Towards the global social: sociological reflections on governance and risk in the context of the current financial crisis

This article explores the relationship between contemporary forms of governance and risk. International Relations scholarship tends to locate governance within a theoretical framework derived from sovereignty. I suggest that a Foucauldian notion of ‘governmentality’ entails a better understanding of modes of governance, especially in so-called advanced liberal societies. In these societies, a particular form of rationality and a series of invasive techniques render individuals as objectified, classified and calculable things, in turn, making them more amenable to risk-based technologies of control. Via a survey of credit-rating, auditing, insuring and other calculative practices, I examine that ways in which governance operates as a biopolitical technology. This clears the way for thinking about governance in terms of the ‘global social’.