1. Social thought and the arts of government Introduction: What is social thought? 1. Society: Michel Foucault and “social thought”  Epistemological space of social thought  Concept of civil society 3. The social French governmentality school and the history of the social and the social question 4. Conclusion: links to our present.

2. Introduction: What is social thought?  Social and society  The social question  Civil society and political and economic thought  Position distinguished from:  hyper-nominalist,  techno-constructionist and  over-politicized conceptions of social thought.

3. Three alternatives Nominalism – views society as historically given concept, but not ‘death of the social’ (governmentality) Techno-constructivism - reject the claim that ‘society has not no substantive character’ (actor network) Over-politicisation – Westphalian system as a condition of society but too close a link between state and society (world risk society thesis)

4. Part One: Society  Human sciences  Sociological Region  Problem of social thought: economic and the political- juridical  Two impossible solutions  Civil society as solution

5. Adam Ferguson’s concept of civil society  Historical-natural constant  Spontaneous synthesis not voluntary union  Permanent matrix of political power  Motor of history

6. Part Two: the social  “Clearly it is not a question of the adjective that qualifies the set of phenomena which sociology deals with: the social refers to a particular sector in which quite diverse problems and special cases can be grouped together, a sector comprising specific institutions and an entire body of qualified personnel (“social” assistants, “social” workers).” Deleuze.

7. Towards a history of the social  Donzelot on the liberal interventions into the family.  Procacci on ‘social economy’  Pauperism and the conditions of the labouring population  Castel and the Social Question  Solidarity/solidarisme/insurance

8. Conclusion  Hybrid social thought from social economy to the social market economy  The death of the social and Hayek  Social thought – autonomy and generality  Society as a unity  Dialogue of social thought with agency of nation-state