Biopolitics and humanitarianism: Conceptual debates and ethnographic research

Abstract

This paper will discuss some recent ethnographical contributions to the study of the politics of life, in contrast with those written by philosophers Giorgio Agamben and Roberto Espósito. The document is divided into four parts. Starting from the distinction between normalization and normativation, the first part offers a brief definition of Foucault’s biopolitics. Then the revisions made by Agamben and Espósito in the light of anthropological critique is discussed. The third section deals with ethnographies of biopower and biolegitimacy of Fassin and Petryna. The fourth section concludes by clarifying the distinction between biopolitics and humanitarianism, in dialogue with the analysis of the Anthropological Research on the Contemporary group.