Kaspar Villadsen

Trygve Wyller

Hans-Joachim Sander

In the present situation in the world, values of tolerance, compassion and hospitality appear to be more contested. The debates among European leaders have come to center around how to "protect us" from refugees, rather than protecting the precarious lives of the refugees.The authors agree that we should not stop looking for practices of hospitality. We need to better understand what hospitality is, where it is practiced and also why it is practiced. Hospitality is not necessarily something we possess as an inner quality or as something disconnected from others. Rather it is practiced in specific ways in in particular spaces. The thesis is that we have to look for the characteristics of hospitality in "the other spaces" that Michel Foucault once called heterotopias.Five specific cases are analyzed: - a monastic garden for interreligious dialogue in Austria, a Lutheran congregation that accommodates a project for undocumented migrants in Western Sweden, a busy intersection in downtown Oslo where substance-users stay (and most others pass by), a voluntary organization that works for the creation of alternative life forms in inner city Copenhagen, and, finally, some aspects of the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York City.The authors are theologians, sociologists and a PhD candidate in diaconia, an illustration of the interdisciplinary composition of the book.

Practicing and Theorizing Hospitality and Counter-Conduct beyond the Religion/Secular Border

The Spaces of Others – Heterotopic Spaces

Mitchell Dean

An examination of Foucault’s work to determine the relationship between the state and civil society. State Phobia and Civil Society draws extensively upon the work of Michel Foucault to argue for the necessity of the concept of the state in political and social analysis. In so doing, it takes on not only the dominant view in the human sciences that the concept of the state is outmoded, but also the large interpretative literature on Foucault, which claims that he displaces the state for a de-centered analytics of power. Understanding Foucault means understanding all his interlocutors—whether Marxists, Maoists, neoliberals, or social democrats. It requires turning to Foucault’s colleagues, including Deleuze and Guattari, François Ewald, and Blandine Kreigel, in relation to whom he carved out a position. And it entails an examination of his legacy in Hardt and Negri, the theorists of Empire, or in Nikolas Rose, the influential English sociologist. Foucault’s own view is highly ambiguous: he claims to be concerned with the exercise of political sovereignty, yet his work cannot make visible the concept of the state. Moving beyond Foucault, the authors outline new ways of conceiving the state’s role in establishing social order and in mediating between an inequality-producing capitalist economy and the juridical equality and political rights of individuals. Arguing that states and their cooperation remain of vital importance to resolving contemporary crises, they demonstrate the interdependence of state and civil society and the necessity of social forms of governance. Praise for State Phobia and Civil Society “I can only describe State Phobia in terms usually reserved for bestsellers: un-put-downable, a cause of sleepless nights.” —Slavoj Žižek, University of Ljubljana “This important book will stand as a milestone in Foucault studies and social and political theory more generally.” —Sanford Schram, Hunter College “State Phobia is a timely investigation of the state in a period of austerity packages, welfare cuts, pension restrictions and admonitions to citizens for self-maintenance.” —Bryan S. Turner, The Graduate Center, CUNY “This strong and timely work is a valuable corrective to many of the excesses of Foucault scholarship that have emerged and taken root in recent decades.” —Jeffrey Bussolini, City University of New York

The Political Legacy of Michel Foucault

State Phobia and Civil Society

Nanna Mik-Meyer

When the state punishes criminals or removes children at risk, its power is immediately apparent. However, power is also at stake when the state seeks to educate, advise, or empower citizens, and this book encourages reflection on the exercise of professional power in these less coercive encounters.

Understanding Citizens' Encounters with State Welfare

Power and Welfare

Statsfobi og civilsamfund

Kaspar Villadsen

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