Biodiversity, Purity, and Death
Conservation Biology as Biopolitics
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4476183 |
|---|---|
| Authors | C Biermann (0000-0002-0821-755X, The Ohio State University), Becky Mansfield (0000-0003-2120-462X, Department of Geography, Ohio State University, 1036 Derby Hall, 154 North Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210, USA) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 257-273 |
| Publication date | 2014-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Environment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1068/d13047p |
| OpenAlex | W2088442121 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 131 |
| References cited | 60 |
This paper draws on the Foucauldian notion of biopower to renarrate the development of conservation science in the US as a form of liberal biopolitical rule. With its emphasis on making nature live, conservation marks a shift away from a sovereign form of rule that emphasized subduing and controlling nature; today, nature is ruled not by the sword but by science. Through a discussion of key concepts in conservation biology-populations in crisis; evolution and its future orientation; extinction as death that is necessary for life; and diversity as purity-we illustrate the truth discourses, underlying logics, and calculative technologies by which distinctions within nonhuman life are made and made meaningful. We argue that conservation is biopolitical not just in that it moves from controlling individuals to statistically managing populations and species, but also in that it extends the racialized logic of abnormality in its core notions of biological diversity and purity. In the logics of conservation and race, life produces diversity, conceived as variety of biological kinds; within that diversity exist kinds that foster ongoing life, which should be maximized, and kinds that are threats, which should be let die in the name of life in general
Biodiversity · Biology · Biopower · Diversity (politics · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Variety (cybernetics · Anthropology · Environmental Philosophy and Ethics · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Philosophy · Religion, Ecology, and Ethics · Ecology
Defending Dogs’ Hillock
Population history of chimpanzees introduced to Lake Victoria’s Rubondo Island
“Governmentalities” of Conservation Science at the Advent of Drones
The Biopolitical Imperative
Objectivity Killed the Cat? Navigating Conservation Ethics in Feral Cat Management in Australia
Tending settler-colonial innocence
An unlikely form of violence
Carceral jaguar geographies along the US/México border and the case for border abolition
Contesting the man-eater animal(ity)
Tiger conservation, biopolitics and the future of Indian environmentalism
The Impacts of Doing Environmental Research (Core Tenet #3)
Relations of divergence and convergence. Political ontology at the intersection of protected areas and neoliberal conservation
Towards fairer conservation
Who must adapt to whom? Contested discourses on human–wolf coexistence and their impact on policy in Spain
Hybrid apes in the Anthropocene
Stakeholder discourse and opinion towards a charismatic non‐native lizard species
Killing for the common good? The (bio)politics of wolf management in Washington State
Aux origines de la biodiversité européenne
Disrupting the Patrón
Geographies of Extinction
Presenting Endangerment
Anthropomorphism in the Anthropocene
Restoration
Ecological Restoration, Genetics, Genomics, and Environmental Governance
Monitoring extinction
The biopolitics of private conservation
More-than-human heritage
Living in the forest as a pluriverse
From colonial fortresses to neoliberal landscapes in Northern Tanzania
Securing the sea
Enterprising Nature
Valuing Species
Anticipating endangerment
Sensing inequity
Rewilding futures
Assemblage, archive, and ancestor
The Reintroduction of Beavers to Scotland
From Biopower to Ontopower? Violent Responses to Wildlife Crime and the New Geographies of Conservation
Auto-rewilding in Post-industrial Cities
Under Pressure
Technology, Inclusivity and the Rogue
The Biopolitics of (English) Rewilding
The biopolitics of carbon accounting in Indonesia’s forests
Deceptive Landscapes
Beyond Biodiversity Conservation
Strained encounters of the anthropogene
Measuring soil, making territory
Whose Place Is This Anyway? An Actor-Network Theory Exploration of a Conservation Conflict
The Weight of Beastly Traits
Consider the (Feral) Cat
License to Cull
Biopolitics in the National Parks
Rethinking the Encounter Between Law and Nature in the Anthropocene
On shaping expectations of “new normals” for living in a post-Covid-19 world
The foucauldian approach to conservation
Environmental governance in motion
Race, Space, and Nature
Mapping for Mapping’s Sake? Ecosystems Services Maps and the Modes of (Ir)relevance of Ecological Knowledge for Nature Conservation
Conservation regimes of exclusion
Living waste, living on waste
Environmentality unbound
Activating uncertainty
Navigating compounding uncertainty
Creating ecotourism territories
More-than-human government and the Tbilisi zoo flood
Securing forests from the scourge of chestnut blight
Territorial cleansing’ for whom? Indigenous rights, conservation, and state territorialization in the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve, Nicaragua
Securing conservation Lebensraum? The geo-, bio-, and ontopolitics of global conservation futures
Renegotiating Species Belonging in a Changing World
Conservation and geography I. Getting into the weeds; the “new” conservation and invasive species management
Fugitive Ecologies
Cultivated, feral, wild
(Co)producing landscapes of coexistence
License to Kill
Wildlife conservation, multiple biopolitics and animal subjectification
Social licence to cull
Trophy Hunters & Crazy Cat Ladies
The many boar identities
The politics of a natural laboratory
Conserving Wolves by Transforming Them? The Transformative Effects of Technologies of Government in Biodiversity Conservation
Entanglement, autonomy and the co-production of landscapes
Revisiting social natures
Political Ecologies of Meat
More-than-human territoriality
Becoming killable
Feral Political Ecologies
Toward vegetal political ecology
Animals’ atmospheres
Animals’ mobilities
Biopolitics, Environmental Change, and Development Studies
Cultural geographies of extinction
Animating capital
Political ecologies of biopower
Informal Urban Displacement in Rio de Janeiro
Changing the Anthropo(s)cene
Probiotic Environmentalities
Natural capital must be defended
Militarisation Under Covid-19
The Conservation Ideological State Apparatus
Infrastructure as biopolitics
A New Century for Natural Resources Management
The Liberal Way of War
Understories
Actor network theory and after
Racial Formation in the United States
Rethinking the Great White North
Against Ecological Sovereignty
Reassembling the Social
Biopower Today
Race and the new epigenetic biopolitics of environmental health
Global biopolitics and the history of world health
Conserving the Race
Producing ‘prehistoric’ life
From catfish to organic fish
Counting Species
Governing the Wild
Biopower, genetics and livestock breeding
After Method
An introduction to science and technology studies
Green governmentality
Bovine biopolitics and the promise of monsters in the rewilding of Heck cattle
Overstocking the Range
Gendered Biopolitics of Public Health
Securing Life
Biopolitics and the molecularization of life
Ecologies of Empire
| Unique citing works | 131 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 10,92 |
| Citation span | 2014 - 2026 (13) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | Yes |
| Citation types | Neutral: 128 |