Biopolitics from Below

Democracy in Question?

This episode explores with Ranabir Samaddar the specific nature of democratic politics during the COVID-19 crisis. Anchored in the specificity of the experience of the pandemic in India, the episode also addresses the global transformation of politics in a time of crisis. How has the pandemic changed our understanding of politics? What does it mean to refocus on life as the primary object of politics? And what does the COVID-19 crisis reveal about the nature of the contemporary Indian state and the fundamental concepts of sovereignty and citizenship?

Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:

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• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD

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Bibliograpy:

Samaddar, R (2017). Karl Marx and the Postcolonial Age. Calcutta: Palgrave MacMillan.

Samaddar, R (2007). The Materiality of Politics: The Technologies of Rule Volume 1. London: Anthem Press.

Samaddar, R et al (2022) India’s Migrant Workers and the Pandemic. New York: Routledge.

Grebmer, Klaus von, Jill Bernstein et al (2021). Global Hunger Index: Hunger and Food systems in conflict settings: Bonn / Dublin.

Agamben, Giorgio (1998). Homo sacer: sovereign power and bare life. California: Stanford University Press.

Glossary:
What is Global Hunger Index?
(00:2:17 or p.1 in the transcript)

The Global Hunger Index is a peer-reviewed annual report, jointly published by Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe, designed to comprehensively measure and track hunger at the global, regional, and country levels. The aim of the GHI is to trigger action to reduce hunger around the world. Source:

Who is Foucault and what does biopolitics mean?
(00:3:36 or p.1 in the transcript)

Foucault and biopolitics: Michel Foucault was a major figure in two successive waves of 20th century French thought–the structuralist wave of the 1960s and then the poststructuralist wave. Foucault’s work is transdisciplinary in nature, ranging across the concerns of the disciplines of history, sociology, psychology, and philosophy. At the first decade of the 21st century, Foucault is the author most frequently cited in the humanities in general. The concept of biopolitics was first outlined by Michel Foucault (2003, 2007, 2009) in his lectures at the Collège de France in order to name and analyze emergent logics of power in the 18th and 19th centuries. According to Foucault, biopolitics refers to the processes by which human life, at the level of the population, emerged as a distinct political problem in Western societies. Biopolitics refers to the style of government that regulates populations through "biopower" - the application and impact of poitical power on all aspects of human life. Source:

What is Malthusianism?
(00:12:23 or p.3 in the transcript)

Malthusianism: Thomas Malthus, English economist and demographer who is best known for his theory that population growth will always tend to outrun the food supply and that betterment of humankind is impossible without stern limits on reproduction. This thinking is commonly referred to as Malthusianism. Source:

What was the Great Deccan famine?
(00:12:33 or p.3 in the transcript)

The 1630–1632 famine was the worst that occurred during the Mughal Empire in India. It was caused by a severe drought, followed by a huge flood and a plague of locusts. During that same period, the Ganges in East India changed its river bed, which led to bad harvests in the following years. Source: