In this article, we follow the trails of 20th-century psychologist Henry Herbert Goddard’s influential study of the Kallikak family. Goddard’s study is treated as a scientific story with two interlocking dimensions: One is the actual story of the Kallikak family, with literary elements such as setting, plot, and characters. The other dimension is the broader eugenic discourse, a powerful scientific narrative that calls for action in relation to society and the population. The purpose of the article is twofold. Firstly, to analyze the forming and articulations of this story and to explore some of the consequences for governing the population that it has made possible. Secondly, to explore some aspects of what a Foucauldian analytics of government can contribute with in relation to Goddard’s work and the eugenic discourse from the early 20th century to today.

In just a little over 100 years, children's living conditions together with the very notion of childhood have changed dramatically in the Western world. Child labor has been banned and institutions for care and schooling have become the primary life world of children rather than the farm and the household. Children are today perceived as individuals in their own right, as maturing through various developmental stages, and as having certain undeniable social and legal rights in relation to both parents and society. This development can of course be thought of in terms of humanitarian progress. But alongside this development we can also observe an increase in the monitoring and governing of children's lives, to the point that childhood can be thought of as ‘the most intensely governed sector of personal existence’ (Rose, 1999: 123). Against the backdrop of humanistic development on the one hand and an increasing governing of childhood on the other, this chapter explores the historical transformations of childhood through the lens of a few overarching themes: industrialization and urbanization, children's path into public life and citizenship, changed notions of the child's nature and being, and the scientification of the child.

In recent years, many programs and manuals for ‘norm criticism´ have been produced for schools in Sweden. In this article, I situate norm criticism and norm critical pedagogics within discourses of values and norms, legal rights and policies through a close reading of the material produced for the Swedish pre-school. I explore the targets, modes, and techniques of governing the child through norm critical programs and practices. I give special attention to the moral regime inscribed in the norm critical project and how the desirable and undesirable subject is constructed. By problematizing norm critical pedagogics, the article propositions them (contrary to its advocates’ claims) as doing much more than widening social norms, creating tolerance for diversity, or furthering freedom and authenticity. Norm criticism attempts to reshape power-relations, assert the moral authority of professionals, and produce a state-approved social subject.

This article examines the dominant discourses of behaviour and discipline in the debate on schooling and the conduct of school pupils in Swedish professional teacher journals between 1946 and 1962, the formative years of the Swedish comprehensive school. Drawing from the theoretical framework of discourse, governmentality and the fabrication of the subject developed by Michel Foucault, the fabrication and governing of the school pupil is highlighted and analysed. The findings of the study are related to historical research of the period as well as Foucauldian studies where a historical shift of perspectives on discipline and behaviour in the school have been proposed. The result is a detailed analysis of the fabrication and governing of the subject within the dominant discourses of behaviour and discipline during the period, as well as a critical nuancing of the idea of this historical shift.