentality', Cultural Values: journal of cultural research 6 (1): 119-138.
2002 (with P. Henman) ‘E-government: transformations in modes of rule?, Innovation Enterprise, 4 (1): 5-11.
Recent book chapters
2009. ‘Three conceptions of the relationship between power and liberty’, in S. Clegg and M. Haugaard (eds) The SAGE Handbook of Power, Sage, London, pp. 175-193.
2007. ‘Governing the unemployed self in an active society’, in R. Vij (ed.) Globalization and Welfare. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
2006. ‘Military intervention as “police” action?, in M. Dubber and M. Valverde (eds) The New Police Science: the Police Power in Domestic and International Governance. Stanford University Press.
2004. ‘Nomos and the politics of world order’, in W. Larner and W. Walters (ed.) Global Governmentality. London: Sage.
2003. ‘Culture governance and individualisation’, in H. Bang (ed.) Governance as social and political communication. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
2002. ‘Prologue to a genealogy of war and peace’, in E. Isin and G. Delanty (eds) Handbook of Historical Sociology, London: Sage, pp. 180-190.
2002. ‘The Regulation of the Self’, in T. Jordan and S. Pile (eds.) Social Change (Sociology and Society). Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 229-257.