ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the social practices of depoliticisation where groups of people are denied political agency and where issues that would seem to be political and moral become subject to regulation and technicalisation. Administrative rule, or more specifically that form of government founded on and furthering depoliticisation and technicalisation, has then become an increasingly prominent form of rule. It argues that because administrative rule was prevalent in colonies it is important to study social constitution of administrative power in colonial sites. The chapter emphasises two ideas, perhaps critical interventions, that try to highlight their consequences for studying contemporary power and, hopefully, moving beyond power. First critical intervention is the idea that studying rule as a social process, focuses on intensive social relationships. Second critical intervention idea that a focus on the social processes and constitutions of rule should turn then to rights and how they are thought in relation to constellations of territory and authority.
