Selvstyring i amerikanske privatiserede boligenklaver

Abstract

#In this thesis we analyze the governmental features of American privatized residential enclaves, Common Interest Developments (CID). This organizational form is primarily characterized by a degree of self-governance that is carried out by a homeowner association as the governing body. Our theoretical framework consists of the philosopher Michel Foucault and his concept of governmentality and sociologist Nikolas Rose with his analysis of contemporary political rationalities through a ‘genealogy of freedom’. In addition, we employ two philosophers who both take point of departure in Foucault’s notion of biopower: Giorgio Agamben and his biopolitical analysis of the state of exception as a modern political paradigm and Gilles Deleuze’s concept of control society as opposed to disciplinary societies. We examine how government is put into practice in CID and what kind of social order and individual and collective conduct is presupposed by and created through this political exercise. We uncover the political and socio-cultural parameters that condition the development of CID in the 19th and 20th century. In continuation of this, we present and analyse the security features and the governmental techniques in CID on the basis of our empirical findings that consist of downloaded governing documents, most importantly Contracts, Conditions & Regulations. The main part of the thesis is a theoretically based analysis of the types of conduct, social order and subjectivities that arise in this particular political organization within a framework of neo-liberalism and security policies. We draw several conclusions on the basis of the manifold analysis. Firstly CID is part and parcel of current security and risk policies in the attempt to capitalize and securitize life which, in many respects, disregards normal political procedures in the name of law and order. Secondly, that CID can be understood as a privileged sector of governance being a part of liberal governance at-a-distance. This political space can be considered a hybrid between the private sector and the market through minimal and rational governance on the one hand and, on the other, a political sector that exercises many governmental functions. Thirdly we consider CID a particular heterotopic space that through an alternate social English abstract 127 ordering produces a homogenous and dissociational space. Finally we analyze the subjectivities in CID within neo-liberal rationalities arguing that the mode of subjectivation is connected to a series of consumption and market technologies whereby the individual selfgovernance and self-realization is promoted. However, we also argue that the subjectivity is not only to be understood within a neo-liberal perspective, since disciplinary and control technologies permeate CID. These technologies produce desubjectivized individuals whose self-advancement and political rights are submitted to a totalitarian and rule-governed regime. In continuation of these points we conclude that the massive governmental structure of CID undermines the neo-liberal ideals of minimal government.