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The competing meanings of “biopolitics” in political scienceSource: Politics and the Life Sciences, 31(1):2-15.Published By: Association for Politics and the Life SciencesDOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2990/31_1-2_2URL: http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.2990/31_1-2_2

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The competing meanings of ‘‘biopolitics’’ in political scienceBiological and postmodern approaches to politics

Laurette T. Liesen

Department of Political Science

Lewis University

One University Parkway

Romeoville, IL 60446

[email protected]

Mary Barbara Walsh

Department of Political Science

Elmhurst College

190 Prospect Avenue

Elmhurst, IL 60126

[email protected]

ABSTRACT. The term ‘‘biopolitics’’ carries multiple, sometimes competing, meanings in political science. Whenthe term was first used in the United States in the late 1970s, it referred to an emerging subdiscipline thatincorporated 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 ScienceAssociation’s annual meeting who followed Foucault’s work in examining the power of the state onindividuals. Michel Foucault first used the term biopolitics in the 1970s to denote social and political powerover life. Since then, two groups of political scientists have been using this term in very different ways. Thispaper examines the parallel developments of the term ‘‘biopolitics,’’ how two subdisciplines gained (and onelost) control of the term, and what the future holds for its meaning in political science.

Key words: Biopolitics, biopower, APLS, APSA, Foucault, knowledge regimes, anatomo-politics, control of

populations, politics and the life sciences

By the beginning of the twenty-first century, it

has become quite clear that the term ‘‘bio-

politics’’ carries competing meanings in politi-

cal science. When the term was used among U.S.

political scientists in the 1970s, it referred to what they

had hoped would be an emerging subdiscipline that

incorporated the theories and data of the life sciences

into the study of politics, political behavior and public

policy. This group of political scientists organized

themselves, established a journal, and published many

articles and books using this approach. However, by

2004 other political scientists were using the term

‘‘biopolitics’’ in a very different way. At that year’s

American Political Science Association’s annual meet-

ing in Chicago, political scientists were using it in a

way which corresponded with a new understanding of

the term adopted by post-modernist scholars who

followed Michel Foucault’s work in examining the

power of the state over individuals. Foucault first used

the term ‘‘biopolitics’’ in the 1970s to denote how

social and political power is used to structure and

control human life, and his concept and method of

analyzing political structures is currently used across

disciplines, including political science.doi: 10.2990/31_1-2_2

2 POLITICS AND THE LIFE SCIENCES � SPRING/FALL 2012 � VOL. 31, NO. 1-2

Consequently, there are now two groups of political

scientists in the U.S. using this term in qualitatively

different, if not contradictory, ways in order to

understand politics. The shared use of this term is

difficult and confusing. In light of this development,

this paper examines the past and present uses of the

term biopolitics, shows how two very different

interpretations of biopolitics have emerged, and

suggests what the future may hold for its meaning in

political science.

The evolution of the meaning of ‘‘biopolitics’’

Prior to the 1970s, when a group of American

political scientists attempted to create a new subdisci-

pline around the idea, other scholars had used the term

‘‘biopolitics’’ in a variety of contexts, particularly

outside of the U.S. during the early part of the

twentieth century. According to Lemke,1 the first

political scientist to use the term biopolitics was a

Swedish scholar named Rudolf Kjellen at the Univer-

sity of Uppsala in the 1920s. He had an organic view of

the state in which various groups and classes struggled

to articulate their interests and ideas, and he considered

the state to be a ‘‘life form’’ that preceded individuals

and their choices. The term ‘‘biopolitics’’ was also used

in 1938 by Canadian novelist and self-taught biologist

Morley Roberts in his book Bio-politics.2 This specu-

lative and analogical book discussed the association

between biological phenomena and human political

behavior. He argued that the correct model for the

world’s states would be similar to a loose association of

cell and protozoa colonies.3,4,5

Unfortunately, during the Nazi period, members of

the Nazi Party used the term ‘‘biopolitics’’ to describe

their racist and organic concept of the state. For

example, in 1934 Hans Reiter, the head of the Reich

Health Department, used the term ‘‘biopolitics’’ in a

speech in reference to the Nazi’s new biologically based

concept of the people and state and their program to

increase the German population and ‘‘improve’’ their

genetic material.6

On account of the associations between Social

Darwinism, eugenics, and the Nazi program, Darwin-

ian ideas about behavior were dismissed by the social

sciences, and anthropologists, psychologists, and soci-

ologists were turning to cultural and environmental

explanations. During the 1920s, for example, Darwin-

ian analyses were associated with those who argued

that differences in intelligence were rooted in race (p.

