Governmentality as Reflexive Method: Excavating the Politics of Legal Research

This chapter argues that in addition to examining the politics of method in terms of how they impact our results we ought also to excavate, evaluate, and emphasize the background assumptions and discursive commitments that produce these results and cause us to ask the questions we do, in the way that we do. Researchers should be conscious of the impact that our ontological, epistemological, political, and normative commitments have on our work and maintain an awareness of the fact that these assumptions are contingent, constructed, and politically significant. There are many different means of attempting to excavate the framing narratives that lurk in the background of 'method' and to attempt to piece together their impact on the politics of (legal) research. This piece presents one such means, offering the 'toolbox' of post-Foucauldian governmentality studies as a useful reflexive starting point for legal academics seeking to uncover how methods serve to produce truths regarding the social world in line with their background assumptions.