Demographic explosion and industrialization forced power beyond sovereignty

Evidence

Both technologies are obviously technologies of the body, but one is a technology in which the body is individuahzed as an organism endowed with capacities, while the other is a technology in which bodies are replaced by general biological processes. One might say this: It is as though power, which used to have sovereignty as its modality or organizing schema, found itself unable to govern the economic and political body of a society that was undergoing both a demographic explosion and industrialization. So much so that far too many things were escaping the old mechanism of the power of sovereignty, both at the top and at the bottom, both at the level of detail and at the mass level. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 264

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth holding: Foucault roots the rise of biopower in material historical pressures — a causal claim some critics contest.
• XREF: connects to: Industrial growth subordinated political power to economic capacity; Demographic explosion and industrialization overwhelmed the old sovereign power model; Biopower replaces sovereignty’s power over death with power over life — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 262 (+8 more)

Related

• Demographic explosion and industrialization overwhelmed the old sovereign power model (similarity 0.95)
• Demographic explosion and industrialization forced sovereignty to yield to biopower. (similarity 0.92)
• Industrial growth subordinated political power to economic capacity (similarity 0.89)
• Biopower replaces sovereignty’s power over death with power over life (similarity 0.82)
• Biopower takes control of life through the twin poles of body and population (similarity 0.80)
• Much societal power remains beyond the political system’s reach (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Capitalism’s non-political nature enabled its global penetration beyond state reach #expands (0.85) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 174
• Much societal power remains beyond the political system’s reach #corroborates (0.78)
• Imperialism made power an end in itself rather than a means to law #expands (0.75)
• Traditional societies and structures can collapse under external pressures #corroborates (0.75)