biopower

English

Etymology

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

Noun

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

political technology

• Finnish: biovalta
• French: biopouvoir (fr)
• German: Bio-Macht f

bioenergy — see bioenergy

See also

• biopolitics
• necropower

Further reading

• biopower on Wikipedia.Wikipedia