Abstract
Since Foucault introduced the notion of biopolitics, it has been fiercely debated—usually in highly generalized terms—how to interpret and use this concept. This article argues that these discussions need to be situated, as biopolitics have features that do not travel from one site to the next. This becomes apparent if we attend to an aspect of biopolitics that has only received scant attention so far: the knowledge practices required to constitute populations as intelligible objects of government. To illustrate this point, the article focuses on processes of biopolitical bordering: the delineation of the target population that is to be known via statistical practices. Drawing on the example of Estonia I show that methodological decisions involved in this work have important biopolitical implications as they affect the size and composition of the population, thus shaping the design of programmes of government aiming at its regulation.
Highlights
Since Foucault introduced the notion of biopolitics, it has been fiercely debated—usually in highly generalized terms—how to interpret and use this concept
The reason for the divergence is that the figure published on Statistics Estonia (SE)’s home page is an ‘adjusted figure’ that is meant to account for a phenomenon known as undercoverage, that is, an undercount of people that are, by definition, part of the usual resident population of Estonia, but have not been enumerated in the population and housing census (PHC) 2011
This article has introduced the notion of biopolitical bordering to attend to an important aspect of biopolitics that has not sufficiently been considered so far: knowledge practices required to enact populations as intelligible objects of government
Summary
Since Foucault introduced the notion of biopolitics, it has been fiercely debated—usually in highly generalized terms—how to interpret and use this concept. This article argues that these discussions need to be situated, as biopolitics have features that do not travel from one site to the This becomes apparent if we attend to an aspect of biopolitics that has only received scant attention so far: the knowledge practices required to constitute populations as intelligible objects of government. The conception of statistical methods as performative yields an important lesson for Michel Foucault’s notion of biopolitics.5 It suggests that debates about biopolitics, which are usually led on a highly abstract level in generalized terms, need to be grounded in a situated analysis that accounts for how biopolitics operate in particular sites. Drawing on material-semiotic approaches, this article addresses this question to show that debates on biopolitics need to be situated because biopolitics feature aspects that do not travel from one site to the
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