Limits of the Regulatory State Idea: Science and the Cultural Constitution of Capitalist States
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.6000/2371-1655.2015.01.14Keywords:
Regulation, technoscience, capitalism, state formation, constitutive viewAbstract
This paper is an empirically grounded theoretical critique of the idea of the “regulatory state.” The language of the “regulatory state” obscures the nature of the modern state as a constitutive “thing.” The modern state is crucially constituted through the co-productions of science and government. It needs to be investigated in terms of its discursive, practiced, and material dimensions, its meanings, its agencies, and its formation as a material entity composed of land, people and built environment. This critique is needed because the idea of the regulatory state too often leaves implicit the notion that capitalism exists prior to the state, and is thus only “regulated” as such post-hoc. The methods used are those of historical sociological case based analytics, utilizing archival materials. The purpose is to challenge the taken-for-granted distinction between the state and capitalist social organization. The implications for further research are the need to delve deeper into the complex entanglements of state and society, and the ironic role that science as culture played in constructing both those concrete entanglements and the abstract bounded categories that obscure them.
References
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Gieryn, T. (1983). Boundary work and the demarcation of science from non-science: Strains and interests in professional ideologies of scientists. American sociological review. 48, 781-95. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2095325
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Neocleous, M. (2000). The fabrication of social order: A critical theory of police power. London: Pluto Press.
O'Neill, K. (2006). Rivers by design: State power and the origins of U.S. flood control. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/9780822387862
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Poovey, M. (1998). A history of the modern fact: Problems of knowledge in the sciences of wealth and society. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226675183.001.0001
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Petty, W. (1927 [1676]). Anatomy lecture. In: The Petty papers: Some unpublished writings of Sir William Petty. Vol. 2. London: Constable.
Poulantzas, N. (1969). The problem of the capitalist state. New left review 1(58), 67-78.
Shadwell, T. (1676). The virtuoso, a comedy acted at the Duke’s Theatre. London: Henry Harringman.
Skocpol, T. (1979). States and social revolutions: A comparative analysis of France, Russia, and China. New York: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511815805
Star, L, Griesemer, J. (1989). Institutional ecology, translations and boundary objects: Amateurs and professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39. Social studies of science 19(3), 387-420. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/030631289019003001
Tilly, C. (1999). Epilogue, now where?. In: Steinmetz, G. Ed. State/culture: State formation after the cultural turn. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Tilly, C. (1992). Coercion, capital, and European states, AD 990-1992. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Biernacki, R. (1995). The fabrication of labor: Germany and Britain, 1640-1914. Berkeley: The University of California Press.
Boyle, R. (1663). Some considerations touching the usefulness of experimental natural philosophy. The second tome. In: Boyle, R: The Works. Vol. 3. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung.
Carroll, P. (2002). Medical police and the history of public health. Medical history. 46, 461-94.
Carroll, P. (2006). Science, culture, and modern state formation. Berkeley: The University of California Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520247536.001.0001
Carroll, P. (2012). Water and technoscientific state formation in California. Social studies of science. 42(4), 489-516. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0306312712437977
Callon, M, Millo, Y, Muniesa, F. Eds. 2007. Market devices. Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Carruthers, B. (2005). Historical sociology and the economy: Actors, networks, and context. In: Adams, J, Clemens, E, and Orloff, A. Eds. Remaking modernity: politics, history, and sociology. Chapel Hill, NC: Duke University Press.
Corrigan, P. and Sayer, D (1985). The great arch: English state formation as cultural revolution. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Curtis, B. (2001). The politics of population: State formation, statistics, and the census of Canada, 1840-1875. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Curtis, B. (2002). Foucault on governmentality: The impossible discovery. Canadian journal of sociology. 27(4), 397-412. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3341588
Epstein, S. (1995). The construction of lay expertise: Aids activism and the forging of credibility in clinical trials. Science, technology, and human values. 20(4), 408-437. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/016224399502000402
Foucault, M. (2003). Society must be defended. New York: Picador.
