The competing meanings of biopolitics in political science

Source: Politics and the Life Sciences, 31(1):2-15.

Published By: Association for Politics and the Life Sciences
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2990/31_1-2_2
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The competing meanings of biopolitics in political science

Biological and postmodern approaches to politics
Laurette T. Liesen
Department of Political Science
Lewis University
One University Parkway
Romeoville, IL 60446
LiesenLa@lewisu.edu
Mary Barbara Walsh
Department of Political Science
Elmhurst College
190 Prospect Avenue
Elmhurst, IL 60126
walshm@elmhurst.edu

ABSTRACT. The term biopolitics carries multiple, sometimes competing, meanings in political science. When
the term was first used in the United States in the late 1970s, it referred to an emerging subdiscipline that
incorporated 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 Science
Associations annual meeting who followed Foucaults work in examining the power of the state on
individuals. Michel Foucault first used the term biopolitics in the 1970s to denote social and political power
over life. Since then, two groups of political scientists have been using this term in very different ways. This
paper examines the parallel developments of the term biopolitics, how two subdisciplines gained (and one
lost) 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

y the beginning of the twenty-first century, it

has become quite clear that the term biopolitics carries competing meanings in political 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
doi: 10.2990/31_1-2_2

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2004 other political scientists were using the term

biopolitics in a very different way. At that years
American Political Science Associations annual meeting 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 Foucaults 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.

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Competing meanings of biopolitics

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 subdiscipline 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 University 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 speculative and analogical book discussed the association
between biological phenomena and human political
behavior. He argued that the correct model for the
worlds 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 Nazis 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, Darwinian ideas about behavior were dismissed by the social
sciences, and anthropologists, psychologists, and sociologists were turning to cultural and environmental

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explanations. During the 1920s, for example, Darwinian 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 contributions biology could make to the discipline. In 1963
James C. Davies argued that the improvements and
insights in psychobiology, neurophysiology, and endocrinology 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 controlledthe 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 physiology (i.e., drug use, biochemical control of personality 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 scholars in political science who maintained that data and
theories from the life sciences (namely, evolutionary
biology and ethology), as well as biological research

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Liesen and Walsh

techniques, could lead to a more complete understanding 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 phenomenon, considering both biological variables and environmental influences in their research. Instead of
adopting a reductionist and deterministic approach
(p. 2223)13 maintaining that individuals lack will and
choice (p. 189),14 this approach takes into consideration the fact that environment and culture interact
with the individuals 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 information 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 biopolitics literature. Peterson and Somit (p. 334)16 delineated 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. Thorsons
philosophical book, Biopolitics, which addressed debate about scientific method within political science (p.
210).17 According to Wiegele, Thorsons major contribution was calling attention to the different ways
classical and modern scholars viewed human nature
humans as part of nature versus humans as separate

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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 unbeknownst to the members of the newly formed APLS,
there were other conceptual understandings of biopolitics 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 healthrelated, 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 foundational in the emergence of the latest definition of
biopolitics.

The work of Michel Foucault

Biopolitics as an historical phenomenon
As is apparent from the foregoing discussion, the
term biopolitics carries multiple, sometimes competing, 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.
Foucaults use of the term biopolitics connotes neither
a method for approaching politics nor a subdiscipline.
Nor does the term, for Foucault, indicate an organic

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Competing meanings of biopolitics

conception of political society. Rather, Foucault adopts
the term to point to particular phenomena in modernity, 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 societynot merely prohibiting, disciplining and punishing but aggressively
molding, shaping and forming human behavior, personalities 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 Foucaults 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 dominatedor 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. 4344).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 veridiction (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 discursivethe
infinitely complex product of intentional and accidental 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

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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 regimes (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 dominant 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 relationships endemic in a particular culture. Gary Gutting
points to Foucaults 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 Foucaults calculation is a study
of the selfs 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 relationships (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. Foucaults
self-description of his lifes work reveals that his
method was largely descriptive and historical, elabo-

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rating the complex dynamics between power, knowledge, and self.23
In his genealogical analysis of sexuality, Foucault
discerns the contours of a new power/knowledge
dynamic: biopower. Foucaults 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, violence and rights (pp. 8889).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 population (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 levelsat the level of
the individual and at the level of society. It controls the
individual by prohibiting conduct such as masturbation, defining some activities as perverted, or celebrating other activities, such as heterosexual sex, as

