ABSTRACT
After having turned to the importance of biopolitics in Chapter 4 and surveillance in Chapter 5, this chapter focuses on the importance of the freedom of the individual for modern governmentality. Accordingly, referring to sociological neo-institutionalism, the diffusion of the norm of individualization in world society plays an important role in this regard. In this context, this chapter will address the question of how individuals are involved in the constitution of world-societal order in Palestine. In many respects, analyses of power relations and societal order in political science and IR often fail to take into account the importance of individuals. 1 By contrast, this chapter highlights that focusing on the role of the modern individual is crucial in order to make sense of world-societal power dynamics. Accordingly, modern governmentality is related to a specific conception of subjectivity that is pervasive in world society and thus also in Palestine. I will therefore rely on the conceptualization of modern subjectivity that was presented in Chapter 3. While I have presented modern subjectivity as a central feature of modern governmentality in world society, in order to assess the individual’s involvement in dynamics of world-societal order in Palestine it is necessary to further conceptually elaborate on the relationship between governmentality, subjectivity, and power.
