Concept Of Biopower

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Biopower is a mechanism of power for managing collectives, the distinguishing quality of this political technology is that it permits for the govern o populations through the physical human body. It creates control of human bodies through an anatomic-politics of the human body which is controlling the body and behaviour of society. Contemporary power within society according to Foucault's analysis, develops into programmed social practices as well as human behaviour as the human subject gradually complies to indirect regulations and expectations social order. It is a vital feature and essential to the mechanisms of the emergence of the modern nation state, capitalism or medicalisation (Einion, 2003). Biopower is literally having power over…show more content…
This idea of the government is not limited to state politics it also includes a range of control methods, that applies to a diversity of matters, from control of the self to the biopolitical mass control of populations. The concept of governmentality develops a new understanding of power. Foucault demonstrates that the ability to think of power not only in terms of hierarchical of the state he argues that there is a wide understanding of power that includes the forms of social control in disciplinary institutions such as hospitals and the forms of knowledge. Power can manifest itself positively by producing knowledge and certain discourses that get adopted by individuals and guide the behaviour of populations (Foucault, 2011). This causes a development of more well-organized forms of social control because knowledge empowers individuals to govern themselves. Through this conception of biopower, thus, is a tool of governance. The objective of biopower is to harvest healthy bodies which is an advantage for governance, due to the ability of the government and individuals to socially control attitudes and behaviours within society. This could be illustrated through the constant visualisation of health examinations, institutions, advertising, or social pressures to be healthy, causes individuals to be more aware that they should be healthy (White 1992). The visualisation of power, through the continuous societal pressures to be healthy is abstracted from Bentham’s Panopticon (1791) theory of the visualisation of power. This, Foucault argues in the Birth of clinic (1991) is set up in a similar manner, as society is uninterruptedly pressuring individuals into medicalisation of the human body. Thus, having control over mass populations, to produce and maintain healthy bodies which
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