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Biopower (or ''biopouvoir'' in French) is a term coined by French scholar, historian, and social theorist Michel Foucault. It relates to the practice of modern nation states and their regulation of their subjects through "an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations".〔Michel Foucault ''The History of Sexuality'' Vol. 1 p. 140 (1976)〕 Foucault first used the term in his lecture courses at the Collège de France,〔Michel Foucault: ''Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977–1978'' pp. 1–4; see notes on p. 24, notes 1–4 (2007)〕〔Michel Foucault: ''Society Must Be Defended'' Lectures at the Collège de France 1975–1976 p. 243 (2003)〕 but the term first appeared in print in ''The Will To Knowledge'', Foucault's first volume of ''The History of Sexuality''.〔Michel Foucault, (1998) ''The History of Sexuality'' Vol. 1: The Will to Knowledge. London: Penguin〕 In Foucault's work, it has been used to refer to practices of public health, regulation of heredity, and risk regulation, among many other regulatory mechanisms often linked less directly with literal physical health. It is closely related to a term he uses much less frequently, but which subsequent thinkers have taken up independently, biopolitics. == Foucault and the concept of biopower == Bio-power can be understood as the sole prerogative of the modern Nation state to "make live and let die" which is distinct from the medieval system of rule by the singular sovereign an invention from the sovereign power derived from the ancient legal apparatus of Roman law ''Pater familias'' which would be "let live and make die" defined by the personal power of a monarch. This kind of attitude of the state toward the lives of its social subjects, Foucault argues, is a way of understanding the new formation of power dominate in Western society today. For Foucault, biopower is a technology of power for managing people as a large group; the distinctive quality of this political technology is that it allows for the control of entire populations. It is an integral feature and essential to the workings of—and makes possible—the emergence of the modern nation state and capitalism, etc.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Amedeo Policante. "War against Biopower: Timely Reflections on an Historicist Foucault", ''Theory & Event'', 13. 1 March 2010 )〕 Biopower is literally having power over bodies; it is "an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations".〔Michel Foucault ''The History of Sexuality'' Vol. 1: The Will to Knowledge. London: Penguin. p. 140 (1998)〕 Foucault elaborates further in his lecture courses on Biopower entitled ''Security, Territory, Population'' delivered at the Collège de France between January and April 1978: It relates to governmental concerns of fostering the life of the population, "an ''anatomo-politics of the human body'' a global mass that is affected by overall characteristics specific to life, like birth, death, production, illness, and so on.〔''Nature Vol 490'' p. 309, 2012〕 It produces a generalized disciplinary society〔''Security, Territory, Population'' pp. 377-378, 2007〕 and ''regulatory controls'' through ''biopolitics of the population''".〔''Security, Territory, Population'' p., 378 2007〕〔''Security, Territory, Population’’, see also note 71, p. 397 2007〕〔''The History Of Sexuality Vol 1'' p. 139 1976〕 In his lecture ''Society Must Be Defended'', Foucault's tentative sojourner into ''biopolitical state racism'', and its accomplished rationale of myth-making and narrative, he states the fundamental difference between biopolitics〔''Security, Territory, Population'' pp. 363–91 2007〕 and discipline: Foucault claims that the previous Greco-Roman, Medieval rule of the emperors, the Divine right of kings and Absolute monarchy〔''Security, Territory, Population'' pp. 363–401 2007〕 model of power and social control over the body was an individualizing mode. However, after the emergence of the medieval metaphor body politic which meant society as a whole with the ruler, in this case the king, as the head of society with the so-called Estates of the realm next to the monarch with the majority of the peasant population or feudal serfs at the bottom of the hierarchical pyramid, this meaning of the metaphor was then codified into medieval law for the offence of high treason and if found guilty the sentence of Hanged, drawn and quartered was carried out.〔''A declaration which offences shall be adjudged treason (25 Edw 3 St 5 c 2)'' 1351 "When a man does compass or imagine the death of our lord the king, or of our lady his Queen, or their eldest son and heir."〕〔For an excellent account of this legislation see John Barrell ''Imagining The Kings Death Figurative Treason, Fantasies of Regicide, 1793-1796'' (2000)〕 However, this was drastically altered with the advent of political power in 18th century Europe. The voting franchise; liberal democracy and Political parties; universal adult suffrage: exclusively male at this time, extended to women in Europe in 1929, and extending to people of African descent in America in 1964 (see Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965). The emergence of the human sciences and its subsequent direction, primarily aimed at the modern western man and the society he inhabits, together with the invention of ''Disciplinary institutions''.〔''Security, Territory, Population'' p. 16 2007〕〔''Security, Territory, Population'' pp. 55–86 2007〕〔''Security, Territory, Population'' pp. 1–27, 2007〕 During the 16th and 18th centuries with the advent of ''anatomo-politics of the human body'' a transition occurred through forcible removal of various European monarchs into a "scientific" state apparatus and the radical overhaul of judiciary practices coupled with the reinvention and division of those who were to be punished.〔''Security, Territory, Population'' pp. 163–90 2007〕 A second mode for seizure of power was invented and discovered; while this type of power was stochastic and "massifying", not "individualizing", as in respect to the king, as in previous cases. By "massifying" Foucault means transforming into a population ("population state") with an extra added impetus of a governing mechanism in the form of a scientific machinery and apparatus. This scientific mechanism which we now know as the State "governs less" of the population and concentrates more on administrating external devices: such as money, policy making decisions, military technology, education, medical administration, social welfare, criminal and legal legislation, production and industrial output, industrial legislation etc., allowing the population to "govern themselves". This power is no longer "directed at man-as-body, but at man-as-species".〔Michel Foucault: ''Society Must Be Defended'' Lectures at the Collège de France 1975-1976 p. 243 (2003)〕 Foucault argues that nation states, police, government, legal practices, human sciences and medical institutions have their own rationale, cause and effects, strategies, technologies, mechanisms and codes and have managed successfully in the past to obscure their workings by hiding behind observation and scrutiny. Foucault insists social institutions such as governments, laws, religion, politics, social administration, monetary institutions, military institutions cannot have the same rigorous practices and procedure with claims to independent knowledge like those of the human sciences; such as mathematics, chemistry, astronomy, physics, genetics, and the biological sciences.〔Serge Lang Challenges pp. 1–222 See Chapter Academia, Journalism, and Politics: A Case Study: The Huntington Case (Serge Lang refers to his dispute with Samuel P. Huntington at the National Academy of Sciences) (1998)〕 Foucault saw these differences in techniques as nothing more than "behaviour control technologies", and modern biopower as nothing more than a series of webs and networks working its way around the societal body. However, Foucault argues the exercise of power in the service of maximizing life carries a dark underside. When the state is invested in protecting the life of the population, when the stakes are life itself, anything can be justified. Groups identified as the threat to the existence of the life of the nation or of humanity can be eradicated with impunity. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Biopower」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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