Meanings
nounbiopower (uncountable)
- uncountablepolitical scienceThe sum of the various techniques used by modern nation-states to control not individual subjects but their entire populations, as contrasted with traditional modes of power based on the threat of death from a sovereign.
The third type of power, biopower, emerges from the eighteenth century onward, and is directed toward populations rather than individual bodies.
2015, Joe Painter, “Power”, in John Agnew, Virginie Mamadouh, Anna J. Secor, Joanne Sharp, editors, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Political Geography, Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 147 - uncountableBioenergy.
Origin
- Frenchbiopouvoir
- Englishbiopower
From bio- + power, calque of French biopouvoir, coined by Michel Foucault.
More words from French
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Finnish biovalta
- biovaltapolitical technology
French biopouvoir
- biopouvoirpolitical technology
German Bio-Macht
- Bio-Machtpolitical technology
Cite this entry
APA
biopower. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/biopower
MLA
“biopower.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/biopower. Accessed November 2, 2026.
Chicago
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “biopower,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/biopower.
Source: biopower on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.