Peace and Quiet : Domestic Science and the Rise of New Precarious Subjects

• While peace remains a concept that is primarily invoked and utilized in relation to armed conflict this paper explores how contemporary regimes of government also calls for a specific form of domestic peace. Throughout Europe and beyond the last decades of market oriented reforms and austerity measures have called for nations and regions to rally behind processes and policies of innovation in order to be competitive. This race for competitiveness is often described in war-like metaphors which emphasizes the need to ‘develop spearheads’, ‘mobilize forces’, ‘foster commanders’, ‘build alliances’ and create ‘united frontiers’. As in moments of armed conflict, success in this war of competitiveness requires a kind of conformity or ‘peace and quiet’ within the own ranks. In short, the room for politics is severely constrained. Therefore, in this paper we explore what we identify as a global policy discourse concerning innovation as competitiveness as it unfolds in specific localized contexts. When doing so we investigate the modes of domestic silence that functions as a necessary requirement for regions and nations and theorize how this form of depoliticization becomes complicit in the production and stratification of precariousness for the subjects of rule (Lorey, 2015). 

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Statsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Political Science (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Regional development

leadership

governmentality

competition

competitiveness

Statsvetenskap

Political Science

Kulturgeografi

Human Geography

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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