ABSTRACT
Psychology today is a technique of government. Some analysts (e.g. Rose, 1985) propose that this has always been the case, that since its inception, psychology has been implicated in practices of inscription, measurement and calculation designed to render populations more manageable. Rose argues that the mere existence of psychology as a separate discipline already exemplifies a particular, individualising tool of governance. Whilst the generality of this claim might be questioned (perhaps, to some extent, psychology has also become more than this), it is nevertheless clear that, in recent years, psychology has increasingly been taken up quite overtly by governments, particularly within their efforts to manage and promote good health and healthy lifestyles. Behavioural change, conceived in largely individualised psychological terms (as opposed to being consequential upon societal, structural influences) is the focus of various contemporary initiatives to foster health and promote wellbeing (Crawshaw, 2013). Simultaneously, psychological evidence and practices are central to the work of the UK Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) or ‘Nudge Unit’. Initially a Cabinet Office initiative, the BIT is now a social enterprise company whose aims include ‘encouraging’ people to ‘make better choices for themselves and society’ (Behavioural Insights Team, 2015) by drawing upon specialist knowledge from disciplines including psychology. Health and wellbeing are frequently linked to happiness with claims sometimes made that happiness itself fosters good health (although evidence for this causal link is shaky; see Pressman and Cohen, 2005). Psychological notions such as self-esteem, coping and resilience are also centrally implicated within the so-called ‘assets-based’ approach to public health (Friedli, 2013; Mindfulness All-Party Parliamentary Group, 2015). Hence, in frequent association with positive psychological concepts, governmental (and indeed some extra-governmental – see New Economics Foundation, 2004) initiatives work with quite explicitly psychologised notions of happiness and wellbeing. In what follows, then, we consider the nexus of psychology and health with
relation to governance. We do so by focusing closely upon the methodological practices used to generate psychological research evidence, taking a specific
paper and its findings as our example. We frame our analysis with respect to Foucault’s notion of biopolitics because this concept makes explicit the intimate links between health and governance in the current neoliberal era. Comparisons and contrasts might nevertheless usefully be drawn between our analysis and others in this volume, such as the analyses of happiness by Binkley and Davies that distinguish between the disciplinary governance Foucault posited and the more fluid and dispersed control societies emphasised by Deleuze (1992). We begin by outlining the concept of biopolitics; we then introduce the study being analysed, outline some general points with regard to its methods and present a more specific analysis of the paper in question. We conclude by describing some possible implications of our analysis for research and for practice.
