gregory donovan's eportfolio (a syndication of cyberenviro.org)
Archive for September, 2010
by gtdonovan on September 29, 2010 at 1:56 pm · Filed under capitalism, economy, governance, Mill, possession, property, quotes
From Principles of Political Economy, p155-156:
We proceed, then, to the consideration of the different modes of distributing the produce of land and labor, which have been adopted in practice, or may be conceived in theory. Among these, our attention is first claimed by that primary and fundamental institution, on which, unless in some exceptional and very limited cases, the economical arrangements of society have always rested, though in its secondary features it has varied, and is liable to vary. I mean, of course, the institution of individual property.
Private property, as an institution, did not owe its origin to any of those considerations of utility which plead for the maintenance of it when established. Enough is known of rude ages, both from history and from analogous states of society in our own time, to show that tribunals (which always precede laws) were originally established, not to determine rights, but to repress violence and terminate quarrels. With this object chiefly in view, they naturally enough gave legal effect to first occupancy, by treating as the aggressor the person who first commenced violence, by turning, or attempting to turn, another out of possession.
by gtdonovan on September 28, 2010 at 1:53 pm · Filed under citizen, ecogovernmentality, governance, identity, language, Psychology, quotes, Rose, state
From Inventing Ourselves, p70-79:
Government depends upon knowledge. Not simply the knowledge of statecraft, which had been the subject if innumerable books of advice to princes in classical antiquity and in the Middle Ages. But a positive knowledge of the domain to be governed, a way of rendering it into thought, so that it can be analyzed, evaluated, it’s ills diagnosed and remedies prescribed. Such ‘representation’ has two significant aspects: the articulation of languages to describe the object of government and the invention of devices to inscribe it . . .
. . . Modern citizens are thus not incessantly dominated, repressed, or colonized by power . . . but subjectified, educated, and solicited into a loose and flexible alliance between personal interpretations and ambitions and institutionally or socially valued ways of living. The languages and techniques of psychology provide vital relays between contemporary government and the ethical technologies by which modern individuals come to govern their own lives.
by gtdonovan on September 28, 2010 at 1:53 pm · Filed under citizen, ecogovernmentality, governance, identity, language, Psychology, quotes, Rose, state
From Inventing Ourselves, p70-79:
Government depends upon knowledge. Not simply the knowledge of statecraft, which had been the subject if innumerable books of advice to princes in classical antiquity and in the Middle Ages. But a positive knowledge of the domain to be governed, a way of rendering it into thought, so that it can be analyzed, evaluated, it’s ills diagnosed and remedies prescribed. Such ‘representation’ has two significant aspects: the articulation of languages to describe the object of government and the invention of devices to inscribe it . . .
. . . Modern citizens are thus not incessantly dominated, repressed, or colonized by power . . . but subjectified, educated, and solicited into a loose and flexible alliance between personal interpretations and ambitions and institutionally or socially valued ways of living. The languages and techniques of psychology provide vital relays between contemporary government and the ethical technologies by which modern individuals come to govern their own lives.
