Abstract
This paper aims to identify, through a case study of the urban poor community in Metro Manila, a distinct characteristic of contemporary urban governance in the processes of decentralization and liberalization since the early 1990s and, specifically, the subjectivity of urban residents constituted through the particular working of power under such governance. As discussed by Foucault, governmentality can be considered a broad effect of power which organizes and structures the interaction of actors, through which some subjectivity internalizing specific norms and rationality is constituted. The current paper examines one aspect of such interaction between governmentality and subjectivity under a concrete setting of the urban poor community in Metro Manila, but further considers the broader implications of the case by contextualizing it in the growing literature on neoliberal urban governance in various parts of the contemporary world.
