Copy the page URI to the clipboard
Ruppert, Evelyn
(2011).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038510394027
Abstract
While Foucault described population as the object of biopower he did not investigate the practices that make it possible to know population. Rather, he tended to naturalise it as an object on which power can act. However, population is not an object awaiting discovery, but is represented and enacted by specific devices such as censuses and what I call population metrics. The latter enact populations by assembling different categories and measurements of subjects (biographical, biometric and transactional) in myriad ways to identify and measure the performance of populations. I account for both the object and subject by thinking about how devices consist of agencements, that is, specific arrangements of humans and technologies whose mediations and interactions not only enact populations but also produce subjects. I suggest that population metrics render subjects interpassive whereby other beings or objects take up the role and act in place of the subject.
Viewing alternatives
Download history
Metrics
Public Attention
Altmetrics from AltmetricNumber of Citations
Citations from DimensionsItem Actions
Export
About
- Item ORO ID
- 24772
- Item Type
- Journal Item
- ISSN
- 1469-8684
- Project Funding Details
-
Funded Project Name Project ID Funding Body Not Set RES-000-22-3493 ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) - Keywords
- agencement; biopolitics; census; enactment; interpassivity; metrics; population; transactional data
- Academic Unit or School
-
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) > Social Sciences and Global Studies
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) - Copyright Holders
- © 2011 The Author
- Depositing User
- Evelyn Ruppert