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1 March 2012 The competing meanings of “biopolitics” in political science
Laurette T. Liesen, Mary Barbara Walsh
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Abstract

The term “biopolitics” carries multiple, sometimes competing, meanings in political science. When the term was first used in the United States in the late 1970s, it referred to an emerging subdiscipline that incorporated the theories and data of the life sciences into the study of political behavior and public policy. But by the mid-1990s, biopolitics was adopted by postmodernist scholars at the American Political Science Association's annual meeting who followed Foucault's work in examining the power of the state on individuals. Michel Foucault first used the term biopolitics in the 1970s to denote social and political power over life. Since then, two groups of political scientists have been using this term in very different ways. This paper examines the parallel developments of the term “biopolitics,” how two subdisciplines gained (and one lost) control of the term, and what the future holds for its meaning in political science.

Association for Politics and the Life Sciences
Laurette T. Liesen and Mary Barbara Walsh "The competing meanings of “biopolitics” in political science," Politics and the Life Sciences 31(1), 2-15, (1 March 2012). https://doi.org/10.2990/31_1-2_2
Published: 1 March 2012
JOURNAL ARTICLE
14 PAGES

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KEYWORDS
anatomo-politics
APLS
APSA
Biopolitics
biopower
control of populations
Foucault
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