Genealogical Research

Genealogy: “The History of the Present”

Michel Foucault popularized the social science research method, Genealogy, in the 1970s. Drawing on Friedrich Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals, originally published in 1888, Foucault defines genealogy as “the union of erudite knowledge and local memories which allows us to establish a historical knowledge of struggles and to make use of this knowledge tactically today” (Foucault, 1980:83).  Genealogical research is an in-depth analysis into the processes, techniques and procedures that produce knowledge and truth and is an attempt to engage with not only how discourses and beliefs are produced and constructed, but also an examination of their historicity. Genealogies, therefore, are attempts to show that political or social phenomenon do not stand alone as independent occurrences, but instead are part of a larger set of processes and discourses. For example, a genealogical research project on airport security could attempt to show that the increasing use of security in airports did not begin simply with the terrorist attacks of 9/11, but would instead trace the practices, policies, and discourses of US policy makers, politicians, airport workers, etc., to examine the use of security mechanisms in airports over a longer period time. A genealogy of airport security might find that 9/11, though a watershed moment in US history, was not the beginning of increasing security but instead a continuation of a set of security policies already set in place, and as connected to a wider set of conditions of possibility. Vital to genealogical research is an examination of power and power relations.

There is no explicit or accepted How-To on writing a genealogy and there is some criticism on a number of issues, including its validity as a research method, the ways in which researchers are deploying the methodology, and even if Foucault wrongly interpreted Nietzsche’s work. Jacqueline Stevens (2003) wrote a Genealogy of Genealogy and describes how the meaning and use of the word has changed:

“Foucault ([1971] 1977a) claims to derive his devotion to genealogy from Nietzsche, yet Nietzsche himself mocked genealogists and their enterprise. Approaching Nietzsche through Deleuze ([1962] 1983), Foucault misreads the single text in which Nietzsche discusses the concept of genealogy (Nietzsche [1887] 1967b), and seems thereby to have led a herd of academics away from Nietzsche’s own meaning of ‘Genealogie’ and into what by now may have become a revaluation of the word. For an elite circle of students, “genealogy” has come to mean something quite different from its ordinary use and etymology”

For the remainder of this essay, I will focus on recent scholarship and the ways in which people have interpreted and conducted genealogical research. The following five articles address a wide variety of topics and each deploys the genealogical method differently. 

“With Numbers in Place: Security, Territory, and the Production of Calculable Space” written by Reuben Rose-Redwood (2011), is a “genealogy of calculable space” (295).  Rose-Redwood examines how mapping and street addressing systems in urban areas have contributed to a reconfiguration of territory in the U.S.  Taking a particular event: a riot in Pennsylvania that led to a city ordinance of visibly displaying apartment numbers on the outside of buildings, Rose Redwood describes the ways in which GIS mapping, geo-coding, and street numbering systems are part of a larger process of making the sovereign space and territory calculable, visible and legible.  This is why, Rose-Redwood writes, “a genealogy of geo-coding practices must consider not only the digital ontologies of geospatial databases themselves but, more important, the points of contact between spatial representations, ontologies, and the world” (299). In addition to over a decade of archival work on a century of street addressing, Rose-Redwood also conducted 30 “semistructured in-depth interviews” “in 2008 with street addressing coordinators, GIS specialists, emergency response mangers, county commissioners, postal officials, planners, private contractors and local residents.” (304). By interviewing a wide array of professionals and people involved in the mapping and calculation of neighborhoods, Rose-Redwood is examining one of the fundamental aspects of genealogical research: power relations and how different actors are involved in the multiples processes that work to create knowledges and practices.

In Raphael Fischler’s article “Toward a genealogy of planning: zoning in the welfare state” (1998), Fischler critiques the simplistic images of modern and postmodern planning. Modern planning is seen as a strictly top-down approach with experts giving universal directives, while, in contrast, postmodern planning is seen as a more collaborative process of negotiations between local and national experts. Fischler, by conducting genealogical research, argues that the difference between modern and postmodern planning is not as black and white as normally assumed. Quoting Foucault, Fischler explains genealogical research as understanding “the origins of those things we take for granted today” (391) and that “Foucault himself ‘problematized’, that is, turned into a problem, the practices we generally accept as given, questioning our intellectual and institutional habits as historical products. This is the goal of genealogical analysis” (392). The main goal for Fischler in this article is to use genealogy as a research method to understand the assumptions and discourses about how society understands urban planning. Additionally, it is important to note the use of  “Toward a Genealogy” in the article title, Fischler does not actually provide a complete genealogy of planning, he instead is setting up the ways in which genealogical methods could be deployed to understand some of the sets of assumptions about urban planning. Drawing on a discourse analysis of urban planning manuals, academic articles, and government policies from the last 100 years, Fischler tracks the development of urban planning within a historical context. According to Fischler, the use of genealogy as a research method to study urban planning allows for an examination of “the descent of modern planning from multiple innovations and its emergence as a coherent mode of action” and that “genealogy makes us realize the extent to which urban planning is part and parcel of a larger system of government”(403).

