Biopolitics

Core ideas and key thinkers There is a lively philosophical and political debate over biopolitics informed by a number of theorists, such as Giorgio Agamben, Antonio Negri, Roberto Esposito, and Peter Sloterdijk (see Campbell 2011; Lemke 2011). While their debates are pushing the theory of biopolitics in new directions, I have purposefully chosen not to include a discussion of their work here, given how much current research on biopolitics and the environment draws almost exclusively on Foucault.1 This account of biopolitics is admittedly myopic, but provides a detailed overview of Foucauldian approaches that are currently more frequently utilized in critical environmental research (see also Kuehls, and Lövbrand and Stripple, this volume).