134).5 Although, according to Dryzek and Schlosberg,

political scientists did not actively participate in the

demise of Darwinism in the social sciences (p. 133),5

most political scientists during these decades dismissed

evolutionary approaches as a type of eugenics. In line

with a preference for learned or environmental

explanations of behavior, political scientists by the

1960s embraced rational choice theory and its models

as a means to understand individual decision-making

and to lead political science in a more empirical

direction.7 According to Somit and Peterson, rational

choice theory fit very comfortably with the prevailing

paradigm in political science that environmental forces

and socialization were the dominant explanations for

what people want and why.8

By the 1960s, in hopes of gaining a greater

understanding of human nature and revitalizing the

study of political behavior, some political scientists

called on their peers to revisit the possible contribu-

tions biology could make to the discipline. In 1963

James C. Davies argued that the improvements and

insights in psychobiology, neurophysiology, and endo-

crinology could help political scientists understand

human nature and aspects of political behavior.9 In his

criticism of systems analysts, Davies proposed that

political scientists examine the ‘‘black box’’ where all

behavior is controlled—the brain.10 The first political

scientist to reintroduce the term ‘‘biopolitics’’ in

reference to the importance of biology to political

science was Lynton Caldwell in 1964. Caldwell

discussed the impact of biological information on the

understanding of political phenomena and public

policy. He was particularly interested in policy issues

that involved the environment and individuals’ phys-

iology (i.e., drug use, biochemical control of personal-

ity and reproduction, and bioweapons).11

By the 1970s a group of political scientists formally

adopted the term biopolitics to define their interest in

politics and biology, forming the Association for

Politics and the Life Sciences (APLS). According to

Somit and Peterson, biopolitics became the term to

describe the interdisciplinary approach used by schol-

ars in political science who maintained that data and

theories from the life sciences (namely, evolutionary

biology and ethology), as well as biological research

Competing meanings of biopolitics

POLITICS AND THE LIFE SCIENCES � SPRING/FALL 2012 � VOL. 31, NO. 1-2 3

techniques, could lead to a more complete understand-

ing of political behavior.12 In other words, ‘‘biopolitics

is an orientation to political inquiry that acknowledges

the person as a complex, rational, emotional, and

biological creature’’ (p. 8).3 These political scientists

examined politics as a social and biological phenom-

enon, considering both biological variables and envi-

ronmental influences in their research. Instead of

adopting a reductionist and deterministic approach

(p. 22–23)13 maintaining that individuals lack will and

choice (p. 189),14 this approach takes into consider-

ation the fact that environment and culture interact

with the individual’s behavioral repertoire. As Roger

Masters explains in The Nature of Politics:

Human behavior is the product of an integration,

within the brain and central nervous system of each

individual, of phylogenetically selected information

transmitted by the genes, historically selected informa-

tion transmitted by language and cultural symbols, and

individually learned information acquired during the

life cycle. . . Individuals and societies can and do evolve

new patterns of behavior, just as every species including

our own evolves new physical and behavioral traits. . .;

(p. 135)15

By the 1970s, it was evident that there were general

categories emerging within this newly defined biopo-

litics literature. Peterson and Somit (p. 334)16 delin-

eated the major streams of biopolitical research

emerging at the time:

� Essays that make the case for a more biologically

oriented political science.� Ethological and evolutionary analyses of political

behavior.� Physiological and pharmacological aspects of

political behavior.� Issues of public policy raised by recent advances in

biology.

According to Somit, the term biopolitics gained

popularity by 1970 through Thomas L. Thorson’s

philosophical book, Biopolitics, which addressed de-

bate about scientific method within political science (p.

210).17 According to Wiegele, Thorson’s major contri-

bution was calling attention to the different ways

classical and modern scholars viewed human nature—

humans as part of nature versus humans as separate

from nature (p. 31).3 In his well-regarded book,

Thorson argued that political scientists’ understanding

of science was based too much on a mechanistic model

derived from nineteenth century physics, and thus too

limiting because they did not consider nature, human

development, time, and change. He defined biopolitics

as ‘‘politics understood by man as evolution becomes

conscious of itself’’ (p. 210).18 Taking time seriously,

Thorson maintains that scientific laws are temporary

and limited, and human activity, including politics,

must be examined in terms of what we understand

about nature. In other words, we cannot assume that

there are fixed laws of behavior, and we must realize

that humans are evolving.19

During the 1960s and 1970s, seemingly unbe-

knownst to the members of the newly formed APLS,

there were other conceptual understandings of bio-

politics emerging in Europe. Instead of examining the

biological bases of politics, these European scholars

used the term biopolitics to refer to all efforts to solve

global environmental problems in terms of the health-

related, environmental, and population policies for the

human species. In addition to environmental concerns,

European scholars in more recent decades also became

concerned about the impact of biotechnology on

human reproduction, health, and life itself, calling the

examination of how humans have become the object of

the life sciences ‘‘biopolitics’’ (see Lemke, pp. 426–

428).1 Finally, in the 1970s another conceptualization

of biopolitics was developed by Michel Foucault, the

French postmodern philosopher whose work is foun-

dational in the emergence of the latest definition of

‘‘biopolitics.’’

The work of Michel Foucault

Biopolitics as an historical phenomenonAs is apparent from the foregoing discussion, the

term ‘‘biopolitics’’ carries multiple, sometimes compet-

ing, meanings in political science. Michel Foucault first

used the terms ‘‘biopower’’ and ‘‘biopolitics’’ in the late

1970s to denote social and political power over life

itself. This use of the term biopolitics represents a

departure from previous employments of the term.

Foucault’s use of the term biopolitics connotes neither

a method for approaching politics nor a subdiscipline.

Nor does the term, for Foucault, indicate an organic

Liesen and Walsh


conception of political society. Rather, Foucault adopts

the term to point to particular phenomena in moder-

nity, to point to a new expression of the historical

confluence of power and knowledge. The term

biopolitics, for Foucault, points to the ‘‘polymorphous

techniques of power’’ (p. 11)20 or ‘‘deployments of

power and knowledge’’ (p. 73),20 which permeate

modern society. Biopolitics designates strategies of

power which are pervasive in modern society. In

modern society, political power becomes a positive

(i.e., constituting) force in society—not merely prohib-

iting, disciplining and punishing but aggressively

molding, shaping and forming human behavior, per-

sonalities and desires. More broadly, modernity is

marked by biopower, ‘‘an explosion of numerous and

diverse techniques for achieving the subjugation of

bodies and the control of populations’’ (p. 140).20

Elaborating Foucault’s notion of biopower demands

an understanding of his notion of history and his

historicist method. Foucault rejects any notion of

history as linear, intentional, or entirely knowable.