Brett Christophers in his 2006 article, “Circuits of Capital, Genealogy, and Television Geographies” deploys a genealogical method to examine how television program choices in the UK can be understood using Marx’s concept of circuits of capital and David Harvey’s work on the geographies of capital. Christophers argues that neither Marx nor Harvey can fully grasp the theoretical complexities of the processes in which capital is valorized in social interactions. He writes, “for my purposes, it seems clear in thinking about television and its curious geographies, that working with the concept of capital circulation is not incompatible with questions of genealogy; rather it can inform and structure such a genealogy” (932).  Christophers argues that to understand why a particular person in the United Kingdom chooses a particular television show (in particular, the television show: Battlestar Galactica) is not based purely on interest or availability, but instead as an entire genealogical history that can be traced and understood through the lens of the circuits of capital. Christophers suggests “we can only properly understand the possibility of  [the Battlestar Galactica viewer’s] specific consumption experience by situating it within wider circuits of money commodities and capitalist production”(948). This article, therefore, uses the genealogical method to examine seemingly disparate objects (for example, US debt lenders and the television show Battlestar Galactica) and finds their connections and interrelatedness to expand upon a particular theory (in this case, circuits of capital).

Jean-Baptiste Fressoz in his 2007 article, “Beck Back in the 19th Century: Towards a Genealogy of Risk Society” attempts to historicize and question the starting point of Ulrich Beck’s Risk Society (1992). Fressoz writes “In this article I would like to challenge the supposed radical novelty of our situation. I believe that the historical narrative underlying contemporary literature on technological risk is (in part at least) a construction which, for the sake of sociological argument, has reduced past risks to somewhat reassuring categories” (334). He argues that the relationships between the technologies of the late 1800s and early 1900s and society had more similarities with the current epoch of risk than differences. He deploys the genealogical method by first discussing the works of multiple authors of the 19^th century who addressed the relationships between risk, modernization and society and second, by drawing on actual events, such as the debates about vaccinations in 1800 in France, that utilized a similar narrative of risk to show that the risk society had its beginning much earlier than Beck suggests. Fressoz argues that the genealogy of the risk society does not prove Beck’s thesis wrong, nor make his argument null, but instead expands upon the concept and adds depth to the existing research.

The final article, by Wendy Larner and William Walters’ (2002), “The political rationality of ‘new regionalism’: Toward a genealogy of the region” examines the use of the “region” in scholarship on globalization, the national and the supranational level.  Larner and Walters argue that existing literature gives a limited and segmented portrayal of the region, they write:

“Otherwise diverse analyses, that examine regionalism in relation to globalization, the history of trading blocs, the security intrigues of states, emerging forms of world capitalism, or distinctive cultures of capitalism, tend to naturalize or ‘inevitablize’ the region. They presume, and thereby help constitute, a particular interpretation of international space. Consequently, they fail to get at what is particular, novel, or unusual about regions” (391).

Therefore, Larner and Walters are expanding on the existing literature about “new regionalisms” by deploying Foucault’s notions of governmentality and the relationship between power and knowledge. They suggest that applying the genealogical research method is not an attempt to prove that regionalism is the evolutionary successor of imperialism and developmentalism, but rather, that a genealogical method “promises to heighten our understanding of certain power relations. By comparing the political rationality of regionalism with those of imperialism and developmentalism, we bring features into relief that might otherwise be treated as self evident” (395). Additionally, Larner and Walters are not attempting to give a complete history of regionalism, nor give a structural theory about historical transformations, but instead compare regionalism with other kinds of governmentality. 

Foucault referred to his work on the genealogy of power as an "anti-method". This may be a reference to the fact that genealogical research is not a totalizing theory, nor a historical examination of cause and effect, nor a structuralist account on the evolutionary progression from one way of being to another. Instead, genealogies are always in motion, never working toward a particular end, this can be seen in how three of the articles highlighted were called "Toward a Genealogy..." Employing the genealogical method requires a number of other research methods from the analysis of historical texts, to structured interviews, to ethnographies. Furthermore this method, or perhaps anti-method, requires not clarifying and explaining, but instead problematizing an issue.

Works Cited

Christophers, Brett. "Circuits of Capital, Genealogy, and Television Geographies." Antipode (2006).

Fischler, Raphael. "Toward a Genealogy of Planning: Zoning and the Welfare State." Planning Perspectives 13.4 (1998): 389-410.

Foucault, Michel, and Colin Gordon. Power/knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. New York: Pantheon, 1980.

Fressoz, Jean-Baptiste. "Beck Back in the 19th Century: Towards a Genealogy of Risk Society." History and Technology 23.4 (2007): 333-50.

Larner, Wendy, and William Walters. "The Political Rationality of ‘‘new Regionalism’’: Toward a Genealogy of the Region." Theory and Society 31 (2002): 391-432.

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. On the Genealogy of Morals. New York: Vintage, 1967.

Rose-Redwood, Reuben. "With Numbers in Place: Security, Territory, and the Production of Calculable Space." Annals of the Association of American Geographers 102.2 (2011): 295-315. 

Stevens, Jacqueline. "On the Morals of Genealogy." Political Theory 31 (2003)