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This article critically engages with the influential theory of ''molecularized biopower'' and ''politics of life'' developed by Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose. Molecularization is assumed to signal the end of population-centred biopolitics and the disciplining of subjects as described by Foucault, and the rise of new forms of biosociality and biological citizenship. Drawing on empirical work in Science and Technology Studies (STS), we argue that this account is limited by a focus on novelty and assumptions about the transformative power of the genetic life sciences. We suggest that biopower consists of a more complex cluster of relationships between the molecular and the population. The biological existence of different human beings is politicized through different complementary and competing discourses around medical therapies, choices at the beginning and end of life, public health, environment, migration and border controls, implying a multiple rather than a singular politics of life.

AT THE 1980 AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION MEETING IN WASHINGTON, A NEW ASSOCIATION DEDICATED TO THE ADVANCEMENT OF AN INTEGRATED BIOSOCIAL PERSPECTIVE IN THE POLITICAL SCIENCES WAS FORMED, THE ASSOCIATION FOR POLITICS AND THE LIFE SCIENCES. THIS ARTICLE REVIEWS THE HISTORY AND RATIONALE BEHIND THIS INTELLECTUAL ACTIVITY AND SOME OF OBJECTIVES OF THE ASSOCIATION.