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Biopolitics draws on the theory, substance, & method of the life sciences in analyzing human political behavior. The relationships between sex differences & politics can be explored from many perspectives within the social & natural sciences, correlating data from sociobiology, psychophysiology, ethnology, & endocrinology with known factors of social structure, political attitudes, socialization, & participation. In an introduction to the topic of biopolitics, theoretical history & recent research are reviewed. A crucial issue is the matter of sex-role socialization, ie, how & whether culture & genetics act together to evolve characteristics of leadership & political activity. 1 Figure. D. Dunseath.

What would it mean to take antiblackness seriously in theories of biopolitics? How would our understanding of biopolitics change if antiblack racialization and slavery were understood as the paradigmatic expression of biopolitical violence? This essay thinks through the significance of black studies scholarship for disentangling biopolitics' paradoxes and dilemmas. I argue that only by situating antiblackness as constitutive of modernity and of modern biopolitics can we begin to meet the theoretical and political challenges posed by biopolitics. While Roberto Esposito formulates some of the most important questions about biopolitics, his responses will always be insufficient insofar as he engages in no discussion of blackness, antiblackness, slavery, white supremacy, or the role of sociopolitical processes of racialization, violence, and domination. I move from a critique of Esposito to explore the modernity-making processes of the imbrication of antiblackness and biopolitics. To do so, I analyze the biopolitics of birth and of flesh, and interrogate the (im)possibility of an affirmative biopolitics. Ultimately, the essay argues that theories of biopolitics can be genuinely critical only to the extent that they center antiblackness.

This article considers the biopolitics of coffee in contemporary Vietnam. Drawing on Vietnamese food safety manuals and coffee processing educational materials, ethnographic research, and recent food safety scandals covered in state media, the article argues that for the Vietnamese state, managing coffee and its microbial matters is about managing people rather than the environment, infrastructure, or export standards in the Vietnamese coffee industry. Commodity coffee production and industrial processing perpetuate food safety scandals, becoming part of the state's biopolitical strategy to maintain order, safety, and composure in the industry.

Here is an important book for social scientists interested in the influence of gender on certain types of behavior. Several perspectives are presented on the general topic of biopolitics and gender, including the points of view of brain science, endocrinology, ethology, psychophysiology, and such conventional interests as political attitudes, socialization, participation, social structure, and political hierarchy. The varied and provocative ideas explored in this volume will broaden discussions of gender beyond an exclusive focus on sex links to oppression and discrimination

Introduction: Challenging the Political - Religious Actors and Religious Arguments in Liberal Democracies (Mirjam Weiberg-Salzmann and Ulrich Willems) -- Part I: Catholic-Latin states with low level or little religious pluralism -- Discursive Strategies of Catholic Churches in Assisted Reproduction Technology Regulation: Poland and Spain in Comparison (Anja Hennig) -- The Role of Religion in Debates on Embryo Research and Surrogacy in France (Jennifer Merchant) -- Embryonic Silences: Human Life Between Biomedicine, Religion, and State Authorities in Austria (Ingrid Metzler and Anna Pichelstorfer) -- Religion and Biopolitics in Ireland (Mirjam Weiberg-Salzmann) -- Part II: Protestant(-English) states with high or moderate level religious pluralism -- Biotechnology and the Non-religious Uses of God Talk (John H. Evans) -- The Political Debate on Embryo Research in New Zealand and the Role of Religious Actors and Arguments (David Gareth Jones) -- The Political Debate on Embryo Research in Australia and the Role of Religious Actors and Arguments (Frank O'Keeffe and Kevin McGovern) -- Part III: Protestant(-Scandinavian) states with low level religious pluralism -- The Status of the Human Embryo: A Case Study of Embryo Experiments and Embryo Research in Denmark (Jacob Dahl Rendtorff) -- Religion and Biopolitics in Sweden (Göran Hermerén and Mats Johansson) -- Negotiating Embryo Politics in Norway and Italy (Mirjam Weiberg-Salzmann and Massimiliano Passerini) -- Part IV: Mixed-confession states with high level religious pluralism -- The Role of Religion in the Political Debate on Embryo Research in the Netherlands (Wybo J. Dondorp and Guido M. W. R. de Wert) -- Moralizing Embryo Politics in Germany (Mirjam Weiberg-Salzmann) -- Bioethics and Biopolitics in Switzerland: Stem Cell Research and Pre-Implantation Diagnostics in the Public Discourse (Monika Bobbert and Yvonne Zelter) -- Morality Policies: How Religion and Politics Interplay in Democratic Decision-making in Belgium (Nathalie Schiffino) --

The article addresses the puzzling silence of the Foucaldian studies of biopolitics about Soviet socialism by revisiting Foucault's own account of socialism in his 1970s work, particularly his 1975–6 course 'Society Must Be Defended'. Foucault repeatedly denied the existence of an autonomous governmentality in socialism, demonstrating its dependence on the techniques of government developed in 19th-century western Europe. For Foucault Soviet socialism was fundamentally identical to its ideological antagonist in its biopolitical rationality, which he defined in terms of racism. This article challenges Foucault's reading, demonstrating that his notion of racism is ill-suited to describe the governmental rationalities of Soviet socialism during both the formation and the consolidation of the Stalinist regime. While the Soviet project was paradigmatically biopolitical in its ambition to transform the forms of life of the population in line with the communist ideology, its biopolitics was fundamentally different from the security-oriented logic of racism, focusing instead on the exposure of the population to the violent transformation of their forms of life. Revisiting Foucault's genealogy of racism, we argue that the point of descent of this biopolitics lies in the 19th-century split of the 'counter-historical' discourse of the struggle of the races into the discourses of state racism and class struggle. While Foucault's genealogy focuses on the development of the former into liberal and totalitarian biopolitics as we know them, it leaves class struggle out of the history of biopolitics and is therefore unable to account for the biopolitical specificity of the Soviet project. ; Peer reviewed

The problem facing society today, which is only superficially defined in terms of 'postdemocracy' or exorcised as populism, is not the limits or defects of democracy, but, on the contrary, its completion in the figure of its opposite. One must be aware that the horizon has profoundly and irreversibly changed. At this point, what is at stake is no longer a simple reform of society's institutions; rather, we are faced with a socio-cultural transformation that runs much deeper than our entire political lexicon. Far from opposing the new significance assumed by biological life under the illusion of restoring our ancient vocabulary, we must place ourselves at the centre of political action – sufficiently responding to the pressing demands that come, to the dilemmas that unfold, to the needs that provoke ever greater masses of men and women – within the borders of the West or with those pressing to gain entry.