History is not a straight line for Foucault, either

through time or power. History is neither an ongoing

expression of dominators and dominated—or of

political advancements or of economic revolutions.

There is no unified subject working his/her way

through time, no grand plan or evolutionary imperative

(pp. 43–44).21 Rather, power and knowledge together

form the societies in which men (Foucault always uses

the pronoun men) are constituted. As Foucault

explains, ‘‘A history of truth should not be understood

in a sense of reconstruction of the genesis of the true

through the elimination or rectification of errors; nor

history of the true which would constitute an historical

succession of rationalities’’ (p. 35).22 Instead, history

‘‘would involve the genealogy of regimes of veridic-

tion’’ (p. 35).22 In other words, for Foucault, the ‘‘will

to knowledge’’ is manifested in history through society,

language, norms, institutions, academic disciplines,

disciplinary rules and more.

History, however, is circular and discursive—the

infinitely complex product of intentional and acciden-

tal forces. Exploring history demands a method that

can pull these forces apart and perhaps discern

discontinuities, boundaries, and ruptures. In his work,

Foucault develops three axes, or levels of analysis, to

investigate these mutating expressions of knowledge

and power in history: archeology, genealogy, and

ethics.23 Archeology is the approach Foucault develops

to uncover the ongoing, necessary, and compound

relationship between power and knowledge in history.

The archeologist explores the power/knowledge re-

gimes (‘‘episteme’’) of past political cultures to reveal

the limits and possibilities of that discursive order, and

perhaps to shed light on his own time. Probing the

limits of past and current historical truth, the

archeologist investigates historical phenomena at the

borders of the dominant discourses, documenting the

silences, the madness, and the chaos. The archeologist

explores that which is unexplainable given the domi-

nant discourses, in other words, facts and idea that do

not fit into prevailing paradigms and frameworks. In

doing so, the archeologist reveals, through contrast, the

limits of the prevalent discourses.

Genealogy involves the critical examination of these

episteme (truth regimes) for power structures. The

genealogist looks beyond a description of past or

current truth regimes to an analysis of the expressions

of power emanating from those truth regimes. The

genealogist explores and sketches the power relation-

ships endemic in a particular culture. Gary Gutting

points to Foucault’s Discipline and Punish as the

‘‘fullest expression of genealogy’’ because this work ‘‘is

concerned with practices and institutions rather than

experiences and ideas’’ (p. 13).24 For Foucault, ethics

looks not for some transcendent moral order but for

the ramifications of these truth discourses and power

dynamics on the development of the self.23 According

to Davidson, ethics in Foucault’s calculation is ‘‘a study

of the self’s relationship to itself’’ (p. 228).23

In an in interview from 1982, just two years before

he died, Foucault summarized these three dimensions

of his work. First, he explained that he has studied,

‘‘the relations we have to truth through scientific

knowledge, to those ‘truth games’ which are so

important in civilization and in which we are both

subject and object’’ (p. 15);25 that is, he studied

archeology. Second, he characterized his work as

illuminating ‘‘the relationships we have to others

through those strange strategies and power relation-

ships’’ (p. 15);25 that is, he studied genealogy. And,

finally, most profoundly towards the end of his life, he

interrogated ‘‘the relationships between truth, power

and self’’ (p. 15);25 that is, he studied ethics. Foucault’s

self-description of his life’s work reveals that his

method was largely descriptive and historical, elabo-



rating the complex dynamics between power, knowl-

edge, and self.23

In his genealogical analysis of sexuality, Foucault

discerns the contours of a new power/knowledge

dynamic: biopower. Foucault’s study of the history of

sexuality revealed a growing power over the human

body and humanity itself. According to Foucault,

premodern power was mainly juridical, negative and

prohibitive, focusing on state and sovereignty, vio-

lence and rights (pp. 88–89).20 But, in modernity a

new power/knowledge has emerged which is both

positive and totalizing. Foucault explains, ‘‘this

formidable power of death . . . now presents itself as

the counterpart of a power that exerts a positive

influence on life, that endeavors to administer,

optimize, and multiply it, subjecting it to precise

controls and comprehensive regulations’’ (p. 137).20

One way Foucault confirmed the increasingly positive

(i.e., invasive) impact of this discursive power on

human bodies and on the species as a whole was by

demonstrating how sex and sexuality are not only

historical constructs but also, in modernity, have

become the focus of the multiple forces of public

power and manipulation.

Biopower operates in two domains: it seeks power

over the human body and power over the population as

a whole. Biopower aimed at the body Foucault calls

‘‘anatomo-politics.’’ This anatomo-politics is ‘‘centered

on the body as a machine: its disciplining, the

optimization of its capabilities, the extortion of its

forces . . . its integration into systems of efficient and

economic controls’’ (p. 141).20 Biopower aimed at the

species, aimed at altering demographics of populations

in terms of ‘‘propagation, births and mortality, the level

of health, life expectancy and longevity, with all the

conditions that can cause these to vary’’ (p. 141),20

Foucault calls biopolitics. In sum, as anatomo-politics

disciplines the body, biopolitics regulates the popula-

tion (p. 382).26 Together these two mechanisms,

anatomo-politics and biopolitics, constitute biopower

and aim for ‘‘the subjugation of bodies and the control

of populations’’ (p. 140).20

In this way, biopower seeks to manipulate and

control human existence at two levels—at the level of

the individual and at the level of society. It controls the

individual by prohibiting conduct such as masturba-

tion, defining some activities as perverted, or celebrat-

ing other activities, such as heterosexual sex, as

natural. It controls the population by attempting to

alter not only individual ‘‘truth’’ and conduct but also

the distribution of certain behaviors (and necessarily

beliefs) in a demographics of society (p. 154).27 So, for

example, biopower seeks to manage the mother/child

relationship at both the level of the body and the

species. Multiple forces direct and coerce the parenting

relationship. Even what and how the child is fed

becomes the product of multiple, discursive power

relationships. How and what a child is fed becomes the

subject of political and economic calculations. Whether

a child is breast fed or bottle fed, or fed on a schedule

or on demand, becomes a subject of public discourse

and coercion—a coercion which families, schools,

hospitals, the workplace and government all partici-

pate. In this way, biopower disciplines the body.

But biopower also regulates the population. It does

so, for instance, by measuring and calculating the

demographics associated with how and when a child is

fed, adjusting the social environment to promote the

desired outcome (pp. 243–244).22 What Foucault

would call a ‘‘veritable discursive explosion’’ (p. 11)20

develops around the mother/child relationship. This

normalizing, discursive power becomes tied in multiple

ways to the development of capitalism,20 and the

creation and maintenance of an efficient labor force.

Biopower seeks to regulate the mother/child relation-

ship, focusing, in part, on providing for the ‘‘controlled

insertion of bodies into the machinery of production

and the adjustment of the phenomena of population to

economic processes’’ (pp. 229–230).22

As this example demonstrates, these two mecha-

nisms of biopower, anatomo-politics and biopolitics,

have a necessary and complicated relationship and are

at times indistinguishable. Foucault himself sometimes

appears to use the term ‘‘biopolitics’’ as synonymous

with ‘‘biopower,’’ especially in a series of lectures titled

The Birth of Biopolitics delivered shortly after The

History of Sexuality was published. Indeed the

secondary literature on Foucault, at least the secondary

literature written or translated into English, frequently

uses the terms ‘‘biopower’’ and ‘‘biopolitics’’ inter-

changeably.

The emergence of biopower, and biopolitics, in

history reflects a paradox internal to Foucault’s

thought. For Foucault, persons are both formed and

forming, created and creating, that is, formed within

historical and epistemic regimes which they themselves

Liesen and Walsh


create.28 Human nature both produces and is produced

by the forces which Foucault calls biopolitics. This

paradox is reflected in Foucault’s method, especially his

turn towards what he calls ‘‘ethics’’ later in his life.

Throughout his work, Foucault points to ‘‘how the

subject constituted itself . . . through certain practices

that were also games of truth, practices of power, and

so on.’’ Foucault explains how he had to ‘‘reject a priori

theories of the subject in order to analyze the

relationship that may exist between the constitution

of the subject or different forms of the subject and

games of truth, practices of power, and so on’’ (p.

33).29 In his ethics, Foucault turns to an explicit

consideration of the self in its relationship to power

and truth. As power creates truth and truth reflects

power, the self both generates—and is generated by—

power and truth. Foucault is acutely aware of this

paradox,22 a paradox he perceives to be integral to the

human condition.

This elucidates Foucault’s fear of biopower, and its

mechanism—biopolitics. He fears biopower’s attempt

to control, to squash resistance at the level of both

thought and behavior. He fears biopower’s intrusive,

controlling extension into modern life. In organizing

around the ‘‘management of life rather than the menace

of death’’ (p. 147),20 biopower reaches beyond the

scope of premodern juridical power. Foucault fears not

only the extension of power which biopower repre-

sents, but also the dispersion across and between many

different sorts of relationships.30 Biopower is not

merely governmental power; it is invisible, plural (p.

84),28 discursive, pervasive and enforced through

myriad power relationships, including hospitals,

schools, and families. In the guise of promoting public

welfare and health, biopower threatens to manage

human life, focusing on the body as a site of profit and

control, for economic and political ends. Genetics,

education, migration, parenting, medical care and

more all become subjects of analysis and calculation;

each becomes a matter of investment and expenditure

aimed at maximizing the human ‘‘abilities-machine’’

(p. 228).22 Foucault perceives the mounting danger of

‘‘an omnipresent government, a government which

nothing escapes, a government which conforms to the

rules of right’’ (p. 296).22 This omnipresent govern-

ment conforms to the dictates of the capitalist

economic order, managing every sphere of society.

Moreover, the menace of this ‘‘devious and discreet

form of power’’ (p. 11)20 reaches beyond the normal-

izing, invasive character of biopower; it threatens the

population as a whole. Biopolitics weighs, calculates

and attempts to manipulate population demographics.

This control of the population as a whole becomes the

focus of public discussion and subject to a variety of

power mechanisms, including explicit government

regulations and tacit social coercion. Now, what is at

stake ‘‘is the biological existence of a population’’ (p.

137).20 As a result, the ‘‘power to expose a whole

population to death is the underside of the power to

guarantee an individual’s continued existence’’ (p.

137).20 As Foucault explains, ‘‘Wars are no longer in

the name of a sovereign who must be defended; they

are waged on behalf of the existence of everyone; entire

populations are mobilized for the purpose of wholesale

slaughter in the name of life necessity’’ (p. 137).20

Indeed, recognizing biopolitics, its scope and depth,

helps explain a new modern danger to populations: ‘‘If

genocide is indeed the dream of modern powers . . . it is

because power is situated and exercised at the level of

life, the species, the race, and the large-scale phenom-

ena of population’’ (p. 137).20

Comparing scientific biopolitics toFoucauldian biopolitics

This history of the use of the term ‘‘biopolitics’’

clearly indicates that there are now two competing and

contradictory usages of the term by two different

groups of scholars. Those who examine the theories

and data of the life sciences to help understand politics

and public policy advocate what we will call here

‘‘scientific biopolitics,’’ while those scholars who

examine the historical manifestations of power on

individuals and society have adopted ‘‘Foucauldian

biopolitics.’’ The foundational difference between each

use of the term biopolitics is related to methodologies.

