This set of essays engages with some aspects of Foucault's notion of governmentality,particularly at the junction where law/regulation meets 'the social'. 'The social', as a special sphere of government, is a special area of concern for those working within broad intellectual spaces of the 'governmentality approach'. Is it the basis of modern liberal systems of government? Is it dead, or even feeling unwell? Has it spawned hybrid forms of government like neo-liberalism, neo-conservatism, or even neo-socialism? In making their presence felt in the debates that have flourished around such questions, especially by highlighting the subtleties of the roles played by law and regulation in the governance of the social, the authors of the essays - David Brown; Jo Goodie; Russell Hogg and Kerry Carrington; Jeff Malpas; Pat O'Malley; George Pavlich; Annette Pedersen; Kevin Stenson; William Walters - range widely. There are pieces on liberal government and resistance to it, some on particular targets of this government, like unemployment, crime, 'law and order', even Australian geography, environment and cultural products, and some that delve into philosophical/methodological issues.

The environment has not always been protected by law. It was not until the middle of the 20th century that 'the environment' came to be understood as an entity in need of special care, and the law-politics duo firmly fixed its focus on this issue. In this book Wickham and Goodie tell the story of how law and politics first came upon the environment as an object in need of special attention. They outline the unlikely intersection of aesthetics and science that made 'the environment' into the matter of great concern it is today. The book describes the way private common-law strategies and public-law legislative strategies have approached the task of protecting the environment, and explore the greatest environmental challenge to have so far confronted environmental law and politics; the threat of global climate change. The book offers descriptions of many of the strategies being deployed to meet this challenge and present some troubling assessments of them. The book will be of great interest to students, teachers, and researchers of environmental law, socio-legal studies, environmental studies, and political theory.

When he died in 1984, Michel Foucault was regarded as one of the most profoundly influential philosophers of his day. Although the law itself never formed a central focus for Foucault, many of the principal themes in his writings are concerned with issues of governance and power that are of direct relevance to the study of law. And yet, until now, Foucault's work has attracted only fleeting attention from the legal academy. Foucault and Law corrects this oversight. Opening with a lucid, critical and unpretentious account of Foucault's work, Hunt and Wickham map out a terrain of methodological and theoretical principals, providing the groundwork for a new sociology of law as governance.

The environment has not always been protected by law. It was not until the middle of the 20th century that 'the environment' came to be understood as an entity in need of special care, and the law-politics duo firmly fixed its focus on this issue. In this book Wickham and Goodie tell the story of how law and politics first came upon the environment as an object in need of special attention. They outline the unlikely intersection of aesthetics and science that made 'the environment' into the matter of great concern it is today. The book describes the way private common-law strategies and public-law legislative strategies have approached the task of protecting the environment, and explore the greatest environmental challenge to have so far confronted environmental law and politics; the threat of global climate change. The book offers descriptions of many of the strategies being deployed to meet this challenge and present some troubling assessments of them. The book will be of great interest to students, teachers, and researchers of environmental law, socio-legal studies, environmental studies, and political theory.

This set of essays engages with some aspects of Foucault's notion of governmentality,particularly at the junction where law/regulation meets 'the social'. 'The social', as a special sphere of government, is a special area of concern for those working within broad intellectual spaces of the 'governmentality approach'. Is it the basis of modern liberal systems of government? Is it dead, or even feeling unwell? Has it spawned hybrid forms of government like neo-liberalism, neo-conservatism, or even neo-socialism? In making their presence felt in the debates that have flourished around such questions, especially by highlighting the subtleties of the roles played by law and regulation in the governance of the social, the authors of the essays - David Brown; Jo Goodie; Russell Hogg and Kerry Carrington; Jeff Malpas; Pat O'Malley; George Pavlich; Annette Pedersen; Kevin Stenson; William Walters - range widely. There are pieces on liberal government and resistance to it, some on particular targets of this government, like unemployment, crime, 'law and order', even Australian geography, environment and cultural products, and some that delve into philosophical/methodological issues.