Uncertain subjects: risks, liberalism and contract

• Published in: Economy and society Vol. 29; no. 4; pp. 460 - 484
• Main Author: Malley, Pat O'
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Taylor & Francis 01.11.2000; Routledge
• Subjects: Certainty; Contracts; Enterprises; Governmentality; Law; Liberalism; Markets; Neoliberalism; Rationality; Risk; Risk Uncertainty Liberalism Law Contract; Statistical models; Uncertainty
• ISSN: 0308-5147; 1469-5766
• DOI: 10.1080/03085140050174741

Uncertainty has been largely overlooked in the governmentality literature dealing with risk, especially because of contemporary emphases on models of statistical or actuarial risk calculation. Yet it represents a distinctive way of governing through the future, whose place in the formation of rationalities of neo-liberalism, and of 'enterprising subjects', is vital. Indeed, in domains of enterprising activity, the governmental modality of uncertainty marginalizes or subordinates statistical and expert models of risk management. In part this is because of enterprise's 'inventive' orientation - which sits ill with risk's assumption of a future that reproduces the past. Not only is uncertainty central to techniques of neo-liberal government, it has a genealogy that is distinguishable from the genealogy of more rationally calculative modalities of liberal government - but also reaching back to the beginnings of liberalism. In the development of contract law, blueprints for government through uncertainty provide a foundational element in the constitution of liberal subjects, and for the 'reasonable' techniques of government through the future which are a hallmark of liberalism. It is concluded that the place of uncertainty is central to liberalism and thus unlikely to be marginalized by 'risk society' developments.