Governing Vitalities and the Security State. (October 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kearns, Gerry
• Is Part Of: Environment and planning. Volume 32:Number 5(2014)
• Page Start: 762
• Page End: 778
• Publication Date: 2014-10
• Subjects: Foucault -- biopolitics -- geopolitics -- AIDS -- war -- famine; Human geography -- Periodicals; Human ecology -- Periodicals; Spatial behavior -- Periodicals; Social sciences -- Periodicals; Sciences sociales -- Périodiques; Ruimtelijke ordening; Social sciences; Periodicals; 304.2305
• DOI: 10.1068/d13002p
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0263-7758

Abstract

The techniques by which states regulate life are both spatial and geopolitical. Foucault wrote of a broad transition from a state concern with territory focused on regulating threats such as famine and epidemics, to a modern concern with population that prioritised instead a set of everyday dangers that were to be averted by continual action for and upon individuals. In this paper I argue that territoriality is more geopolitical in character and more continually significant than Foucault suggested. This geopolitics implicates a global political economy and forms of imperialism and colonialism occluded by Foucault's state-centric rather than states-centric approach.