Scientific biopolitics integrates the insights and data of

the empirical and rationalistic life sciences to the study

of politics. In contrast, postmodernist biopolitics is not

a method or approach but designates particular

phenomena in modern politics which Foucault’s

historical method detects. As a result, scientific

biopolitics and Foucauldian biopolitics differ substan-

tially in their understanding, analyses and approach to



politics. The following discussion explicitly compares

scientific biopolitics and Foucauldian biopolitics in

terms of history and sex, highlighting the substantial,

indeed irreconcilable, differences between the two

current, competing uses of the term biopolitics.

HistoryScholars who study scientific biopolitics do study

history—the evolutionary history of humans. Biologi-

cal evolution is a change in the properties of organisms

within a species that goes beyond the lifetime of a

single member. These changes occur at the genetic level

and transpire from one generation to the next (pp. 7–

8).31 Contemporary evolutionary science is built upon

Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection which

begins with the observation that all living things tend

to overproduce, while at the same time a species’

population often remains stable from generation to

generation. There are differences among individuals

within a species that promote their survival and

reproduction, and these differences are hereditary,

giving some offspring advantages in a given environ-

ment. Thus, adaptations are passed on to the next

generation because they have enhanced the survival

and reproduction of the previous generation. Any

evolutionarily determined traits can be modified over

time as an individual encounters new pressures from

the environment. Scholars who use scientific biopolitics

demonstrate awareness of history and social context in

the study of human social behavior by taking into

account individual variability and interactions with the

environment.

Like contemporary evolutionary science, scientific

biopolitics does not assume a notion of progress.

Individuals within a species, including humans, can be

fit (physically capable for survival and reproduction)

for the environments within which they find them-

selves, but as a species they can also be vulnerable to

future death/extinction due to changes in the environ-

ment, genetic drift (random changes in the alleles), or

just random death. For proponents of scientific

biopolitics, evolutionary history is the framework to

study the survival and reproduction of humans not

only in terms of physiology but also in terms of social

and political behaviors, such as cooperation and

aggression, which can influence individual survival

and reproduction.

Foucault’s understanding of history rejects any

meaning or truth, including evolutionary truth, as

operating outside of history and the truth/knowledge

dynamic. History is a history of truth systems,

episteme. The key to studying history is the investiga-

tion of power. Indeed, in investigating power and

knowledge in history, Foucault concludes that there is

‘‘no escaping from power’’ (p. 82).20 Evolution,

biology and sex only acquire meaning within history,

within particular truth systems. Truth itself is an

artifact of the ongoing historical power/knowledge

dynamic. After all, truth is an historical phenomenon

and each of us is historically constructed. Biopower is

one constellation of this historical power/knowledge/

truth dynamic.

The natural and social sciences, and what we call

here scientific biopolitics, are also products (and

producers) of particular truth regimes (episteme). As

such, they are also prone to being captured by the

prevailing power discourses. As he would criticize the

conception of biopolitics articulating the intersection

between politics and the life sciences, Foucault rejects

the social sciences as totalizing and reductionist. There

is no exteriority of power, or history, which the social

sciences—or politics and the life sciences—can refer-

ence. The social sciences express the dominant power

discourses. For example, in considering anthropology,

Foucault concludes that ‘‘anthropology has proven

worthy of the whole modern deployment of sexuality

and the theoretical discourses it generates’’ (p. 110).20

The person whom the social sciences create is an

historical construct, as are the various disciplines and

subdisciplines associated with the social sciences (p.

45).28

Sex/sexuality and powerBoth Foucauldian and scientific biopolitics study

sexuality and power. While the subject matter is the

same, the approach and methodological differences

result in very different understandings of the relation-

ship between power and sex and sexuality. Scientific

biopolitics begins with a biological definition of sex,

which is the process of combining genes from more

than one source. In mammals, normally, an individual

offspring inherits genes from two parents, but is

identical to neither. From a biological perspective, the

relative size of gametes defines male and female: female

Liesen and Walsh


gametes, or ova, are larger than male gametes, or

sperm.

An important question within evolutionary biology

is ‘‘Why does sex occur at all?’’ It is especially puzzling

since there are several costs incurred because of sexual

recombination that entails the breakup of genotypes

and their recombination, the 50 percent reduction of

an individual’s genes in the next generation, and the

time and energy involved. For many mammals,

especially primates, reproduction requires not only

mating effort—energy spent competing for, attracting,

and provisioning a mate, but also parental effort—time

and energy to bring the offspring to maturity. Despite

these costs, there are important advantages in sexual

reproduction that benefit the individual organism.

Thus, sexual reproduction provides genetic flexibility

for species facing changing environments, and is

especially adaptive for fighting parasites and disease

that may have proliferated in the host of the present

generation. There are thus genetic advantages for both

sexes in pursuing sexual reproduction. This reproduc-

tive cooperation does not preclude, however, an

ongoing conflict of reproductive interests between

males and females over the means of producing and

raising offspring. 32

Sexual reproduction has led to physical and behav-

ioral differences between males and females. To

account for the extravagant traits males acquired that

did not appear to be adaptations to the environment,

Darwin proposed the theory of sexual selection. This

type of selection occurs between the individuals of one

sex, typically the males, for mating access with the

other, usually the females. It is the male that usually

develops conspicuous characteristics or behavioral

habits. Selection occurs when males compete with each

other for access to females, and when females choose

particular males with whom to mate. The result of this

competition among the males is not death, but an

increased number of offspring. During the twentieth

century, biologists built upon Darwin’s theories of

natural and sexual selection to develop the theories of

kin selection, reciprocal altruism, and parental invest-

ment, which have provided explanations for altruistic

behaviors, competitive/aggressive behaviors, and male

and female behavioral differences across species.

