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PNS0195

Neoliberal governmentality, and beyond

This course offers PhD students, and other colleagues, an opportunity to do a close reading of how neoliberalism’s ethos of competition has been taken up, and indeed challenged, in government institutions. It will take an interdisciplinary approach, beginning in recent research on neoliberalism as governmentality and be focused on careful individual reading of key texts and collective discussions. It is suitable for students of planning, architecture, rural development, environmental communication and other disciplines concerned with governing everyday life as a biopolitical problem. The course revolves around the political ethos of neoliberal governmentality, and how neoliberal modes of governing are related to present populist projects and what alternatives it enables and forecloses. The course is conducted through the participation in three reading seminars that will be open for all staff members at the department, making it possible for interested scholars to contribute to the discussion based on their expertise.



The course consists of three two-hour seminars held every other week. The seminars focus on a close, contextualizing reading of one full length monograph, paired with a diverse set of journal articles as specified below. For each seminar, the student reads two chapters of the monograph, and additional 1-3 texts selected from a longer list based on their own research interests.

Syllabus and other information


Syllabus

PNS0195 Neoliberal governmentality, and beyond, 3.0 Credits

Subjects

Agricultural History,Environmental Communication,Landscape Architecture,Other Social Science,Rural Development, Landscape Planning

Education cycle

Postgraduate level

Grading scale

Pass / Failed

Prior knowledge

Enrolled as a PhD-student.

Objectives

Upon completion of the course the student should be able to: - account for contemporary debates on neoliberal governmentality, and contrast different perspectives on this issue and their analytical limits. - to critically evaluate political and policy-related implications of particular analytical frameworks in relation to the topics introduced in the readings. - discuss potential scholarly use of the introduced analytical perspectives in their own and each other’s research projects.

Content

This course offers PhD students, and other colleagues, an opportunity to do a close reading of how neoliberalism’s ethos of competition has been taken up, and indeed challenged, in government institutions. It will take an interdisciplinary approach, beginning in recent research on neoliberalism as governmentality and be focused on careful individual reading of key texts and collective discussions. It is suitable for students of planning, architecture, rural development, environmental communication and other disciplines concerned with governing everyday life as a biopolitical problem. The course revolves around the political ethos of neoliberal governmentality, and how neoliberal modes of governing are related to present populist projects and what alternatives it enables and forecloses. The course is conducted through the participation in three reading seminars that will be open for all staff members at the department, making it possible for interested scholars to contribute to the discussion based on their expertise. The course consists of three two-hour seminars held every other week. The seminars focus on a close, contextualizing reading of one full length monograph, paired with a diverse set of journal articles as specified below. For each seminar, the student reads two chapters of the monograph, and additional 1-3 texts selected from a longer list based on their own research interests.

Additional information

The course is given as part of the post-graduate research school ‘Society and Landscape’ at the Department of Urban and Rural Development at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

Responsible department

Department of Urban and Rural Development