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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 coerciona coercion which families, schools,
hospitals, the workplace and government all participate. 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. 243244).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 relationship, 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. 229230).22
As this example demonstrates, these two mechanisms 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 interchangeably.
The emergence of biopower, and biopolitics, in
history reflects a paradox internal to Foucaults
thought. For Foucault, persons are both formed and
forming, created and creating, that is, formed within
historical and epistemic regimes which they themselves

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Competing meanings of biopolitics

create.28 Human nature both produces and is produced
by the forces which Foucault calls biopolitics. This
paradox is reflected in Foucaults 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 generatesand 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 Foucaults fear of biopower, and its
mechanismbiopolitics. He fears biopowers attempt
to control, to squash resistance at the level of both
thought and behavior. He fears biopowers 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 represents, 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 government conforms to the dictates of the capitalist
economic order, managing every sphere of society.

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Moreover, the menace of this devious and discreet

form of power (p. 11)20 reaches beyond the normalizing, 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 individuals 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 phenomena of population (p. 137).20

Comparing scientific biopolitics to

Foucauldian 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 Foucaults
historical method detects. As a result, scientific
biopolitics and Foucauldian biopolitics differ substantially in their understanding, analyses and approach to

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Liesen and Walsh

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.

History
Scholars who study scientific biopolitics do study
historythe evolutionary history of humans. Biological 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 Darwins 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 environment. 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 themselves, but as a species they can also be vulnerable to
future death/extinction due to changes in the environment, 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.

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Foucaults 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 investigation 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
sciencesor politics and the life sciencescan reference. 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 power

Both 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 relationship 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

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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 individuals genes in the next generation, and the
time and energy involved. For many mammals,
especially primates, reproduction requires not only
mating effortenergy spent competing for, attracting,
and provisioning a mate, but also parental efforttime
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 reproductive 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 behavioral 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 Darwins theories of
natural and sexual selection to develop the theories of
kin selection, reciprocal altruism, and parental investment, 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

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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 reproductive 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 inequality.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,

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which demonstrate how sexuality is produced: the
hysterization of womens bodies, the pedagogization of childrens sexuality, the socialization of
procreative behavior, and the psychiatrization of
perverse pleasure (pp. 104105).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/knowledge dynamics in history. Examining powerwhich
grows, dies, mutates and ruptureselucidates history.
Biology or evolution is therefore meaningless outside
the prevailing knowledge/power dynamics.

Biopolitics as a movement within political science

This comparison clarifies an essential difference
between scientific biopolitics and Foucauldian biopolitics. 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 biopolitics 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 subdiscipline in political science in order to draw some
conclusions about future use of the term.

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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 Associations Annual Meeting 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 Science: 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 Associations annual meeting, and by 1970 Somit had
organized a similar panel in Munich at the International Political Science Associations 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 behaviorhumans were not only cultural
beings but also biological beings (pp. 2527).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 environmental issues and biological weapons. Political scientists 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

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political behavior the substantive findings of the life
sciences (pp. 47).3 Rather than looking at human
behavior as only rational, psychological, or cultural,
scientific biopolitics asks that political scientists examine 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 recognition 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. Consequently, the APLS Executive Council decided to hold
its own independent meeting in Boston that year
concurrent with APSAs annual meeting. (For more
background about the association and journal, see
Gary Johnsons 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 successfulwellattended by a variety of scholars interested in politics,
policy, and the life sciences. According to Somit and

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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
scholars 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 understanding 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 Contributions45 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 Funks 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

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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 explicitly 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 methodology.

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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 Foucaults concept of biopolitics. For example, 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 biopolitics. 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
Foucaults 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, communications, 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 organizational 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 scientific biopolitical research at the American Political
Science Associations annual meeting beginning in
1998 coincides with the increased number of postmodernists presenting biopolitical papers, e.g., Halpern and
Nackenhoffs (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 increasingly 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

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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 movement 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 theoretical, 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 connotation 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 incorporating human biology, the environment, and culture in
the analysis of political behavior, policy, and politics.

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