Males and females have competing reproductive

strategies as both sexes strive for reproductive success.

While males tend to focus on access to females and

controlling resources, females focus on their choice of

males and access to resources. Feminist evolutionists,

such as Sarah Blaffer Hrdy,33 Barbara Smuts,34 and

Patricia Adair Gowaty,35 have all demonstrated that

females are active participants in reproduction and

have their own interests, and these interests do conflict

at times with males’ interests. They have demonstrated

that despite male attempts to control female reproduc-

tive choices, females have found counter-strategies to

overcome these constraints.

Men and women both strive to achieve reproductive

success (or at least attain that which in the past led to

reproductive success), but there are conflicts over how

each sex can best accomplish this goal. Men and

women are thus involved in a micro-level political

relationship as they cooperate or compete in pursuit of

resources, power, and status.36 In comparison to other

primates, the social and economic dominance and

control that men wield over women is unique in its

pervasiveness.33 Evolutionary perspectives can advance

our understanding of sexual inequality and patriarchal

structures that does not merely attribute it to innate

male aggressiveness and physical strength. Scholars

using a scientific biopolitical method examine the

various environmental, social, and cultural variables

that impact the development of this type of inequali-

ty.37

In sharp contrast to scientific biopolitics, sex and

sexuality are determined in history for Foucault, not by

some biological or evolutionary imperative exterior to

history. The meanings we identify with our bodies and

sexuality are rooted in history, power and knowledge/

truth regimes, not in biology.38 There is no truth, or

ultimate nature, to sex or sexuality beyond history and

the multiple discursive dynamics of power and

knowledge. In history, a variety of power matrices

have sought to control sexuality, to discipline, regulate,

manipulate and form sexuality. Sex, far from being a

biologically ordained structure, is culturally and

historically constructed, and therefore vulnerable, like

any other human relationship, to coercion and

manipulation by dominant power matrices. ‘‘Sexuality

is not the most intractable element in power relations,

but rather one of those endowed with the greatest

instrumentality: useful for the greatest number of

maneuvers . . .’’ (p. 103).20

In The History of Sexuality, Foucault points to four

strategies, or mechanisms of power and knowledge,



which demonstrate how sexuality is produced: the

‘‘hysterization of women’s bodies,’’ the ‘‘pedagogiza-

tion of children’s sexuality,’’ the ‘‘socialization of

procreative behavior,’’ and the ‘‘psychiatrization of

perverse pleasure’’ (pp. 104–105).20 Together these

power/knowledge mechanisms demonstrate the growth

of public power beyond the premodern repressive,

disciplinary, negative juridical approach to the modern

knowledge/power dynamic: biopower. Families,

schools, medical health professionals, mental health

professionals, economic organizations and forces, and

governments all interact in a complex knowledge/

power dynamic which encourages some expressions of

sex and sexuality and prohibits others.

Unlike scientific biopolitics, Foucault would not ask

‘‘Why does sex occur at all?’’ but ‘‘How is sex

manifested in particular historical dynamics?’’ ‘‘How

is sex the product of the prevalent knowledge/power

dynamics?’’ ‘‘How does sex support/produce that

dynamic?’’ Foucault does not trace the differences in

behavior between men and women to biology, to

nature, or to some universal truth exterior to history

but to different truth systems, different power/knowl-

edge dynamics in history. Examining power—which

grows, dies, mutates and ruptures—elucidates history.

Biology or evolution is therefore meaningless outside

the prevailing knowledge/power dynamics.

Biopolitics as a movement within political scienceThis comparison clarifies an essential difference

between scientific biopolitics and Foucauldian biopol-

itics. Whereas scientific biopolitics understands itself as

a potential discipline or subdiscipline in political

science, Foucault rejects any discipline, or subdiscipline

as an expression of the prevalent power/knowledge

dynamic. For Foucault, disciplines are constraining,

and attempt to lock us into the established power/

knowledge discourse. He would certainly reject any

attempt to establish a discipline or subdiscipline in his

name or upon any of his central concepts, including

biopolitics. By contrast, proponents of scientific bio-

politics launched a formal effort to create a new

subfield within political science aimed at integrating

the life sciences into the discipline of political science.

In the following section, we look at the evolution of the

efforts to establish scientific biopolitics as a subdisci-

pline in political science in order to draw some

conclusions about future use of the term.

