What is Governmentality

The process of organizing and shaping the behavior of individuals who are subject to powerful institutions (e.g., schools govern students’ behavior; corporations govern employees’ behavior).

The ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analyses and reflections, the calculations and tactics that allow the exercise of this very specific albeit complex form of power, which has as its target populations, as its principal form of knowledge political economy, and as its essential technical means apparatuses of security.

Means the study of power that focuses on governing people’s conduct through positive means. Power is imposed via subtle and indirect methods, practices, procedures or through a network of institutions, to control the social conduct of individuals.

The way in which the state exercises its power to control the population as a whole, while also governing individuals by guiding, shaping and channelling their conduct.