Ulrich Bröckling

This is a review of Urlich Bröckling's book (2017) "Gute Hirten führen sanft. Über Menschenregierungskünste." (which can be roughly translated as: "Good shepherds lead gently. On the arts of governing humans") Bröckling's book collects new essays, as well as already elsewhere published works, which have been revised for this book. On 422 pages the author presents his sociology of governing humans through gouvernementality, which is a worth reading contribution to the governmentality studies. The book is divided into three main sections: Approaches, Dispositives and Critique. In the first part, Bröckling presents his theoretical-methodological approach to topics such as "pastoral power", "governmentality", "anthropology" and the tasks of a "sociology of human gouvernementality-arts". In the second section, Bröckling presents eleven individual analyses on the topics of prevention, resilience, mediation, nudging, feedback, contract pedagogy, competition, burnout, planning, human capital and battlefield research, each of which can be read individually and do not build on oneanother. Finally, Bröckling explores the relationship between sociology and critique. His book can be read as a collection of follow-up studies on the neoliberal form of socialization which he dubbed the 'entrepreneurial self' (Bröckling 2007). He not only continues research in the field of governmentality studies, but also develops exciting theses about their limits and on governing through affects.

Child welfare systems often have unintended and undesirable consequences for children and their social environments. They will be analysed by applying the concept of “normative paradoxes” (Honneth and Sutterlüty) and drawing mainly, but not exclusively, on Germany. The normative aim of child welfare legislation will be reconstructed and it will be argued that the law can be perceived as an institutionalisation of a single, albeit internally complex normative principle – i.e., the principle of the child’s autonomy or self-determination. Using this principle as a yardstick, three types of paradoxical effects will be identified. These counter-productive effects of the autonomy-centred welfare principle will be described as the “undermining”, the “subsumption”, and the “distortion” paradoxes. Because discourse in this field has always had some awareness of these paradoxes, legal developments can be interpreted as ongoing attempts to overcome them.