In this special feature for TCS Online, Couze Venn analyses Michel Foucault's conception of neoliberalism as located within an integral part of his analyses of the relationships between power, governmentality and political economy. According to Venn:

The critical reading of neoliberalism which Foucault developed in The Birth of Biopolitics elaborates a perspective which enables us to better understand the global world today from the standpoint of the possibility of overcoming present conditions. As such it is both prescient – being the edited version of lectures he gave in 1978-79 – and a challenging renewal of critical theory at a moment when contemporary societies face fundamental crises arising from the limits that the global world is approaching regarding climate change, the depletion of basic resources and economic growth. One should locate it as an integral part of his analyses of the relationships between power, governmentality and political economy, and thus part of the series of lectures from Society Must be Defended (2003 [1975]) which re-examines power in terms of the multiplicity of the relations of force that can be coded as ‘war’ or ‘politics’ and which political economy reconstituted in terms of biopolitics.'

Read the full article here and discuss it on the TCS Blog. 

Have you read Ash Amin’s new article, ‘The Remainder of Race’, yet? You can find it here in the new issue of TCS (vol 27, issue 1). We think it’s significant enough to merit a forthcoming special section of commissioned responses (later this year) and we’d also like to hear what you make of it, so feel free to post your comments on the TCS Blog.  .

Amin seeks to understand why racism so quickly resurfaces even when thought to be thoroughly dismantled, and why the steady achievements of multiculturalism in the last decades of the 20th century have melted away so fast. By reflecting on the interplay between the mechanisms that keep racial coding and judgement close to the surface, and the mobilizations of race by biopolitical regimes, he explains the contemporary ‘racialisation of everything’ as the product of mutually reinforcing mischief between vernacular and biopolitical racism.

TCS's Climate Change issue is coming soon and Body & Society's long-awaited 'Affect' issue

The long-awaited special issue of Body & Society on Affect is out now. Read ground-breaking papers by Blackman, Callard and Papoulias, Clough, Featherstone, Henriques, Manning, Venn and Walkerdine. Read the Table of Contents here. Check the TCS Blog for the latest updates and extra materials.

Coming Soon: TCS Special Issue, 27.2/3, CHANGING CLIMATES

“Climate change is always already social; the social does not need to be added to it, just to be revealed.  That is the task of this collection: to use theory to explore the social dimensions of the challenge of the changing climate, so that we can better understand the nature of the epoch we seem to be entering, and what is at stake” (Bronislaw Szerszynski and John Urry, Introduction).

Climate change is the result of, and has consequences for, almost all economic, social and cultural practices around the world. This TCS Double Issue on Changing Climates demonstrates the contribution that social theory can make to addressing this extraordinary challenge. It gathers papers by some of the world's leading authors working on the increasingly complex entanglement of climate and society. The contributors draw on a range of social science theories and concepts, tracing the way that climate science has been produced, organised, mobilised and contested, and exploring the relationships between climate change, politics, global inequity, financial turbulence and life itself. This landmark publication demonstrates how social science can help to illuminate the very nature of the challenge of climate change.

As a supplement to the Climate Change issue, TCS Webs is featuring images from artist, Joy Garnett's, Strange Weather series on its brand new photo album on the TCS Extra Materials page.

As a supplement to the recent TCS special issue on Foucault,TCS Webs presents an interview between TCS’ editor, Mike Featherstone, and the special issue’s guest editor, Couze Venn. Tell us what you think on the TCS blog.