Foucault, M. (2007). Security, territory, population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977-78. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230245075
Frankel, O. (2006). States of inquiry: Social investigations and print culture in nineteenth-century Britain and the United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Gieryn, T. (1983). Boundary work and the demarcation of science from non-science: Strains and interests in professional ideologies of scientists. American sociological review. 48, 781-95. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2095325
Hunt, A. (1999). Governing morals: A social history of moral regulation. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Jasanoff, S. (1987). Contested boundaries in policy-relevant science. Social studies of science. 17, 195-230. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/030631287017002001
Jasanoff, S. (1990). The fifth branch: Science advisers as policymakers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Jasanoff, S. (1995). Science at the bar: Law, science, and technology in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Jasanoff, S. (2004). States of knowledge: The co-production of science and social order. New York: Routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203413845
Jessop, B. (2002). The future of the capitalist state. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Kelley, R. (1998). Battling the inland sea: Floods, public policy, and the Sacramento Valley. Berkeley: The University of California Press.
Kelman, S. (1981). Regulating America, regulating Sweden: A comparative study of occupational safety and health policy. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Knorr-Cetina, K, Preda, A. Eds. (2006). The sociology of financial markets. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kuhn, T. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Latour, B. (2004). Why has critique run out of steam?: From matters of fact to matters of concern. Critical inquiry. 30, 225-248. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/421123
Levi-Faur, D. (2005). The global diffusion of regulatory capitalism. The annals of the American academy of political and social science. March, 12-32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0002716204272371
MacKenzie, D, Muniesa, F, Siu, L. (2007). Do economists make markets: On the performativity of economics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262134606.001.0001
MacKenzie, D. (2006). An engine, not a camera: How financial models shape markets. Boston: The MIT Press.
Marx, K. (1974). Capital: A critical analysis of capitalist production, Vol. 1. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Marx, K, Engels, F. (1998) The communist manifesto. Signet Classics. New York: Penguin.
Mitchell, T. (2002). Rule of experts: Egypt, techno-politics, modernity. Berkeley: The University of California Press.
Mukerji, C. (1994). The Political Mobilization of Nature in Seventeenth Century French Formal Gardens. Theory and society. 23(5), 651-677. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00992906
Mukerji, C. (1997). Territorial ambitions and the gardens of Versailles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nee, V, Swedberg, R. (2005). The economic sociology of capitalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Neocleous, M. (2000). The fabrication of social order: A critical theory of police power. London: Pluto Press.
O'Neill, K. (2006). Rivers by design: State power and the origins of U.S. flood control. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/9780822387862
Petty, W. (1927). The Petty papers: Some unpublished writings of Sir William Petty. Vol. 2. London: Constable.
Poovey, M. (1998). A history of the modern fact: Problems of knowledge in the sciences of wealth and society. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226675183.001.0001
Petty, W. (1851 [c.1659]). A briefe accompt of the most material passages relatinge to the survey managed by Doctor Petty in Ireland, anno 1655 and 1656. In: Larcom, T. Ed. Petty, W. The history of the survey of Ireland, commonly called the down survey. Dublin: Irish Archaeological Society.
Petty, W. (1927 [1676]). Anatomy lecture. In: The Petty papers: Some unpublished writings of Sir William Petty. Vol. 2. London: Constable.
Poulantzas, N. (1969). The problem of the capitalist state. New left review 1(58), 67-78.
Shadwell, T. (1676). The virtuoso, a comedy acted at the Duke’s Theatre. London: Henry Harringman.
Skocpol, T. (1979). States and social revolutions: A comparative analysis of France, Russia, and China. New York: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511815805
Star, L, Griesemer, J. (1989). Institutional ecology, translations and boundary objects: Amateurs and professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39. Social studies of science 19(3), 387-420. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/030631289019003001
Tilly, C. (1999). Epilogue, now where?. In: Steinmetz, G. Ed. State/culture: State formation after the cultural turn. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Tilly, C. (1992). Coercion, capital, and European states, AD 990-1992. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
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