The development of the scientific biopolitical

movement dates back to the mid-1960s when Albert

Somit and Robert Pranger presented papers at the 1967

Southern Political Science Association’s Annual Meet-

ing where they argued that biological approaches could

bring new insights into the study of politics (p. 334).16

In 1968, Albert Somit wrote a journal article entitled

‘‘Toward a More Biologically-Oriented Political Sci-

ence: Ethology and Psychopharmacology,’’ which

called for political scientists to reorient their approach

to political behavior. He challenged political scientists

to look at both ethology (the study of evolutionary

change in animal behavior, especially in terms of

natural selection) and psychopharmacology (the study

of how drugs affect the mind) instead of looking only

at learning and environmental factors.39 In 1969,

Somit and James C. Davies co-chaired a biology and

politics panel at the Western Political Science Associ-

ation’s annual meeting, and by 1970 Somit had

organized a similar panel in Munich at the Interna-

tional Political Science Association’s biannual meeting

(p. 135).5 Even the president of the American Political

Science Association, John Wahlke, argued that political

scientists needed to start examining and taking

seriously the biological sciences in their study of

political behavior—humans were not only cultural

beings but also biological beings (pp. 25–27).4

The less controversial aspect of scientific biopolitics

is the research investigating policy implications of

findings in the life sciences that impact individuals,

society and the world. Issues of biopolicy oriented

toward individual persons include human genetic

intervention, prenatal issues such as reproductive

technologies, nutrition, and death-related issues such

as assisted suicide. Issues of biopolicy oriented toward

society as a whole address such matters as aging

populations, biohazards, and sex differences. Finally,

globally oriented biopolicy concerns include environ-

mental issues and biological weapons. Political scien-

tists with an understanding of the life sciences can

certainly provide insights to policy makers as well as

guidance to scientists as they deal with governmental

agencies.40

In the 1970s, political scientists who embraced

scientific biopolitics believed that it had the potential

to become integral to the various subfields of political

science. This approach asks political scientists to use

the scientific method and to include in their analysis of

Liesen and Walsh


political behavior the substantive findings of the life

sciences (pp. 4–7).3 Rather than looking at human

behavior as only rational, psychological, or cultural,

scientific biopolitics asks that political scientists exam-

ine how biological factors temper or influence human

behavior. As Somit and Peterson explained, the

scientific biopolitical movement was quite successful

in its growth and maturity when one examines its

organizational structure during this period. In 1973,

scientific biopolitics scholars received formal recogni-

tion as a subgroup when the International Political

Science Association gave its official approval to create a

Research Committee on Biology and Politics. By 1981

the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences

(APLS) was founded, and by 1982 the organization

began publishing its own journal, Politics and the Life

Sciences. By 1998 numerous books in biopolitics had

been published and there were over 1,200 scientific

biopolitical articles in print, yet few in the top political

science journals.12

Despite steady growth during the 1970s and 1980s,

the scientific biopolitical movement in political science

began facing challenges to continued growth and

influence in political science. At the 1996 annual

meeting in San Francisco, the American Political

Science Association announced that in order for an

organized section to maintain its status, it would be

required to have a minimum of 250 members. APLS

asked that APSA allow its nonpolitical scientist

members to attend the meeting in order to participate

in the panels, but APSA declined, stating that these

individuals would have to join APSA. Had APLS

continued holding meetings at the APSA, by 1998 it

would have only been allotted two panels, three

opportunities for meetings, and a reception. Conse-

quently, the APLS Executive Council decided to hold

its own independent meeting in Boston that year

concurrent with APSA’s annual meeting. (For more

background about the association and journal, see

Gary Johnson’s commentary in the previous issue.41)

By any measure, the 1998 meeting was quite

successful: there were 70 events, 43 panels, a keynote

address by E.O. Wilson, seven plenary lectures and 219

participants from 11 countries and 30 different fields

(p. 113).42 Subsequent meetings in Atlanta and

Washington, DC were also quite successful—well-

attended by a variety of scholars interested in politics,

policy, and the life sciences. According to Somit and

Peterson, two-thirds of the participants at these

meeting were not political scientists.43 Unfortunately,

attendance at the 2001 APLS meeting Charleston, SC

was definitely impacted by a general unwillingness to

travel following the 9/11 and anthrax attacks that year.

Many international and U.S. participants declined to

travel during this time, and the number of participants

at the APLS conference was markedly lower.

Over time, it became increasingly clear to the APLS

Executive Council that the financial risks of holding

independent annual meetings at major hotels were

increasing as attendance at APLS meetings never

recovered to pre-9/11 levels. Membership also declined

on account of ongoing delays in the publication of

Politics and the Life Sciences due to legal wrangling

over the publication of an article critical of a popular

scholar’s work on birth order.44 In 2006, the APLS

Executive Council decided to hold the annual meeting

at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN. Not only did

this help minimize the financial risk to APLS, it also

enabled the organization to draw more graduate

students to the meetings.

While APLS members who were political scientists

enjoyed these independent meetings, there were also

members who were concerned that the organization

was becoming too distant from APSA and political

science as a discipline. Not only was the APLS

membership and meeting attendance shrinking, it was

becoming apparent that other political scientists were

embracing the scientific biopolitical method with no

awareness of or reference to the scientific understand-

ing of the term ‘‘biopolitics’’ (or APLS). By 2004,

political scientists who were not associated with APLS

were presenting scientific biopolitical papers at APSA.

A paper by John Hibbing, John Alford, and Carolyn

Funk on ‘‘The Source of Political Attitudes and

Behavior: Assessing Genetic and Environmental Con-

tributions’’45 is a good example. In 2004, Alford and

Hibbing published a piece in Perspectives on Politics

that discussed the ‘‘new’’ insights evolutionary biology

can bring to political science and the understanding of

the ultimate causes of political behavior.46 And in

2005, Alford, Hibbing, and Funk’s ‘‘Are Political

Orientations Genetically Transmitted?’’47 appeared in

the American Political Science Review. In these pieces,

the authors make no mention of scientific biopolitics,

APLS, or the journal Politics and the Life Sciences.

