Gellner's genealogy of the open society
Biopolitics as fragment and remainder
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4481439 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kevin Ryan (0000-0002-7059-9560, Ollscoil na Gaillimhe – University of Galway, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 128 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 113-125 |
| Publication date | 2015-06-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Thesis Eleven (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0725-5136 • E-ISSN: 1461-7455 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0725513615587387 |
| OpenAlex | W1499594835 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 7 |
A decade before Foucault began to work with the related concepts of biopolitics and biopower, Gellner posed a series of questions which are suggestive of a similar line of inquiry. Gellner did not pursue this strand of his thought as an historical sociologist however. Instead he packaged it into a functionalist account of how industrial society reproduces itself. In Gellner's writings, biopolitics is both present and absent, like a redacted text. This is the focus of this article, which locates Gellner's method of inquiry within a corpus of genealogical studies that includes the work of Polanyi, Weber and Foucault. What distinguishes Gellner is that the history he reconstructs is a story of achievement in the face of terrible historical odds, but this culminates in a normative genealogy that limits the scope for critical analysis. The article concludes by adopting an alternative - yet still Gellnerian - approach to the question of social reproduction, thereby using Gellner to critique Gellner
Biopower · Epistemology · Normative · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Law · Philosophy · Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory
| Highly cited | No |
|---|