Powers of Freedom, first published in 1999, offers a compelling approach to the analysis of political power which extends Foucault's hypotheses on governmentality in challenging ways. Nikolas Rose sets out the key characteristics of this approach to political power and analyses the government of conduct. He analyses the role of expertise, the politics of numbers, technologies of economic management and the political uses of space. He illuminates the relation of this approach to contemporary theories of 'risk society' and 'the sociology of governance'. He argues that freedom is not the opposite of government but one of its key inventions and most significant resources. He also seeks some rapprochement between analyses of government and the concerns of critical sociology, cultural studies and Marxism, to establish a basis for the critique of power and its exercise. The book will be of interest to students and scholars in political theory, sociology, social policy and cultural studies.

This book examines the underlying theoretical issues concerning the nature of political freedom. Arguing that most previous discussions of such freedom have been too narrowly focused, it explores both conservativism from Edmund Burke to its present resurgence, the radical tradition of Karl Marx, as well as the orthodox liberal model of freedom of John Locke, John Stuart Mill and Isaiah Berlin. Political Freedom argues that these three accounts of political freedom - conservative, liberal and radical - all have internal weaknesses which render them unsatisfactory. In the second part of the book George Brenkert develops an alternative theory of political freedom. Using the guiding concept of empowerment, his model explores individual rights, democratic participation in government and workplace, and the need to provide the material and educational resources to allow individuals to effectively exercise their rights to self-determination. It is a clear and bold attack on the view that there is no link between freedom and power.

The purpose of this work is to discuss and explain the nature of political freedom. The approach is interdisciplinary, drawing from social theory, history, and law, as well as philosophy and political theory. The argument presented defends a view of political freedom as a social norm that has gained great prominence in those places where it has emerged through time as a social mechanism that supports social order and brings security to social life. Regarded as a social norm, political freedom promotes the toleration of the religious, cultural, ideological, and moral differences that generate normative conflict throughout society. The resultant understanding of political freedom therefore defends a distinction between political and personal freedom and separates the idea of political freedom from the individualism with which it is normally associated in most philosophical literature. The argument also indicates why it is appropriate to regard political freedom as a central virtue of social justice.

A novel, sophisticated and realistic account of freedom as power through political representation.

This edition of a 1995 book (Sage Publications) contains a new introduction by the series editor and a new preface. Readers familiar with Foucault's work will appreciate the difficulty in critically studying its arresting paradoxical nature. Dumm (political science, Amherst College) negotiates the problem by creating a thematic framework--the idea of being "free" in a modern Western capitalist democracy--and examining it through a Foucaultian lens. He focuses on the politics of freedom, negative freedom, the disciplinary society, ethics, seduction, governments, and provides an enlightening companion to Foucault's postmodern philosophy. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This second volume deals with power relations between the Industrial Revolution and the First World War.