Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 From Paternafare to Marriage Promotion: Sexual Regulation and Welfare Reform
- 2 Biopower and Sexual Regulation
- 3 Post-Foucauldian Sexual Regulation Theory
- 4 The Ideological Construction of Paternafare
- 5 Paternafare Law Today
- 6 Welfare Reform, Reproductive Heterosexuality, and Marriage
- 7 The Normative Assessment of Paternafare: An Ideal-Type Analysis
- 8 Feminist Visions
- Appendix I Gender, Race, and the TANF Population
- Appendix II Family Structure and Poverty
- Appendix III Child Support Enforcement Allocations in a Neoliberal Fiscal Environment
- Appendix IV The “Swarming” of Paternafare
- Appendix V The Disconnection between Poverty and TANF Assistance
- Appendix VI Race, Ethnicity, and the Family Cap
- Index
Appendix IV - The “Swarming” of Paternafare
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 From Paternafare to Marriage Promotion: Sexual Regulation and Welfare Reform
- 2 Biopower and Sexual Regulation
- 3 Post-Foucauldian Sexual Regulation Theory
- 4 The Ideological Construction of Paternafare
- 5 Paternafare Law Today
- 6 Welfare Reform, Reproductive Heterosexuality, and Marriage
- 7 The Normative Assessment of Paternafare: An Ideal-Type Analysis
- 8 Feminist Visions
- Appendix I Gender, Race, and the TANF Population
- Appendix II Family Structure and Poverty
- Appendix III Child Support Enforcement Allocations in a Neoliberal Fiscal Environment
- Appendix IV The “Swarming” of Paternafare
- Appendix V The Disconnection between Poverty and TANF Assistance
- Appendix VI Race, Ethnicity, and the Family Cap
- Index
Summary
In Foucault's biopower model, official discourse and institutions, including State agencies, work up strategic targets for social control in a somewhat uncoordinated process that is driven largely by specific institutional cultures. Professional experts and policy makers following standardized postgraduate education programs and organized career paths are deeply immersed in their profession's paradigm. The latter encourages the policy expert to construct social outlaws, such as the criminal, as an extreme danger to the well-being of the general population. Disciplinary tactics are then deployed ostensibly to correct the deviant's behavior or at least to contain the social disorder caused by the deviant within strong institutional boundaries. The cunning of biopower, however, consists in its ability to “swarm” outward from the original target to the contiguous areas of the social terrain such that more and more peripheral subjects are caught up in the disciplinary wave. Thus the modern police force not only keeps known criminals under surveillance; it also constantly searches for ways to augment its presence among the general population. It might, for example, encourage anxious suburban residents to form Neighborhood Watch groups; alternatively, it could erect traffic stops in virtually every neighborhood, sponsor local community events, establish a bicycle registration program in the park, assist the high schools with their public order efforts, launch a community policing initiative in a public housing project, or attempt to influence the policies of feminist domestic violence advocates.
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- Information
- Welfare Reform and Sexual Regulation , pp. 275 - 278Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007