ABSTRACT
This chapter elaborates the contemporary governmentality conceptual toolkit and themes with an eye to discerning omissions or misconceptions. The governmentality conceptual toolkit is first revisited to take inventory, discover what is missing or misconceived, and evaluate tools and themes that might be usefully deployed to research human rights regimes. These points are illustrated or considered by drawing on existing governmentality research in and outside criminology in Canadian and international contexts, including in relation to less attended to refugee and privacy rights enshrined in domestic and international law. Key features of neoliberal mentalities that have been identified in criminology include ‘responsibilization’ or movement of responsibility for governance of problematized forms of conduct to more local levels. A key feature of the governmentality analytic is the presumption that the exercise of governmental power always emerges with forms of knowledge.
