Answer one question. Essays should be 4,000 words (including bibliography. Word count may be no more than 400 words either side of this target length).
The purpose of this assessment is to let you explore the ideas and texts from the module, and put some of them to use in a way you find interesting. If there is some aspect of the course that you are particularly keen to write about, but which you don’t feel fits any of these questions, please email me ( w.davies@gold.ac.uk ) and explain a bit about what you’d like to cover, and we can agree a different essay question.
You are not permitted to create your own essay question without contacting me first, and essays that do so will be marked a Fail.
1. Why are numbers and measurement so important to the practices of liberal government?
2. What role have economists and economics played in delineating the spheres of ‘the market’ and ‘the economy’?
3. What is the significance of the Panopticon and ‘panopticism’ to Foucault’s understanding of discipline?
4. In what sense can power be thought of as ‘productive’, as opposed to ‘repressive’?
5. Why have neoliberals placed so much value upon entrepreneurship?
6. What are the implications of viewing politics via the perspective on ‘population’?
7. Why are the ‘psych’ sciences (psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis) so important for the governing of liberal societies?
8. How does the rise of ‘real-time’, digital data transform liberal government?
9. How does the distinction between ‘sovereignty’ and ‘government’ help us understand politics and power today?
10. What did Foucault mean by ‘governmentality’?
11. What role has the measurement of pleasure and/or happiness played in the history of liberal government?
NB you are encouraged to use examples (ideally with references) and to draw on the Reading List in your essays. Essays that rely wholly on materials from other modules will be marked down.
