Governmentality and the scientific-political dispositive of risk: The theory of psychosocial risk

Abstract

This article examines the conditions that underpin risk factor theory. It starts discussing the neoliberal governmentality as a political paradigm (Foucault). In this paradigm, one of the chief value is individual responsibility, where politics has as its task to normalise those that cannot adapt to that value. This normalisation is embedded in the practices which pertain public policies and social intervention. To shed light on these practices, the paper develops Foucault’s concept of dispositive. In this context, one of the main dispositive is risk factor theory. It arises from the concept of risk, and by means of an historical reconstruction of this notion, we show that this theory does not reconstruct a natural condition of some people; rather, it is a contingent selection used in the context of the neoliberal governmentality.