ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the much-debated and much-used but rather fuzzy term 'governmentality'. Despite the fact that Foucault never gave a clear and stable definition for the invented word and scholars developing his work continue to debate its precise meaning, with no resolution in sight, the word governmentality has launched a thousand ships in various scholarly and public-intellectual environments, including amongst criminological and legal researchers and in areas such as health studies, sexuality studies, and sociology. Foucault introduced the term governmentality in early 1978 in the course of a series of lectures that had been advertised under the title 'Security, Territory, Population'. Foucault's long-standing effort to link the government of others to the governance of oneself was based on a belief which seems to have grown stronger as he aged–that the separation of ethics from economics and politics is a somewhat problematic development. The police power exercised by local authorities was and remains very great, and very intrusive.
