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1 – 10 of 748This chapter seeks to look at the most important trends in international relations and global affairs spurred by the coronavirus crisis, and its long-term repercussions. In this…
Abstract
This chapter seeks to look at the most important trends in international relations and global affairs spurred by the coronavirus crisis, and its long-term repercussions. In this analysis the author adapts the current biopolitical scholarship to such disciplines as security studies, foreign policy analysis, international relations and regional studies, and world politics and globalization. The chapter starts with discussing the biopolitics of the coronavirus crisis from a security perspective that requires a juxtaposition of COVID-19 emergency with some other securitized biopolitical events and experiences such as the war on terror and the refugee crisis. When it comes to the global level, the analysis includes the new roles of global organizations and their contribution to the fight against COVID-19. Another perspective is grounded in the discussions on the idea of “the international” and the reverberations of COVID-19 for the entire system of inter-state/inter-governmental/trans-national relations, including its regional dimensions. From the viewpoint of national foreign policies, the pandemic can be viewed as a global calamity producing new forms of diplomatic activity that significantly re-actualize and expand the concepts of biodiplomacy and health diplomacy.
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Robert H. Blank and Michael Bang Petersen
Purpose – This chapter discusses the increased acceptance of biopolitical research by mainstream political science and examines the potential causes. It demonstrates that the…
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.
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Amy Swiffen and Shoshana Paget
This chapter looks at how the concept of biopolitics can be used to understand the settler colonial legal orders. The focus is on the evolution of the definition of ‘Indian…
Abstract
This chapter looks at how the concept of biopolitics can be used to understand the settler colonial legal orders. The focus is on the evolution of the definition of ‘Indian status’ in the Indian Act, which is the central piece of legislation in Canada’s Indian administration regime. Historically, the legal concept of Indian status was used as a way to constitute a population in relation to colonial sovereignty, and later was adapted as a mechanism to internally dividing the population through complex forms of legal domination. Scholars have turned to Michel Foucault’s studies of biopolitics and racism to understand how settler colonial sovereignty relates to a population on a territory. This chapter argues that Foucault’s analysis was radically historically embedded in a way that shapes its relevance to understanding settler colonialism. In Foucault’s original analysis, racism emerges as tool of the state in the relation between territory and sovereignty, which was characteristic in feudal Europe. In settler colonial legal orders such as Canada, however, sovereignty’s relation to the population is constituted in the absence of a prior connection to the land.
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Milton Lodge, Albert Somit, Andrea Bonnicksen and Rebecca J. Hannagan
Purpose – This chapter is designed to acquaint readers with examples of and issues in graduate education in biology and politics…
Abstract
Purpose – This chapter is designed to acquaint readers with examples of and issues in graduate education in biology and politics.
Design/methodology/approach – The main method adopted is the case study. Several programs or suggestions of how a program might develop are provided.
Findings – There are several examples of graduate education in biology and politics. These illustrate how different departments carry out educating students in biology and politics. Approaches include a biology and politics track in a political science program or interdisciplinary collaborations.
Research limitations – There are only a handful of case studies. Considering how other programs work would be a useful future research initiative to pursue.
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Albert Somit and Steven A. Peterson
Biology and Politics (or Biopolitics) has been a part of the political science firmament since the 1960s. Over time, it has become less an odd outlier in the discipline and more a…
Abstract
Biology and Politics (or Biopolitics) has been a part of the political science firmament since the 1960s. Over time, it has become less an odd outlier in the discipline and more a tolerated (and sometimes respected) part of the enterprise. After about 50 years of existence, this is a proper time to reflect on where biopolitics has been, where it is now, and where it might go as an academic endeavor. Indeed, some have said that the best step would for biopolitics to no longer be seen as a special, narrow part of political science – but a part of every field in the discipline, integrated into the larger world of the study of politics.
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Juan Saavedra and Catalina Alvarado-Cañuta
This article analyzes biopolitical strategies for the recovery of neoliberal normality in urban areas affected by earthquakes in 1985, 2010 and 2015 in Chile (intensity >8.0Mw).
Abstract
Purpose
This article analyzes biopolitical strategies for the recovery of neoliberal normality in urban areas affected by earthquakes in 1985, 2010 and 2015 in Chile (intensity >8.0Mw).
Design/methodology/approach
This is a qualitative design research. In total, 198 semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven focus groups. The data were processed in search of discursive threads, guided by the categories contained in the analysis and those arising from the interview transcripts.
Findings
Results describe three clusters of discursive threads: disruption of normality, strategies of disaster biopolitics and narratives on the recovery of normality in the medium to long term. In the analyzed cases, disaster biopolitics entered domestic and community spaces to govern life; while the aim was to safeguard lives, it also sought to ensure the continuity of the neoliberal regime. The disaster biopolitics used the exception to normalize, constructing subjectivity and memory around the idea of catastrophes.
Research limitations/implications
The qualitative design can be used in sudden and extreme situations, but it is not possible to anticipate similar results in other kind of disasters (e.g. drought).
Social implications
This study wants to contribute a political vision about disasters by describing the process of restoring order, which follows highly destructive disasters, by demonstrating that in Chile, the biopolitical exception was key to returning to neoliberal normality.
Originality/value
The findings can help improve emergency responses and propose the necessity of political contextualization in post-disaster recovery processes.
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