Childhood, Biosocial Power and the “Anthropological Machine”
Life as a Governable Process
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12643116 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kevin Ryan (0000-0002-7059-9560, School of Political Science & Sociology National University of Ireland Galway, Republic of Ireland, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 266-283 |
| Publication date | 2014-10-18 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Critical Horizons (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1440-9917 • E-ISSN: 1568-5160 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1179/1440991714z.00000000035 |
| OpenAlex | W1572608744 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 22 |
This article examines how childhood has become a strategy that answers to questions concerning the (un)governability of life. The analysis is organized around the concept of “biosocial power,” which is shown to be a particular zone of intensity within the wider field of biopolitics. To grasp this intensity it is necessary to attend to the place of imagination in staging biosocial strategies, that is the specific ways in which childhood is both an imaginary projection and a technical project, and to this end Agamben’s concept of the “anthropological machine” is used to examine how biosocial power has been assembled and deployed. The paper begins with the question of childhood as it was posed towards the end of the nineteenth century, focusing on how this positioned the figure of the child at the intersection of zoē and bios, animal and human, past and future. It ends with a discussion on how the current global obesity “epidemic” has transformed this one-time vision of mastery into a strategy of survival
Biosocial theory · Epistemology · Physics · Power (physics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Anthropology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Philosophy · Political Theology and Sovereignty · Psychology · Race, Genetics, and Society
A Treatise on Man and the Development of his Faculties
A Commentary on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 13
Faces of Degeneration
The Obesity Epidemic
The Dawn of Darwinian Medicine
Obesity in Britain
Children's Geographies
Homo Sacer
Children, Rights and Childhood
Foucault, Michel . Abnormal
Innocents and Oracles
White Trash
Measuring Fatness, Governing Bodies
Gluttony or sloth’
From the Subjection of Women
Genetics, biosocial groups & the future of identity
Negotiating vulnerability through "animal" and "child
The new wave of childhood studies
Governing the Soul - a Quarter of a Century On
Despotism' and ethical liberal governance
| Citations per year | 0.33 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2014 - 2023 (10) |
| Highly cited | No |