Success or Failure? A Critical but Optimistic Evaluation of Biopolitics

Abstract

Purpose – This chapter discusses the increased acceptance of biopolitical research by mainstream political science and examines the potential causes. It demonstrates that the changing status of biopolitics is part of a more general pattern in academia, where biological explanations of social phenomena are increasingly viewed as acceptable and even necessary.

Design/methodology/approach – A brief review of the history of the literature of biopolitics with a content analysis of the three leading general-readership journals of political science and other measures of activity in biopolitics.

Findings – Political scientists until recently have not been receptive to the arguments advanced by proponents of biopolitics, but this resistance is weakening. This case for a more biologically oriented political science is more tenable now in part because of the groundwork done by the early generation of biopolitics scholars but mainly because of changing circumstances.

Citation

Blank, R.H. and Petersen, M.B. (2014), "Success or Failure? A Critical but Optimistic Evaluation of Biopolitics", The world of biology and politics: Organization and research areas (Research in Biopolitics, Vol. 11), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 199-216. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2042-9940(2013)0000011013