Securing health and happiness: a note on possibilities and limits

Abstract

This paper argues that the expansion of modern governance into the realm of interpersonal relations, healthy living and personal growth is at odds with the determinate languages which make the social knowable and governance possible. After exploring the genesis and characteristics of this tension, the paper identifies some of the ways the dissonance is accommodated within contemporary professional thought. Attention is given to the means by which the social is rendered governable through simplification, codification and deconstruction, and to the significant part which notions of 'system' and 'motive' play in providing a sense of order. The paper ends by considering some of the social and political implications of these accommodations.