English

edit

Etymology

edit

From bio- +‎ power, calque of French biopouvoir, coined by Michel Foucault.

Noun

edit

biopower (uncountable)

  1. (political science) The sum of the various techniques used by modern nation-states to control not individual subjects but their entire populations, as contrasted with traditional modes of power based on the threat of death from a sovereign.
    • 2015, Joe Painter, “Power”, in John Agnew, Virginie Mamadouh, Anna J. Secor, Joanne Sharp, editors, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Political Geography, Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 147:
      The third type of power, biopower, emerges from the eighteenth century onward, and is directed toward populations rather than individual bodies.
  2. Bioenergy.

Translations

edit

See also

edit

Further reading

edit