However, they did make passing reference to the work



of Roger Masters, John Wahlke, and Somit and

Peterson, usually in the footnotes.48,4,49,50 In response

to Alford and Hibbing as well as McDermott, Somit

and colleagues reminded these scholars that their work

and insights were not revolutionary as they had

claimed and that the Darwinian ‘‘revolution’’ in

political science that is scientific biopolitics was now

40 years old.45,51,52

Losing control of the term ‘‘biopolitics’’Today it is clear that APLS has lost control of the

term ‘‘biopolitics’’ as a descriptor of its approach to the

analysis of politics. Not only were members of the

APLS not the only scholars using the term biopolitics,

the organization has not managed to sustain or

increase its market share over use of the term. Some

of the problem definitely rests with political science as

a discipline, which can be very insular and fragmented,

making some groups and subfields nearly ‘‘invisible’’

(p. 136).5 For the last three decades, this was a problem

not only among American political scientists at their

annual meetings but also in Europe where there were

only a handful of political scientists identifying with

scientific biopolitics (p. 434).1

How did the scientific biopolitical movement lose

control of its own name and concept? Several factors

seem to have contributed to this state of affairs. One

contributing factor is that newer scholars in the

emerging subfield do not typically use the term

‘‘biopolitics’’ within their own research like those of

the founding generation in APLS. Rather than explic-

itly stating that they are using the scientific biopolitical

method or approach, these scholars employ the terms

‘‘evolutionary,’’ ‘‘Darwinian,’’ or ‘‘ethological’’ to

describe their research (for example Laurette Liesen,53

Rebecca Hannagan,54 and Patrick Stewart55). This

trend was evident by the 1990s, when there were

substantially fewer listings using the term ‘‘biopolitics’’

in the online databases Scopus and Sci-Verse compared

to the 1970s and 1980s. Prior to this time, most

‘‘biopolitics’’ articles were published in Politics and the

Life Sciences. This may reflect that newer scholars were

no longer making the case for this perspective and were

moving beyond apologetics toward employing the

scientific biopolitical perspective, for using empirical

data from other fields or for using scientific method-

ology.

In addition to the decline in the use of the descriptor

‘‘biopolitics,’’ the term was increasingly appropriated

by political scientists and other scholars who now

embraced Foucault’s concept of biopolitics. For exam-

ple, a library search of journal articles in the EBSCO

database turned up 1,200 citations published between

1950 and 2011 under the keyword ‘‘biopolitics.’’ Yet

most of the articles listed employ Foucauldian bio-

politics. Interestingly, as a descriptor, ‘‘biopolitics’’ calls

up journal articles dating back to the 1950s and 1960s

that do not even include the term ‘‘biopolitics’’ but use

Foucault’s approach. By 2001 the word ‘‘biopolitics’’

was widely being used in the titles of journal articles

using Foucauldian biopolitics and found not only in

political science, but also sociology, anthropology,

business, biology, literature, religious studies, commu-

nications, cultural studies, economics, and history. In

sum, during the 2000s, the vast majority of biopolitics

journal articles were works of Foucauldian biopolitics.

At the same time, APLS had made some organiza-

tional decisions in the mid-1990s that may have

contributed to the organization losing control of the

term ‘‘biopolitics.’’ The Executive Council decided to

hold their annual meetings away from the APSA. The

diminished presence of political scientists doing scien-

tific biopolitical research at the American Political

Science Association’s annual meeting beginning in

1998 coincides with the increased number of postmod-

ernists presenting biopolitical papers, e.g., Halpern and

Nackenhoff’s ‘‘(Un)-doing the State: Feminist Theorists

and the Transformation of 21st Century Politics’’ in

2002.56 Other political scientists embraced biology and

genetics in their research of political behavior, but did

not use the term biopolitics to describe their research

(see, for example, Hibbing, Alford, and Funk44). In

addition, the scope of APLS as an organization grew

substantially during the 1990s, especially in terms of

biopolicy. According to Goetze, by the late 1990s

biopolicy studies was the largest subgroup at the APLS

annual meetings and was drawing members increas-

ingly from outside of political science.57 While Goetze

suggests that APLS lost its focus during this period, and

became too inclusive by welcoming scholars from a

variety of disciplines, Gary Johnson maintains that

biopolicy has always been a part of APLS from its

founding and that the policy implications of this

perspective were attracting the attention of scholars

throughout the world.41

Liesen and Walsh


Finally, it may be that the scientific biopolitical

movement is just maturing into a more specific research

area that utilizes data and theories of the natural

sciences in analyzing political behavior. Alford and

Hibbing suggest that the scientific biopolitical move-

ment of the 1970s followed evolutionary psychology

(and sociobiology) by focusing on the role of genetics

and brain physiology in establishing human universals

such as hierarchy, war, sexual politics, and leadership

behavior. In addition, they make the distinction

between a scientific biopolitics that remained theoret-

ical, descriptive, and speculative and a ‘‘new empirical

biopolitics’’ that does research on the brain and genes.58

Conclusion

For conceptual clarity and disciplinary identity, both

groups of scholars within political science cannot

continue to share the term ‘‘biopolitics.’’ For several

reasons, we recommend that APLS abandon the term

as a descriptor of its research approach. First, the term

has a negative historical connotation for many

scholars, especially since there is evidence that it was

used by Nazi operatives and was associated with

eugenics. Second, it currently has a negative connota-

tion since postmodernists use it to describe the

oppressive power of the state on individuals and

populations. Finally, in terms of disciplinarity, the

APLS and other scholars using the scientific biopolitical

method have lost control of the term. Not only is it not

being used by many politics and life sciences scholars, it

is associated almost completely in the academic library

databases and political science conferences with

Foucauldian biopolitics. While we do not offer a new

term for what we have labeled scientific biopolitics, we

believe it is time to discuss the option for a new term or

phrase that succinctly captures the intersection of

politics and the life sciences. Perhaps we already have

the label that better describes the approach incorpo-

rating human biology, the environment, and culture in

the analysis of political behavior, policy, and politics.

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