Pastoral power outside Foucault’s Europe: public education and the ‘epistemic authority’ of social scientists in Mexico

Zavala-Pelayo, Edgar

doi:10.1080/2158379x.2014.887542

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…141-142). Whereas this church-state disconnection took place at the bureaucratic-administrative and institutional levels, there was not necessarily a parallel cessation at the level of pastoral governmentalities (Zavala-Pelayo, 2014). As Blancarte (2004) points out, the new liberal state sacralized itself; the Catholic saints were “replaced with the heroes of the independence movement and the Reform, and the religious altars were replaced with the fatherland’s altars” (p. 21; my translation).…”

Section: Genealogical Complements Ruptures and Continuitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Welfare governmentalities: pastoralism and parties’ youth wings in Mexico

Zavala-Pelayo

2017

IJSSP

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Purpose From a micro-macro perspective, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the welfare-related criteria reported by the heads of political parties’ youth wings in Mexico, the implicit and explicit religious beliefs that inform some of those criteria and the (Foucauldian) pastoral genealogy of both the criteria and beliefs. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws on qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with a group of 32 heads of three political parties’ youth wings in Mexico. The interpretation of the data builds on a previous genealogical analysis of Foucauldian pastoralism in colonial Mexico. Findings The respondents’ criteria on a state that should aim at procuring “material-spiritual” and “material-transcendental” types of well-being and politics as “help,” are partly informed by religious values. Such criteria and religious values have been partly constructed out of a pastoralism which was deployed during the Spanish colonial regime and included “temporal” and “spiritual” teleologies of government and the practice of charity as (self-)governmental technique. Originality/value The literature on welfare/social policies of Latin American countries like Mexico tends not to problematize issues of secularity other than the religions’ undesirable intrusions in the political field. Governmentality studies also tend to bypass Foucault’s discussion of pastoralism. An empirical study of the pastoral genealogy of contemporary political rationalities in a constitutionally secular country such as Mexico can prompt further research on the gaps above and comparative analyses of pastoral and welfare governmentalities across Latin American and other world regions.

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Section: Genealogical Complements Ruptures and Continuitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Welfare governmentalities: pastoralism and parties’ youth wings in Mexico

Zavala-Pelayo

2017

IJSSP

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“…Academic and extra-academic audiences in Mexico take for granted that professional sociologies and sociologists are part of a public-oriented academic discipline and institution – either in ‘traditional’ or ‘organic’ forms (Burawoy, 2005: 7–8) – with an intrinsic authority to prescribe solutions to social malaise. Challenging the traditional canons of secularism in social science, I have argued that ‘official’ and ‘folk’ Catholicisms have been making non-intentional contributions, since colonial times, for the legitimation of both these interventionist sociologies 13 (Zavala Pelayo, 2013) and the professional ‘pastoral authority’ (Zavala Pelayo, 2014) that sociologists and social scientists in general tend to adopt in Mexico. Here I also want to note the role of the Mexican state, in the past and the present.…”

Section: Sociologies In Mexico: the Public Policy And Critical Is The Professionalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nominal Openness and Epistemic Endogamy in ‘Global’ and ‘Provincialized’ Sociologies

Zavala-Pelayo

2014

Sociology

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Calls for global and provincialized sociologies have emerged in the last decade as thoughtful projects in contemporary sociology. In this article, I criticize the rhetorical nature and epistemic endogamy of some of those calls through case studies of sociologies in Mexico and their institutional and epistemic complexity. Avoiding reductionisms, I will characterize sociologies in Mexico as both central (mainly Westernized) and (semi)peripheral. From a critical stance, I will argue that the latter are constructed upon teleological, prescriptive and pragmatic-theory logics and constitute epistemologically legitimate ( professional) sociologies, given their logics’ internal cognitive affinity and the consistency these logics present in relation to external ideological structures and socio-political discourses. I will then make explicit some of the theoretical and disciplinary challenges these overlooked professional sociologies bring to the fore. I conclude by suggesting a postcolonial theoretical-methodological strategy to address such challenges.

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Pastoral power outside Foucault’s Europe: public education and the ‘epistemic authority’ of social scientists in Mexico

Cited by 2 publications

References 29 publications

Welfare governmentalities: pastoralism and parties’ youth wings in Mexico

Welfare governmentalities: pastoralism and parties’ youth wings in Mexico

Nominal Openness and Epistemic Endogamy in ‘Global’ and ‘Provincialized’ Sociologies

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